Angelos Koutsourakis

Politics as Form in Lars von Trier (eBook, ePUB)

A Post-Brechtian Reading

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

This is the first study that employs a materialist framework to discuss the political implications of form in the films of Lars von Trier. Focusing mainly on early films, Politics as Form in Lars von Trier identifies recurring formal elements in von Trier's oeuvre and discusses the formal complexity of his films under the rubric of the post-Brechtian. Through an in depth formal analysis, the book shows that Brecht is more important to von Trier's work than most critics acknowledge and deems von Trier a dialectical filmmaker. This study draws on many untranslated resources and features interviews with Lars von Trier and his mentor, the great Danish director Jørgen Leth.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 264
• Erscheinungstermin: 24. Oktober 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781623561338
• Artikelnr.: 48421141

Autorenporträt

Angelos Koutsourakis is Professor in Film and Cultural Studies at the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures, University of Leeds, UK. He is the author of Kafkaesque Cinema (2024), Rethinking Brechtian Film Theory and Cinema (2018), Politics as Form in Lars von Trier (Bloomsbury, 2013) and the co-editor of Cinema of Crisis: Film and Contemporary Europe (2020) and The Cinema of Theo Angelopoulos (2015).

Inhaltsangabe

Preface and Acknowledgements
Notes to the Text

Foreword: Looking Back
1. From Brechtian to Post-Brechtian Cinema. Lars von Trier and the Post-Brechtian
Brecht on the Film Medium
Brecht's Critique of the Institution of Cinema
What is Post-Brechtian Cinema?
Locating von Trier in the post-Brechtian
Challenging the Cinematic Institution
Artaudian Cruelty as Verfremdungseffekt

2. Historical Fragments in the Europa Trilogy
Europe is Painful
Beyond the Fabel
Audiovisual Plenitude: the Individual in Crisis
Dialectical Images
Literalization of the Medium: the Essay as Form
History as Transition
On Film Voyeurism

3. The Primacy of the Apparatus
Back to the 1970s? Dogme 95 Realism and Anti-Illusionism
Technology and Productivity
The Idiots: Performant Function and Performative Camera
Interrupting the Narrative
Performance as Form
Characters as Bodily Effects
Performing out of Character
Reflections on the Primacy of the Apparatus: Post-Dogme Developments, Rules and Automavision

4. Dogville and Manderlay: Experimentation and Dialectical Negations
Representation as an Experiment
Experimentation as Pedagogy
Theatricality: Attitudes in Space
Performative Contradictions
Narrative Openness as Negative Dialectics

Epilogue: Dialogue with the 'Dissensual' Past

Appendix:
Interview with Lars von Trier
Interview with Jørgen Leth
Manifestos
Filmography and Bibliography
Index

Rezensionen

Koutsourakis's examination of the often-examined Lars von Trier is refreshing for a couple of reasons. First, Koutsourakis (research fellow, Centre for Modernism Studies, Univ. of New South Wales, Australia) foregoes biographical attention to von Trier the man in the interest of restoring focus on the formal complexities of the films themselves. Second, Koutsourakis interprets the films through a postmodern rethinking of Bertolt Brecht, and he dedicates the first chapter, 50 pages or so, to Brecht and defining "post-Brechtian"--which should interest scholars of theater, performance studies, and contemporary cinema. The book is strongly argued and will prove useful to those interested in von Trier. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. J. Sundquist, Eastern Washington University CHOICE