Provocation in Women's Filmmaking - by Janice Loreck

About the Book

A new critical perspective on the female auteur that considers her place in the avant-garde tradition of provocation

Book Synopsis

Critics regularly use the term "provocateur" to describe controversial film directors. Although most individuals who attract this term are men, there is a long and largely unexamined history of female auteurs who shock and unsettle their viewers. Provocation in Women's Filmmaking: Authorship and Art Cinema investigates how women directors participate in the tradition of provocative art cinema. Focusing on the post-millennium films of auteurs such as Lisa Aschan, Catherine Breillat, Jennifer Kent, Isabella Eklöf, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Claire Denis, Anna Biller and Athina Rachel Tsangari, this book considers the aesthetics and strategies of women's provocative filmmaking in contemporary cinema. Challenging the gendering of provocation as a hyper-masculine mode of authorship, the book uncovers an enticing and complex array of divisive works by women.

Review Quotes

Loreck has done a fantastic job of considering women's cinematic provocation from many worthwhile angles, and the depth and care with which she reads her chosen works garners significant insight.--Tiia Kelly "Senses Of Cinema"

Through incisive studies of Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Claire Denis and Jennifer Kent, amongst others, Loreck demonstrates that women filmmakers are responsible for the most provocative, transgressive and affective art cinema in the twenty-first century. A must-read for those interested in women filmmakers, art cinema, and the gendering of film authorship.

--Alison Peirse, University of Leeds

About the Author

Janice Loreck is Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of Melbourne. She is co-editor of Screening Scarlett Johansson: Gender, Genre, Stardom (2019) and the author of Violent Women in Contemporary Cinema (2016).