Transgressive Art Films by Oliver Kenny, Paperback, 9781474483940 | Buy online at Moby the Great

Transgressive Art Films

Extremity, Ethics, and Controversial Images of Sex and Violence

Author: Oliver Kenny  

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6th December 2025
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PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

Explores extremity in films and it's ethical, theoretical and film-philosophical implications

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Description

Transgressive Art Films offers a holistic approach to the way we consider controversial and extreme cinema not just as individual or grouped texts for analysis but as artefacts that ought to be considered within a complex network of social factors. This book provides a rigorous framework for understanding some of the most controversial films of the past twenty-five years.
The term 'transgressive art film' designates the phenomenon of a small number of controversial films recuperated each year by the cinema art world as part of an expansion of the definition of film art. Rather than seeing controversial films as aberrations, this book suggests that transgressive art films should be understood as a socio-cultural phenomenon and a central plank of cinema's need for newness, innovation, and renewal. By paying attention to all scales of cinema, from close analysis of individual frames, through the discourse constructed around them, up to global distribution and film-festival networks, Transgressive Art Films details how certain kinds of cinematic transgression gain wide-ranging institutional support rather than being ignored or forgotten.

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Critic Reviews

Proposing a refreshingly precise new framework for thinking about transgressive art cinema, Oliver Kenny's compelling book offers an important intervention into debates surrounding extreme, pornographic, and contentious filmmaking. Paying equal attention to aspects of form, reception, and theory, it promises to revitalise scholarship on transgression in twenty-first-century art cinema.--Tina Kendall, Anglia Ruskin University

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About the Author

Oliver Kenny is Lecturer in Film and Media at the Institute of Communication Studies (ISTC), UniversitΓ© Catholique de Lille.

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Product Details

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Published
29th August 2025
Format
Paperback
Pages
352
ISBN
9781474483940

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New
Pre order release date
6th December 2025
Check delivery options