Provocation in Women’s Filmmaking
Authorship and Art Cinema
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 Hadžihalilović, 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.
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).
