The Art of Trash: Evaluating Troma Entertainment as Paracinema

The aim of this research is to explore the anti-establishment function of the work of Lloyd Kaufman and his film studio, Troma Entertainment. The research focuses on Troma\u27s capacities as paracinema, and examines how in relishing their derided position in the cultural field, Lloyd Kaufman\u27s films represent an anti-establishment cinematic form, combating an institutionalised idea of cultural value. Through challenging the rules of taste, Lloyd Kaufman\u27s films serve to push the boundaries of what is considered valuable in contemporary culture. Films that revel in their \u27bad taste\u27 through extreme themes, poor humour and amateurism, make a stand against the mainstream through deliberately positioning themselves as its binary opposite, and positioning themselves as counter cinema through their elevation of different pleasures. The creative portion of the thesis, Dan The Dog Man draws upon the work of Lloyd Kaufman and the films he has released through Troma Entertainment in order to highlight an understanding of how Troma films in particular use bad taste as a weapon against the mainstream idea of cultural value

Love in the Time of Capital

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Johns Hopkins University Press via the DOI in this recordThis essay begins with Alain Badiou's book, In Praise of Love, and ends with Jean-Luc Godard's film of the same title. Between these narrative poles and drawing on a web of associated theoretical and artistic registers, it seeks to advance two mutually related theses. The first is that, since the beginnings of the twentieth century, cinema has grappled with its potential to exemplify an aesthetic program for love. The second thesis is that love is materially incompatible with capitalism, the mode of production from and through which cinema has evolved. These two theses are explored concurrently as they advance through the twentieth- and into the twenty-first century, evolving a visual language of what Badiou calls "minimal communism.

Bard Observer, Vol. 10, No. 1 (September 24, 1999)

https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/observer/1572/thumbnail.jp

Columbia Chronicle (03/17/2003)

Student newspaper from March 17, 2003 entitled Columbia Chronicle. This issue is 36 pages and is listed as Volume 36, Number 21. Cover story: Unpaid in full: Columbia to delay tuition discount Editors-in-Chief: Ryan Adair, Georgia Evdoxiadishttps://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cadc_chronicle/1570/thumbnail.jp

“No Reason to Be Seen:” Cinema, Exploitation, and the Political

This dissertation argues that we can best understand exploitation films as a mode of political cinema. Following the work of Peter Brooks on melodrama, the exploitation film is a mode concerned with spectacular violence and its relationship to the political, as defined by French philosopher Jacques Rancière. For Rancière, the political is an “intervention into the visible and sayable,” where members of a community who are otherwise uncounted come to be seen as part of the community through a “redistribution of the sensible.” This aesthetic rupture allows the demands of the formerly-invisible to be seen and considered. We can see this operation at work in the exploitation film, and by investigating a series of exploitation auteurs, we can augment our understanding of what Rancière means by the political. Chapter 1 treats the films of Lloyd Kaufman, co-founder of Troma Studios. The chapter offers a fuller account of Rancière’s conception of the political alongside a reading of the apparently-incoherent politics of Kaufman’s films. Chapter 2 offers a necessary supplement to an account of Rancière’s conception of the political by thinking through the ways that community works in the films of Lars Von Trier. Chapter 3 turns from the constitution of community to the moment of rupture that creates a space for dissensus. This notion of rupture helps us to understand the cinema of David Cronenberg, whose films are overtly and consistently concerned with rupture. Chapter 4 takes a slightly broader view, thinking through Quentin Tarantino’s recent historical films with the aid of Rancière’s conception of the political. Rather than understanding Tarantino’s engagement with politics as resting on his invocation of historical tragedy, this chapter begins with a reading of The Hateful Eight’s “Lincoln letter” to argue that the fundamental gesture of the political is one of affirmation. The conclusion offers a brief glimpse at the ways in which temporality, cinema, and the political are intertwined

La divine comédie de Stan Brakhage : une lecture du film lyrique The Dante Quartet

Film abstrait peint à la main sur de la pellicule recyclée, The Dante Quartet de Stan Brakhage est une adaptation personnelle de La divine comédie de Dante. Agissant comme un palimpseste où chaque couche révèle des éléments caractéristiques de l’oeuvre du cinéaste ainsi que l’influence de certains poètes et artistes, The Dante Quartet reprend certaines caractéristiques de l’ekphrasis. Dans ce mémoire, je travaille avec l’hypothèse heuristique que The Dante Quartet est une ekphrasis, et plus précisément une ekphrasis inversée. Ce mémoire s’intéresse à ce qui reste du pré-texte après son passage d’un média à un autre. Compte tenu du laps temporel qui sépare ces deux œuvres, il est aussi question d’influences contemporaines au travail de Brakhage. Le cinéaste basant son travail sur les phénomènes de vision (et plus particulièrement sur les visions hypnagogiques dans le cas qui m’occupe), le point sera fait sur la pensée de Brakhage à ce sujet, pensée qu’il expose dans son livre-manifeste Metaphors on Vision.The Dante Quartet by Stan Brakhage is a personal adaptation of The Divine Comedy of Dante who took the form of an abstract movie made from hand painted images on recycled footage. Acting as a palimpsest in which each layer reveals characteristic features of Brakhage's work and the influence of different poets and artists on it, The Dante Quartet also includes some features of ekphrasis. In this thesis, I work with the heuristic assumption that The Dante Quartet is an ekphrasis, specifically a reverse ekphrasis. This thesis looks at what remains of the pre-text after the transfer from one medium to another. Given the temporal interval between these two works, I will also discuss of certain contemporary influences to Brakhage's work. As the filmmaker based his work on vision phenomena (especially on hypnagogic visions in that movie), the point will be made regarding Brakhage's thinking about this, thought that he describes in his manifesto Metaphors on Vision

Image de la femme transsexuelle dans Transamerica

La transsexualité et son image représentent pour plusieurs une subversion ou une transgression de la binarité du genre. L’image de la transsexualité est souvent considérée en termes de représentation. Afin de questionner cette image transsexuelle, sa subversivité, sa transgressivité et même sa représentabilité, on tentera de la regarder autrement. Ce mémoire propose d'étudier l'image audiovisuelle de la transsexualité comme figure. Pour définir la figure, on la distinguera d'un autre concept esthétique : la représentation. Par l'analyse d'un film, Transamerica (2005), réalisé par Duncan Tucker, on verra comment certaines modalités donnent à voir la figure trans. Suite à cette analyse de la figure au cinéma, on rendra compte de la manière avec laquelle on a poursuivi, au moyen de la vidéo, la recherche qui concerne la question de la figure trans.Transsexuality and its depiction represent for many a subversion or transgression of gender binarity. Transsexuality’s depiction is oftenly regarded as representation. In order to question this transsexuality's depiction, its subversivity, its transgressivity, and even its representability, we will attempt to look at it otherwise. This thesis discusses transsexual audiovisual image as figure. To define what figure is, a distinction will be made between this term and another concept of aesthetics: representation. By means of a filmic analysis of Transamerica, directed by Duncan Tucker, we shall see how some modalities allow trans figure to appear. After this cinematic figure's study, we will give an account of the manner by which we pursued in a video production the research concerning the question about trans figure

Vers une exposition de la haine : gore, pornographie et fluides corporels

Mémoire diffusé initialement dans le cadre d'un projet pilote des Presses de l'Université de Montréal/Centre d'édition numérique UdeM (1997-2008) avec l'autorisation de l'auteur

Elementi postmoderni nell'horror americano contemporaneo. Forme testuali e culturali della mutazione 1968-1998

This research argues for an analysis of textual and cultural forms in the American horror film (1968- 1998), by defining the so-called postmodern characters. The “postmodern” term will not mean a period of the history of cinema, but a series of forms and strategies recognizable in many American films. From a bipolar re-mediation and cognitive point of view, the postmodern phenomenon is been considered as a formal and epistemological re-configuration of the cultural “modern” system. The first section of the work examines theoretical problems about the “postmodern phenomenon” by defining its cultural and formal constants in different areas (epistemology, economy, mass-media): the character of convergence, fragmentation, manipulation and immersion represent the first ones, while the “excess” is the morphology of the change, by realizing the “fluctuation” of the previous consolidated system. The second section classifies the textual and cultural forms of American postmodern film, generally non-horror. The “classic narrative” structure – coherent and consequent chain of causal cues toward a conclusion – is scattered by the postmodern constant of “fragmentation”. New textual models arise, fragmenting the narrative ones into the aggregations of data without causal-temporal logics. Considering the process of “transcoding”1 and “remediation”2 between media, and the principle of “convergence” in the phenomenon, the essay aims to define these structures in postmodern film as “database forms” and “navigable space forms.” The third section applies this classification to American horror film (1968-1998). The formal constant of “excess” in the horror genre works on the paradigm of “vision”: if postmodern film shows a crisis of the “truth” in the vision, in horror movies the excess of vision becomes “hyper-vision” – that is “multiplication” of the death/blood/torture visions – and “intra-vision”, that shows the impossibility of recognizing the “real” vision from the virtual/imaginary. In this perspective, the textual and cultural forms and strategies of postmodern horror film are predominantly: the “database-accumulation” forms, where the events result from a very simple “remote cause” serving as a pretext (like in Night of the Living Dead); the “database-catalogue” forms, where the events follow one another displaying a “central” character or theme. In the first case, the catalogue syntagms are connected by “consecutive” elements, building stories linked by the actions of a single character (usually the killer), or connected by non-consecutive episodes about a general theme: examples of the first kind are built on the model of The Wizard of Gore; the second ones, on the films such as Mario Bava’s I tre volti della paura. The “navigable space” forms are defined: hyperlink a, where one universe is fluctuating between reality and dream, as in Rosemary’s Baby; hyperlink b (where two non-hierarchical universes are convergent, the first one real and the other one fictional, as in the Nightmare series); hyperlink c (where more worlds are separated but contiguous in the last sequence, as in Targets); the last form, navigable-loop, includes a textual line which suddenly stops and starts again, reflecting the pattern of a “loop” (as in Lost Highway). This essay analyses in detail the organization of “visual space” into the postmodern horror film by tracing representative patterns. It concludes by examining the “convergence”3 of technologies and cognitive structures of cinema and new media