Theorizing Art Cinemas: Foreign, Cult, Avant-Garde, and Beyond

The term "art cinema" has been applied to many cinematic projects, including the film d'art movement, the postwar avant-gardes, various Asian new waves, the New Hollywood, and American indie films, but until now no one has actually defined what "art cinema" is. Turning the traditional, highbrow notion of art cinema on its head, Theorizing Art Cinemas takes a flexible, inclusive approach that views art cinema as a predictable way of valuing movies as "art" movies-an activity that has occurred across film history and across film subcultures-rather than as a traditional genre in the sense of a distinct set of forms or a closed historical period or movement. David Andrews opens with a history of the art cinema "super-genre" from the early days of silent movies to the postwar European invasion that brought Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, and the New German Cinema to the forefront and led to the development of auteur theory. He then discusses the mechanics of art cinema, from art houses, film festivals, and the academic discipline of film studies, to the audiences and distribution systems for art cinema as a whole. This wide-ranging approach allows Andrews to develop a theory that encompasses both the high and low ends of art cinema in all of its different aspects, including world cinema, avant-garde films, experimental films, and cult cinema. All of these art cinemas, according to Andrews, share an emphasis on quality, authorship, and anticommercialism, whether the film in question is film festival favorite or a midnight movie.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Correcting Art Cinema’s Partial Vision Part One: Art, Auteurism, and the World Chapter One. Art as Genre as Canon: Defining “Art Cinema” Chapter Two. No Start, No End: Auteurism and the Auteur Theory Chapter Three. From “Foreign Films” to “World Cinema” Part Two: Formats and Fetishes Chapter Four. Recovery and Legitimation in the Traditional Art Film Chapter Five. Losing the Asterisk: A Theory of Cult-Art Cinema Chapter Six. Revisiting “The Two Avant-Gardes” Chapter Seven. Sucking the Mainstream: A Theory of Mainstream Art Cinema Part Three: Institutions and Distributions Chapter Eight. Re-integrating Stardom ( . . . or Technology or Reception or . . . ) Chapter Nine. Art Cinema as Institution, Redux: Art Houses, Film Festivals, and Film Studies Chapter Ten. Art Cinema, the Distribution Theory Epilogue. Beyond, Before Cinephilia Notes Filmography Bibliography Index

About the Author :
David Andrews is an independent scholar who has published widely on issues related to art cinema and cult cinema. He is the author of Soft in the Middle: The Contemporary Softcore Feature in its Contexts.

Review :
"[H]is ambitious and heavily researched work addresses issues of auteur theory, the historical relationship between avant-garde and art films, and the role that technology has played in redefining these terms [...] Given the potentially overwhelming web of theoretical traps Andrews could easily find himself in, his deft ability to explain positives and negatives from nearly every perceptible vantage point goes to considerable lengths in establishing not only his own credibility on the matter, but legitimating his suggestions for future scholarship [...] his breadth of reference to numerous kinds of cinema should delight just about any conceivable reader with more than a passing interest in cinema history." - Slant "An independent scholar looks at the history of postwar European film, the development of the auteur theory, and the common elements shared by experimental films, cult movies, New-Hollywood, indie films, and various Asian new wave films." - Cornell Alumni Magazine "Film scholar David Andrews makes many arguments in his latest book and the central one is provocative: there is no such genre as "art film" or "art house," just a set of subjective (and often dubious) signifiers by which a film (or anything else, a Brillo box?) is labeled as "art" in a culture that segregates art from everything else. Theorizing Art Cinemas: Foreign, Cult, Avant-Garde, and Beyond is a stimulating exploration of the assumptions undergirding how movies are understood and consumed [...] Like a Socratic philosopher, Andrews challenges filmgoers to define the terms they use, which leads almost inevitably to the conclusion that our words are inadequate and misleading, our statements are tautologies. In plain English, most of us don't know what we're talking about." - Milwaukee Shepard Express