New Blood in Contemporary Cinema

'Revisiting the foundational question of feminist critique - what difference does difference make? - this expansive study of female-directed horror films considers not just what feminist readings offer to a poetics of horror, but what the poetics of horror can offer to feminist thinking, expanding its understanding of materiality, embodiment, affect, violence, desire, form, and relationality itself.' Eugenie Brinkema, author of The Forms of the Affects Since the turn of the millennium, a growing number of female filmmakers have appropriated the aesthetics of horror for their films. In this book, Patricia Pisters investigates contemporary women directors such as Ngozi Onwurah, Claire Denis, Lucile Hadzihalilovic and Ana Lily Amirpour, who put 'a poetics of horror' to new use in their work, expanding the range of gendered and racialized perspectives in the horror genre. Exploring themes such as rage, trauma, sexuality, family ties and politics, New Blood in Contemporary Cinema takes on avenging women, bloody vampires, lustful witches, scary mothers, terrifying offspring and female Frankensteins. By following a red trail of blood, the book illuminates a new generation of women directors who have enlarged the general scope and stretched the emotional spectrum of the genre. Patricia Pisters is Professor of Film, Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Cover image: Evolution by Lucile Hadzihalilovic (France/Spain/Belgium, 2015). Courtesy of Les Films du Worso Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN Barcode