New Punk Cinema

Nicholas Rombes

Post-Punk Cinema is the first book to examine a new breed of film that is indebted to the punk spirit of experimentation, do-it-yourself ethos, and an uneasy, often defiant relationship with the mainstream. An array of established and emerging scholars trace and map the contours of new punk cinema, from its roots in neorealism and the French New Wave, to its flowering in the work of Lars von Trier and the Dogma 95 movement. Subsequent chapters explore the potentially democratic and even anarchic forces of digital filmmaking, the influences of hypertext and other new media, the increased role of the viewer in arranging and manipulating the chronology of a film, and the role of new punk cinema in plotting a course beyond the postmodern. The book examines a range of films, including The Blair Witch Project, Time Code, Run Lola Run, Memento, The Celebration, Gummo, and Requiem for a Dream.

Introduction; PART ONE: BACKGROUND AND CONTEXTS; 1. Punk Cinema; 2. Italian Neorealist Influences; 3. The French New Wave: New Again; 4. Sincerity and Irony; PART TWO: SCREENING POST-PUNK CINEMA; 5. DVD and the New Cinema of Complexity; 6. Digital Technologies and the Poetics of Performance; 7. Navigating Chaos; 8. Non-Linear Narrative; 9. Making It Real; PART THREE: CASE STUDIES; 10. Dogma brothers: Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg; 11. Mike Figgis: Time Code and the Screen; 12. What Was the Neo-Underground and What Wasn't: A First Reconsider of Harmony Korine; 13. Repo Man: Reclaiming the Spirit of Punk with Alex Cox.