Best of 2024

My favourites viewed or read in the past year. Films are all new. Books are new to me this year and mostly not published in 2024 (given my preference for paperbacks, and the long delay before these appear, I rarely read books the year they’re published). Not necessarily in any rank order.

Films

The Zone of Interest

Anatomy of a Fall

All of Us Strangers

Monster

I Saw the TV Glow

Fiction

Adam Mars-Jones trilogy, Pilcrow (2009), Cedilla (2012), Caret (2023) (not finished the latter yet)

John le Carré, ‘Karla’ trilogy, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), The Honourable Schoolboy (1977), Smiley’s People (1979). Hadn’t realised what a good writer in general le Carré was.

Jennifer Egan, Candy House (2023)

Jon Fosse, Septology (2019)

Non-fiction

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger (2023). I think everyone should be required to read this, to understand the contemporary political/cultural scene

John Durham Peters, The Marvelous Clouds: Towards a Philosophy of Elemental Media (2016)

Judith Butler, Who’s Afraid of Gender? (2024)

Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (2020)

Carol Smart, Personal Life: New Directions in Sociological Thinking (2007)

Jeffrey Weeks, The World We Have Won: The Remaking of Erotic and Intimae Life (2007)

Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2015)

Graham Robb, The Discovery of France (2016)

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Some reflections on retirement work

One of the things I thought I’d have more time to do after retiring in October last year was to post to this blog more than once in a blue moon. So that didn’t happen, given that it’s taken until now to do anything… One of those imagined posts was some kind of record of what I was doing in retirement and what issues that raised for me: something I’ve vaguely rehearsed in my head a few times and now eventually got down in writing.

One of the main questions for me was how much I’d keep writing academic-oriented film books, once that was no longer something for which I was paid as part of my salary (and it does not earn very much in any other way). I couldn’t really imagine ceasing to do so at all, so important is that outlet to my general sense of self and self-expression. But that left a lot to resolve in terms of how much, how intensively or obsessively – an issue I’m far from having solved so far.

My first decision was to have a clear break for a least a couple of months and fill that with lots of ‘indulgent’ reading of fiction. That started with the maybe pretentious-obligatory Proust, the first volume of which I read back in 1989 (the date was inscribed in my copy, along with an old TGV ticket I’d used as a bookmark while starting it on a trip to France). I had the three books, all from that time; Penguins nicely softened with age. So I bashed through them one after the other in characteristic fashion (rather than letting them fill out a larger space), and a few other literary classics I’d not got around to before. Proust, in turned out, wasn’t a long-term retirement project…

In the meantime I took one substantial decision: to shelve a full-length academic book I’d been planning for some time (a book about the distributor A24) and seek to do something easier and less all-encompassing: namely a shorter, single-film study. I’ve written a couple of these for different series in the past (on Donnie Darko and Lost in Translation). Pondering a couple of other options, I decided to pitch for something for the BFI Classics series: eventually narrowing that down to The Conversation, which has always been one of my favourite films. So I started a bit of gentle background reading, mostly books about Coppola, and began to prepare a proposal, having established that it was a title that interested the series editor.

This was just the kind of more restricted way of keeping writing that I’d thought would probably be a good idea, as part of a properly managed transition to whatever longer-term retirement would look like. But then, pretty much at the same time I sent in the proposal for that book (February this year), I suddenly got the idea for a new full-length book project. This was basically a framework that would enable me to write about a bunch of my favourite works of arthouse cinema from the last few years – plus some that I first saw at this time (the list includes Aftersun, Close, Petite Maman, Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest and All of Us Strangers, the last three of which I folded into it as the idea coalesced). This got me quite excited.

I thought I’d try to get a publisher interested at an early stage, without providing any draft material, which proved to be a possibility (although it would still entail the usual long process of having academic reviewers rate the proposal: an ordeal with which fellow academics will be all-too familiar). Having a contract early on would give me a sense of fixed commitment, something I felt would be more than usually valuable given that I had no other formal context in which to produce this as part of a job. The alternative was to consider the full freedom of self-publication, which I’ve been tempted to do for a couple of books or so. But that meant working in a complete institutional vacuum until completion, which didn’t feel quite right at this stage. The question of commitment – my own or that of a third party – seems more of an issue in a context in which nothing else external requires me to do any of this.

I would read a small amount of material relating to some of the specific thematic background issues, I told myself: that would probably be necessary to satisfy academic reviews of the proposal at this stage. More than 40 books later… Yes, so I wasn’t capable of just reading a little on the subjects concerned but was knee-deep in probably as concentrated a period of such research as I’d ever done. Pretty much a book a day, day after day, for several weeks (weekdays only, at least: I’ve kept that distinction intact so far). This was highly stimulating and enjoyable in one sense but did not represent any progress in the art of doing such things in a less obsessive-intensive way. Maybe no surprise there.

Having read that much, I then felt the need to write up some key material, while it was freshly in my head, rather than taking my time and doing that later, as I had anticipated. This added to what was to have been a very brief draft opening that gave an initial flavour of the main films and issues I was planning to address. A bit later on, what was going to be a short section to flag up one of the main industry-background case studies I was going to use – the online streamer turned producer and distributor, MUBI – found itself as pretty much a whole additional chapter. So my not-going-to-provide-any-draft-material-other-than-very-brief-opening-flavour eventually became more than 20,000 words.

All this went straight onto the back burner once I got the formal go-ahead and contract for the BFI book on The Conversation, in June. That’s now a pretty-near-complete draft of 25,000 words. So a total of 45,000 words in my first year of retirement. Don’t get me wrong: I’m chuffed to have done that but I don’t feel that it represents any progress in the longer term attempt to rebalance my life between this work and, well, what would be fully leisure activities. Even with four weeks of campervanning in France in September…

I also get caught wondering what to call what I do now. I still think of it as ‘work’, and it clearly is labour. Some of that is pleasurable but it can still be hard graft of its own kind. Some of the actual writing gives me a real high, and deep satisfaction afterwards (the pleasure of having written something I’m happy with is one of the best feelings). But there’s also some stress at times. Part of me keeps asking whether or not I can let all this go – or, at least, do that more of the time. Or work in a less all-or-nothing manner. It is different when it’s part of a paid job and, effectively, necessary or required (even if I’ve always written more than was strictly necessary from a basic-employment perspective). Or is that really an illusion and this more about my way of doing things?

I suppose it gets a bit predictably retired-existentialist now. To what extent is doing this work, effectively, who I am, or a large part of it? (I’ve left out other the aspects of my life since retiring in this account). Is it just a fantasy that there’s some better mode of being, one that is all delirious relaxation and none of what remains the more labour-like activity of planning, researching or writing my books? I rather think that is the case.

I’ve sent off the proposal for the new book now, so will relax on that for at least a while (need to put the finishing touches to the BFI book after the holidays, though). But when I get back into it, can I do it in a more measured way? Do I really want to (or just want to be someone who could do that)? I’m betting with myself that I’ll be piling in wholesale again, and probably sooner than I plan…

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Best of lists

I’ve not done a ‘best of year’ list before but thought I’d have a stab this time – and do it across films, TV literary fiction and nonfiction. These are lists of my favourites/best viewed or read in the past year, not necessarily works that appeared in 2022 or in rank order (2022 UK release unless otherwise dated).

Many ‘film of the year’ lists are filled with titles those who do not attend festivals have not yet had the chance to see, which is why I’m with those who go by the year’s viewing rather than film year (and I’m not great at catching them on theatrical release anyway). For novels, I much prefer paperbacks to hard covers (and wouldn’t read for pleasure on kindle), so usually have to wait (far too long, in my opinion) for that option to become available. Nonfiction tends to be related to work and so depends on when I happen to be reading up on any particular topic. I also often watch TV series behind time, when they’ve accumulated more episodes, so in all cases ‘experienced during it’ makes more sense for me than from the last year.

Films

Aftersun (even if I didn’t see it until just now, early Jan 2023)

Decision to Leave

Petite Maman (2021)

Elena (2011)

Slow West (2015)

Lamb (2021)

TV

Succession S3

We Own This City

Severance

Dopesick (2021)

Dark (2017-2020)

Squid Game

Russia 1985-1999: Trauma Zone

Literature

The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, M. John Harrison (2020)

The Boiled In Between, Helen Marten (2020)

The Age of Wire and String, Ben Marcus (1995)

Weather, Jenny Offill (2020)

The Long Take, Robin Robertson (2018)

Nonfiction

Stuff, Daniel Miller (2009)

Globalization and Culture: Global Melange, Jan Nederveen Pieterse (4th edition 2019)

The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity and the Birth of the Human Sciences, Jason Ananda Josephson Storm (2017)

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genres, film cycles, and a reading cycle

A reading strand and how one text leads to another in both film production and academia…

I recently read my Brunel University colleague Leon Hunt’s fascinating new book on Mario Bava, Mario Bava: The Artisan as Italian Horror Auteur (2022), which skilfully explores a number of dimensions of the work of Bava across issues such as genre and the accordance (or otherwise) of cultural value to such work. Among other dynamics the book considers are the pulls between forces such as those of critically venerated or cult-adopted authorship/auteurism and the more practical exigencies of low-budget production and the existence of multiple versions of individual films, across a number of genres.

Citations by Hunt led me to Austin Fisher’s Blood in the Streets: Histories of Violence in Italian Crime Cinema (2019/20), an investigation of 1970s crime-related films from Italy; another examination of rapidly produced cycles understood both in these industrial terms and as reflections of the heightened socio-political context of the time. The latter Fisher finds most clearly not in conscious or fully articulated thematic dimensions but more – and, as he suggests, more significantly – in the shape of background details that demonstrate the taken-for-granted nature of some of the socio-political context of the times.

In the way of academic reading more generally (the ‘I’ll just read this book to finish off this topic but the it leads to several more, which lead to more, potentially ad infinitum’ phenomenon), Fisher then, in turn, took me to a book I really thought I should have read long before and had missed: Richard Nowell’s innovative account of the original teen slasher cycle, Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle (2011). I was drawn to this by Fisher’s citation of Nowell’s model of film-cycle development, which is a significant contribution to genre/cycle theory in its own right (key participants in the development of cycles are separated out into the categories of pioneers, speculators, prospectors and carpetbaggers).

Nowell’s book is a model of industrial analysis of how film production trends actually work on the ground, particularly in the more commercially oriented parts of the independent sector (both in the US and Canada). He shows how teen slasher films drew on a much wider range of contemporary trends than has generally been acknowledged, including ‘animal’ teen comedies and other group-centred youth-oriented films, romantic dramas and violence police procedurals.

A key argument is how these films were developed by independent producers seeking specifically to target sales to Hollywood studios (defined as members of the MPAA) rather than films to distribute themselves – because studio distribution was a far stronger route to significant earnings potential. Rather than being cut-rate hack exploiters, as some have been characterized, Nowell suggests, those involved engaged in a quite sophisticated process of assaying the value of various contemporary trends that could be drawn upon most effectively to create material mostly likely to appeal to MPAA members at the time.

This explains a number of features of the films involved, key exemplars of different stages in the cycle being Black Christmas (1974), seen as an unsuccessful pioneer, Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980) and Prom Night (1980) (Nowell dismisses accounts that see films such as Psycho (1960) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) as part of this cycle). One of these was a deliberate strategy of seeking to target female as well as male viewers, contrary to some previous assumptions about such films, as well as limiting the extent of graphic violence depicted on screen and, as the cycle developed, seeking to avoid being seen as overly focused on violence specifically against women when that became a source of feminist protest. He then traces how some of these strategies developed or changed across the original cycle until it came to an end as a result of factors including overproduction and lack of differentiation – if to live to slash another day in subsequent revivals.

So, three very useful books. I’d especially (if belatedly) recommend Nowell to anyone interested in a broader understanding of the American independent sector in its more commercially oriented manifestations – as opposed to the more arthouse-leaning realm that tends to receive far more attention in the work of academics, including myself – in which horror has often played a prominent role.

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Cinema of Discomfort cover, due date

I now have a cover image for my new book, The Cinema of Discomfort, which is due out in either October or November (only in expensive hardback initially, unfortunately).

This is the updated cover blub:

How do we understand types of cinema that offer experiences of discomfort, awkwardness or disquieting uncertainty? This book examines a number of examples of such work at the heart of contemporary art and indie film. While the commercial mainstream tends to offer comforting viewing experiences, or moments of discomfort that exist largely to be overcome, The Cinema of Discomfort analyses films in which discomfort is offered in a sustained manner. Cinema of this kind confronts us with material such as distinctly uncomfortable sexual encounters. It invites us into uncertain relationships with awkward and sometimes unlikable characters. It presents us with challenging behaviour or what are presented as uncomfortable realities. It often refuses information on which to base judgments. More discomfortingly, cinema of this kind tends to provoke uncertainty at the level of what emotional responses we are encouraged to have towards difficult, sometimes controversial, characters or events.

The Cinema of Discomfort examines a number of case-studies, including Palindromes by Todd Solondz (US) and Dogtooth from Yorgos Lanthimos (Greece), along with other examples from Austria, Sweden, the UK, the US and Germany. Offering close textual analysis of the manner in which discomfort is generated, it also asks how we should understand the appeal of such work to certain viewers and how the existence of films of this kind can be explained, as products of both their socio-cultural context and the more particular institutional realms of art and indie film.

I’d also like to thank Thomas Schatz for his kind endorsement:

The Cinema of Discomfort adds another dimension – and marks another important advance – in Geoff King’s masterful study of independent film and international art cinema, digging into the oddly pleasurable and darkly comic ‘assaults’ mounted by resolutely marginal filmmakers ranging from Todd Sonodz to Yorgos Lanthimos to Joanna Hogg.

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Things that don’t quite fit the film itself

What to do when faced with that awkward academic situation when you read an article in a major journal that seems very relevant to exactly something you are working on; you draft a line from this and then watch the film it’s about afterwards (not one you’ve seen before and that had to be obtained through the post), only to find that the argument isn’t really stood up by the film?

That just happened to me and it is a bit tricky. The point made just fitted nicely into something I was writing. I’m probably going to keep it, and say that, in this particular case, the film used seems to contain no real grounding for the claims made in this case. But, then, I can’t really use up enough words fully to explain this (I’m always over-writing), which maybe seems a bit unfair. I suppose I could just do that here online instead, but I don’t really want to devote a post just to knocking someone else’s work for the sake of it.

This does raise a broader issue, though, to do with the way we interpret films (or other media texts) in relation to issues of their social context, as is the case here. To what extent do we need to have some specific grounds in the text for making such readings, rather than situating them very broadly within such contexts? That’s a long-standing issue, of course. There is a vast amount of work that stretches such things a long way from what can reasonably be said to be grounded in the text. I’m saying nothing new here in that sense.

This is probably inevitable in some more theoretically based approaches, but there are many cases in which the preexisting theoretical concept seems to be prioritised over whether or not it really works for the text. In the case I’m talking about here, the writer seems to have some such concepts, then to take some more directly relevant material from related films, and then find small details in the main film examined on which to base reading across from the others to the one. That seems rather tendentious and trying too hard to fit a film into a frame.

We all probably do this at times, to some extent. But I think a key issue here is to make it clear where such readings remain broad and speculative – where they are very strongly a reading-into rather than based on something that has a reasonably clear presence in some form in the text itself. What exactly ‘reasonably clear’ means is itself less than transparent, of course, and leaves plenty of space for debate. But it is good to be open about this rather than to apply readings in a head-down manner that can require a large act of faith on the part of the reader – or that imposes a ‘take it or leave it’ alternative, rather than trying to open out the question of how far such readings work or for whom.

This is an issue that perhaps has a particular application to the field of art cinema, on which I now mostly work, part of the textual nature of which is sometimes to be elusive rather than to provide unambiguous grounds for interpretation. That can created an open season for theoretically inspired speculation. One way to deal with this is to identify that as a phenomenon in its own right: one of the appeals of certain kinds of art cinema to academics is the license it can provide for certain types of theoretical interpretations. That’s fine, but it’s good to try to distinguish between this and questions of what films are likely to mean to those who view them outside the context of academic interpretation. That can involve actual audience research of some kind or just acknowledging the very particular nature of much academic interpretation.

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The Cinema of Discomfort

About time I posted something new, after a gap of all-but a year, so an update here on my next book, which is The Cinema of Discomfort: Disquieting, Awkward and Uncomfortable Experiences in Contemporary Art and Indie Film. This is now almost finished and due for delivery in October, for publication next year by Bloomsbury. A blurb follows:

How do we understand types of cinema that offer experiences of discomfort, awkwardness or disquieting uncertainty? This book examines a number of examples of such work at the heart of contemporary art and indie film. While the commercial mainstream tends to offer comforting viewing experiences – or moments of discomfort that exist largely to be overcome – The Cinema of Discomfort analyses films in which discomfort is offered in a sustained manner. Cinema of this kind confronts us with material such as distinctly uncomfortable sexual encounters. It invites us into uncertain relationships with awkward and sometimes unlikable characters. It presents us with challenging behaviour or what are presented as uncomfortable realities. It often refuses information on which to base judgments. More discomfortingly, cinema of this kind tends to provoke uncertainty at the level of what emotional responses were are encouraged to have towards difficult, sometimes controversial, characters or events. 

The Cinema of Discomfort examines a number of case-studies, including films by Todd Solondz (US), Ulrich Seidl (Austria), Yorgos Lanthimos (Greece), Athina Rachel Tsangari (Greece), Roy Andersson (Sweden), Ruben Östlund (Sweden) Joanna Hogg (UK), Maren Ade (Germany) and Rick Alverson (US). Offering close textual analysis of the manner in which discomfort is generated, it also asks how we should understand the appeal of such work to certain viewers and how the existence of films of this kind can be explained, as products of both their socio-cultural context – locally and within broader understandings of late modernity or neoliberalism – and the more particular institutional realms of art and indie film.

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Annapurna under threat of bankruptcy?

Bad news for the indie/Indiewood sectors if Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures is exploring the option of bankruptcy, as is suggested in various reports, initially from Deadline.com. Annapurna has been a key supporter of both indie productions and more challenging studio or speciality division features in recent years, including Zero Dark Thirty, American Hustle, The Master, Detroit and If Beale Street Could Talk.

According to Deadline, meeting are about to take place between Ellison and her father and backer, the billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, the company being reported to have ‘burned through much of the $350 million credit facility the company secured in fall 2017.’

Will Larry step in and save the day, either with some of his own billions or more guarantees? Hopefully, as Annapurna would be a significant loss to the indie film and ‘quality’ Hollywood ends of the market. Megan Ellison herself has issued a statement to staff referring to restructuring deals with financial institutions and saying she remains committed to the company and its future.

Links below for reports from Deadline and the studio trade press:

Deadline

The Hollywood Reporter

Variety



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Voices on indie exhibition

Interesting round-table of voices on Indiewire in response to one of the latest expressions of doom-and-gloom about demand for theatrical exhibition, particularly of indie and art films.

This is a seemingly endless debate, often circling around the same issues, but there are some usefully calm and pragmatic voices here. We do need to remember that most indie films have never gained theatrical release, even in the ‘golden age’ of the late 1980s and 1990s, so panic responses are often overstated. And, as suggested here, there remains a particular space for the theatrical experience for non-mainstream films, even if it is limited.

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/06/movie-exhibition-distribution-future-1202152832/?fbclid=IwAR090S3hy1_GNfJeoutefojHBzrWvQJQfY1oliG5Twjchg04FSphdla4nHg
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Positioning Art Cinema, cover and blurbs

Very pleased with the finished cover design for my new book, Positioning Art Cinema: Film and Cultural Value, now due out at the end of this month. A copy of the descriptive blurb is included below. I’m also very grateful to those who provided wonderfully supportive quotations for the cover or inside, also copied below as they might not be legible in the image.

Art cinema occupies a space in the film landscape that is accorded a particular kind of value. From films that claim the status of harsh realism to others which embody aspects of the tradition of modernism or the poetic, art cinema encompasses a variety of work from across the globe.

But how is art cinema positioned in the film marketplace, or by critics and in academic analysis? Exactly what kinds of cultural value are attributed to films of this type and how can this be explained? This book offers a unique analysis of how such processes work, including the broader cultural basis of the appeal of art cinema to particular audiences.

Geoff King argues that there is no single definition of art cinema, but a number of distinct and recurrent tendencies are identified. At one end of the spectrum are films accorded the most ‘heavyweight’ status, offering the greatest challenges to viewers. Others mix aspects of art cinema with more accessible dimensions such as uses of popular genre frameworks and ‘exploitation’ elements involving explicit sex and violence. Including case studies of key figures such as Michael Haneke, PedroAlmodóvar and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, this is a crucial contribution to understanding both art cinema itself and the discourses through which its value is established.

‘For too long, the term “art cinema” has suffered from slippery, I-knowit-when-I-see-it usage. Incisively and intrepidly, Geoff King dissects thiscontested category, deliberating on the diverse, yet codified ways ofattributing cultural value to film drama.’
Mattias Frey, Professor of Film and Media, University of Kent, UK‘

Here’s a book film studies has long needed. Geoff King is sensitive tonuances of both text and context and he introduces fruitful terms like the“heavyweight” film. Essential reading for anyone interested in art cinema!’
Michael Z. Newman, Associate Professor and Chair,Department of Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies,University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA

‘With Positioning Art Cinema, Geoff King deftly executes a delicateintellectual maneuver: writing nonjudgmentally about critical judgments.The book navigates the subjective and contradictory terminology thatsurrounds a range of films, filmmakers and modalities framed as distinctfrom perceived mainstream entertainments. Never drifting into schematictaxonomy, King shrewdly unpacks the proliferating categories thatscholars, critics and filmmakers themselves have used to assign culturalvalue to cinema.’
Mark Gallagher, Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies,University of Nottingham, UK‘

‘Following his leading work in the fields of Hollywood blockbusters,American independent cinema and quality Hollywood films, Geoff Kinghere shifts his attention to the often vaguely defined and understood fieldof art cinema. Through questioning established critical orthodoxies andwith the help of his trademark close textual analysis of key recent titles,Positioning Art Cinema does a great job in laying bare the complex,culturally determined and often unspoken assumptions that help elevatethis type of cinema to the top of cultural hierarchies. Superbly researchedand utterly readable, the book will appeal to both experts in the field andart film novices.’
Yannis Tzioumakis, Reader in Film and Media Industries,University of Liverpool, UK

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