From the critical and commercial fanfare his films generate, it is largely understood that Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the more interesting filmmakers to have emerged out of the new century. A markedly transnational filmmaker, between Dogtooth and The Favourite Lanthimos has managed to traverse the gap between the art-house and mainstream while not once sacrificing his unique style and worldview. His films, while often difficult, showcase his talents as a filmmaker, collaborator, and commentator on the human condition. Accompanied by a trademark acerbic wit, Lanthimos's films take aim at humanity's more contemptible and absurd designs as he explores a thematic preoccupation with, among other things, power, trauma, isolation, sex, and violence.
This edited collection covers everything from an early career that was marked by experimentation with a range of different media to international festival hits including Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and the Academy Award-winning "historical" epic The Favourite, Lanthimos's most successful feature to date. All his work demonstrates a fascinating contravention of aesthetic, thematic, and generic boundaries that forms the basis of some of the analyses to be found here. Featuring a roster of talented scholars, both new and established, The Cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos: Films, Form, Philosophy provides a timely compendium of critical approaches to one of the most distinct voices in contemporary film.
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
A Note on Titles
1. (A Late) Introduction: Framing Yorgos Lanthimos’s Weird Worlds
Eddie Falvey, Plymouth College of Art, UK
Part I: Origins and Identity
2. Greek Screen Cultures and the Scopic Regimes of the Long 1990s: Exploring Yorgos Lanthimos’s Early Works
Afroditi Nikolaidou, University of Athens, Greece
3. The Anti-Foundationalist Cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos: The Case of Kinetta
Vrasidas Karalis, University of Sydney, Australia
Part II: Experiencing Lanthimos
4. On Confinement, Sameness and Grieving: Yorgos Lanthimos’s Alps
Asbjørn Grønstad, University of Bergen, Norway
5. Bodies Out of Place: Ontological Adriftness in The Lobster
Ina Karkani, Freie University Berlin, Germany
6. Notes toward a Cinema of Apathy in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos
Eddie Falvey, Plymouth College of Art, UK
Part III: Form and Authorship
7. Kafkaesque Themes in The Lobster
Angelos Koutsourakis, University of Leeds, UK
8. Animal Instincts: Fear, Power and Obedience in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos and Stanley Kubrick
Michael Lipiner, University of Bangor, UK and Nathan Abrams, University of Bangor, UK
9. Consider the Absurd: Uneasy Proximity in Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Nepomuk Zettl, University of Zurich, Switzerland
10. Dog, Lobster, Deer, Rabbit: Yorgos Lanthimos’s Animal Metaphors
Savina Petkova, King’s College London, UK
Part IV: Genre and Variation
11. Arthouse Thriller: Auteur Meets Genre in The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Geoff King, Brunel University, UK
12. Myth and Mythopoeia in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos
James J. Clauss, University of Washington, USA
13. Rethinking the Heritage Film: Gothic Critique in The Favourite
Alex Lykidis, Montclair State University, USA
Part V: Gender, Sex and Sexuality
14. Young Women’s Deadly Rebellions in the Early Films of Yorgos Lanthimos
Tonia Kazakopoulou, University of Reading, UK
15. The ‘Weird’ Sex Scenes of Yorgos Lanthimos
Alice Haylett Bryan, King’s College London, UK
16. The Queer Posthumanism of The Lobster
Marios Psaras, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Yorgos Lanthimos Primary Feature Filmography
Index
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