Films That Spill - by Marie Sophie Beckmann (Paperback)

About the Book

Films That Spill takes up a previously understudied moment in 1980s underground culture in New York City called Cinema of Transgression, offering both a microhistory of the intermingling art, music, performance, and film scenes of the time and a glimpse into their afterlives.

Book Synopsis

Films That Spill is a comprehensive study of the Cinema of Transgression, a hitherto underexamined moment in US underground film culture. Reconsidering the concept of transgressive cinema not only as a description of the intentionally provocative content of the films but also as a feature of a cross-disciplinary practice, Marie Sophie Beckmann explores how filmmaking in the context of the vibrant and intermingling art, music, performance, and film scenes in 1980s Lower Manhattan spilled over the boundaries of artistic disciplines, media formats, and content concepts. This study not only provides a microhistory of these scenes and insight into their afterlife in archives and exhibitions but also represents an innovative contribution to debates within film, media, and visual culture about the methodological and historiographical challenges posed by the expansion of film beyond the discursive boundaries of cinema.

Review Quotes

"Beckmann situates [Cinema of Transgression] within a longer genealogy of experimentation. . . . This book offers a rich, layered, and fresh way of approaching a particular film historical moment in U.S. without first setting its limits. In doing so, it urges us to treat historical methods and history writing itself, not as stabilising frameworks but as processes that, like the films themselves, spill over and resist containment."

-- "Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television"

"One would be sorry to miss Beckmann's expert analytical observations in this fascinating new book. . . . Beckmann greatly aids the discipline when she interrogates concepts such as 'downtown, ' 'underground, ' and 'scene.' She goes far beyond the genre in her theorization of concepts that are directly related to late-20th-century nonmainstream film culture and the impact of both video and cable on this culture. . . . Highly recommended."

-- "Choice"

"Exciting and stimulating."

-- "Film International"

"A provocative rethinking of the legacies of the Cinema of Transgression as simultaneously site, scene, and body of works, Films That Spill provides a much-needed revision and insightful probing of the mythos of 1980s downtown New York filmmaking, offering new pathways for understanding its vital, messy imaginaries, circulations, and afterlives." --Elena Gorfinkel "author of Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s"

"A lively, engaging, and interdisciplinary account of the Cinema of Transgression and its afterlives, underpinned by deep archival research and conversations with key figures in the scene."--Fiona Anderson "author of Cruising the Dead River: David Wojnarowicz and New York's Ruined Waterfront"

About the Author

MARIE SOPHIE BECKMANN is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Art and Visual Culture at Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg in Germany.