Overview

This is the first study that employs a materialist framework to discuss the political implications of form in the films of Lars von Trier. Focusing mainly on early films, Politics as Form in Lars von Trier identifies recurring formal elements in von Trier’s oeuvre and discusses the formal complexity of his films under the rubric of the post-Brechtian. Through an in depth formal analysis, the book shows that Brecht is more important to von Trier’s work than what most critics seem to acknowledge and deems von Trier as a dialectical filmmaker. This study draws on many untranslated resources and features an interview with Lars von Trier, and another one with his mentor – the great Danish director Jørgen Leth.

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9781501307690

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Reviews

Koutsourakis's study succeeds in two ways. It identifies the political dimension of Brecht's artistic practice not in his Marxist ideology or modernist devices but in his aesthetics of negation. Second, it positions von Trier in this tradition as a post-Brechtian filmmaker whose experimental and irritating productions - like Brecht's - politicize the audience's perception of history and the present through their formal properties of radical negation. Unlike many books on von Trier, this richly illustrated study, including interviews and relevant documents, pushes far beyond the biographical into the media and representational aesthetics that distinguish this body of challenging films. Marc Silberman, Professor, Department of German, and Director, Director, Center for German and European Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA In his book, Angelos Kousourakis takes a new and innovative look at the cinema of Lars von Trier. Using Bertolt Brecht's theories as a key, he analyses the political and ideological aspects of Lars von Trier's oeuvre with sharp intellectual energy. In Koutsourakis's reading, Trier's radicalism is made visible: Lars von Trier as a revolutionary! Peter Schepelern, Associate Professor, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Koutsourakis's examination of the often-examined Lars von Trier is refreshing for a couple of reasons. First, Koutsourakis (research fellow, Centre for Modernism Studies, Univ. of New South Wales, Australia) foregoes biographical attention to von Trier the man in the interest of restoring focus on the formal complexities of the films themselves. Second, Koutsourakis interprets the films through a postmodern rethinking of Bertolt Brecht, and he dedicates the first chapter, 50 pages or so, to Brecht and defining post-Brechtian --which should interest scholars of theater, performance studies, and contemporary cinema. The book is strongly argued and will prove useful to those interested in von Trier. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. -- J. Sundquist, Eastern Washington University CHOICE

Author Information

Angelos Koutsourakis is Professor in Film and Cultural Studies at the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures, University of Leeds, UK. He is the author of Kafkaesque Cinema (2024), Rethinking Brechtian Film Theory and Cinema (2018), Politics as Form in Lars von Trier (Bloomsbury, 2013) and the co-editor of Cinema of Crisis: Film and Contemporary Europe (2020), and The Cinema of Theo Angelopoulos (2015).

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