Since we first began writing on the subject of a “new extremism” in French—and then more broadly European—cinema, the paradigm of extreme filmmaking has expanded and taken hold in a number of different contexts, which call precisely for the kind of renewed scholarly evaluation that is being facilitated by this issue of Cinephile. In our book, The New Extremism in Cinema: From France to Europe, we were interested in exploring the notion of extreme cinema in relation to the work of a range of European art house filmmakers such as Gaspar Noé, Lars von Trier, Catherine Breillat, Lukas Moodysson, Michael Haneke, and others. Sensing affinities between the works of these provocative directors, we set out to theorize the dynamics of extreme watching that their films brought into play. The relationship set up between the spectator and the screen was central to our exploration of these films. As we noted in our introduction, “it is first and foremost the uncompromising and highly self-reflexive appeal to the spectator that marks out the specificity of these films for us,” as well as the “complex and often contradictory ways in which these films situate sex and violence as a means of interrogating the relationship between films and their spectators in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries” (1-2).
Extreme cinema has since evolved in a number of exciting directions, extending its cultural reach. As an indication of its cultural relevancy, for instance, the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Film includes an entry on “extreme cinema (ordeal cinema),” which it defines as “a group of films that challenge codes of censorship and social mores, especially through explicit depiction of sex and violence, including rape and torture” (Kuhn and Westwell 152). The inclusion of the alternate term, “ordeal cinema,” is important for the emphasis it places on the role of the spectator, “who commits to watching a film that will take them through a horrendous experience in what seems like real time” (ibid). As this dictionary entry suggests, such an extreme cinema tradition evokes a spectatorial dynamic that is central to a growing number of cinematic and national contexts. Taking a step back to encompass a more global view of cinema, it is clear that the new extremism tendency was never limited to European cinema, but has been a growing cinematic force across a number of national contexts, including films from South Korea, Japan, the United States, Mexico, and the Philippines, to name a few. It is no exaggeration to say that the notion of an extreme art cinema can feasibly be thought of not just as a transnational trend, but also as a highly lucrative global commodity, marketed to consumers in a range of different national contexts.