ABSTRACT
This book proposes that over the first two decades of the new millennium women from around the world have directed an astonishing number of groundbreaking and stylish films. Their works are distinctive and diverse. They break with tradition, challenge dominant forms, and speak for the rights of women and social minorities. This book argues that they constitute a specific historical movement—Feminist New Wave Cinema. The central unifying figure in all Feminist New Wave films is the monstrous-feminine who is represented as liberating and transformative. Monstrosity is an empowering concept in Feminist New Wave Cinema. Most Feminist New Wave films utilise horror as an aesthetic form to convey the reality—often the surreality—of the human struggle. These films, however, are not classic scare-and-scream horror films, but instead explore the horrific via a wide range of different genres, including horror, rape-revolt, and social issue films. They tell stories about women in rebellion against male violence and corrosive patriarchal values including misogyny, racism, homophobia, and anthropocentrism. Determined to discover their own identity and desires, the protagonists embark on a journey into the dark night of abjection, where they engage with the underlying horrors of the patriarchal order, often emerging transformed.
