Abel Ferrara

In this concise study, Nicole Brenez argues for Abel Ferrara's place in a line of grand inventors who have blurred distinctions between industry and avant-garde film, including Orson Welles, Monte Hellman, and Nicholas Ray. Rather than merely reworking genre film, Brenez understands Ferrara's oeuvre as formulating new archetypes that depict the evil of the modern world. Focusing as much on the human figure as on elements of storytelling, she argues that films such as Bad Lieutenant express this evil through visionary characters struggling against the inadmissible (inadmissible behaviour, morality, images, and narratives).

Nicole Brenez, prominent film critic and curator for the experimental cinema programs at the CinTmathFque frantaise in Paris, teaches cinema studies at Universite Paris I. She is the author of Shadows de John Cassavetes and other books. Adrian Martin is coeditor of the internet magazine Rouge and the author of Once Upon a Time in America and The Mad Max Movies.