Films That Spill: Beyond the Cinema of Transgression

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.

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