Cult Films.

This bring me back a few months. I remember like it was a few months ago, doing my media coursework on magazines with the almighty 'Alt*' magazine. I had chosen my article to be on cult films. Months later and here i am again in familiar-ish territory trying to pull off the same feat again. But this time i am looking at international cult films opposed to familiar 'commercialised' (if you can call a cult film, commercialised) cult films such as Fight club and Reservoir Dogs and trying my hand at the foreign language world cinema view on cult films.

From Quintin Tarantino to Luc Besson, the leafy suburbs of Donnie Darko to the dystopian neo-Tokyo of Akira and from Tyler Durden to Konstantin Khabensky.

But before i get into more detail on the films in which i am researching into, which i have compiled a LONG list of to sift through, i thought that as i seemed to have defined World Cinema it is probably for the best that i now try to define 'Cult Cinema'.

In a previous cult film article i described it as;

"The word cult refers to a social group who all follow the same ideologies of something out side of the mainstream and which deviates from the norm. Slap the word film on to the end of it and you get ‘cult film’. Cult films are particularly known to of failed commercially at the cinemas (bar a few exceptions such as Tarantino’s ‘Pulp fiction’) and out side of their relatively small fan bases. These fan bases over time become obsessive and slightly obscure as they transcend into the depths of fandom, hence why they are compared to ‘cults’. Simple. Cult Films can be identified thanks to the conventions with in them; they are usually eccentric, obscure, random and go against the traditional narratives found in the more generic genres such as action and drama. These are the ‘alternatives’ of cinema in a way as they at times can be called controversial as they turn their backs on the ‘Hollywood cinema’ that we all know and love and instead tell magnificent stories and highlight innovative exotic topics that no other film would dare touch upon."

I feel that this is a pretty solid basis of what a cult film is. Although upon reading it, it could be possible to label ALL of international cinema as 'cult' films as they as stated, have loyal solid fan bases, the films have flopped commercially, they do not go against the normal genres of the western world, and they are the 'alternatives' for all those who frown upon 'Hollywood cinema'. Also international films tend not to focus on the commerciality of westernised films such as the ever original Hollywood blockbuster film factory.

Pretty straight forward right. Im not going to write about every international film ever, cos i quite frankly just don't have the time, instead im going to choose a select few from a select few countries and analyse the crap outa them. These films will be chosen for many reasons such as their influence and their impact on other cinema. If thats okay. Which i damn well hope it is.


I will post a list of said films up in a later post.


Also to further my research beyond the interwebs i have joined ilford library \o/ and i have taken out a very useful book called 'The cinema of Japan and Korea' which as the name entails focuses on mainly Asian cinema. I will use this book to gather work on the 3 Japanese films i shall be researching. I will search for more international cinema books upon my next visit.

Until the next time


-Alex x