Fascinatingly Disturbing

Michael Haneke is one of Europe's most successful and controversial film directors. Awarded the Palme d'Or and numerous other international awards, Haneke has contributed to and shaped contemporary auteur cinema and is becoming more and more popular among academics and cinephiles. His mission is as noble as it is provocative: he wants ""to rape the audience into independence,"" to wake them up from the lethargy caused by the entertainment industry. The filmic language he employs in this mission is both highly characteristic and efficient, and yet his methods are open to criticism for their violence toward and manipulation of the audience. The aim of this book is to analyze critically Haneke's aesthetics, his message, as well as his ethical motivation from an interdisciplinary and intercultural perspective. Contributors to the book come from a variety of academic disciplines and cultural backgrounds-European and North American.

""Sex and art, sin and guilt, religion and violence, this book has it all. With its focus on Haneke's enigmatic filmmaking, Ornella and Knauss have provided a great service by pulling together multiple issues relevant to contemporary life. Starting with the view of the world seen through Haneke's lens, the authors here provide their own lenses onto Haneke's work, keeping the readers fascinated and disturbed.""
--S. Brent Plate
author of Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-creation of the World

""The superbly structured Ornella/Knauss collection will stand apart from other new Haneke anthologies for an unconventional mix of examinations that are not in a rush to respond to trendy discourse or even to take on the director as phenomenon. The text gives Haneke a voice in the proceedings but also asks 'How Much Haneke Do We Deserve.' The presentations located between these two poles make for a truly vibrant investigation that is as excitingly daring as the writing is elegant.""
--Robert von Dassanowsky
author of Austrian Cinema: A History


Alexander D. Ornella is Research Fellow at the Institute of Fundamental Theology, Graz University (Austria). He is the author of Das vernetzte Subjekt (2010).

Stefanie Knauss is Research Fellow at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Centro per le Science Religiose, Trento (Italy). She is the author of Transcendental Bodies (2008).

Together they edited Reconfigurations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Religion in a Post-Secular Society (2008).