A low-budget breakout film that wowed critics and audiences on its initial release, Stranger than Paradise would prove to be a seminal film in the new American independent cinema movement and establish its director, Jim Jarmusch, as a hip, cult auteur. Taking inspiration from 1960s underground filmmaking, international art cinema, genre cinema, and punk culture, Jarmusch's film provides a bridge between midnight movie features and a new mode of quirky, offbeat independent filmmaking. This book probes the film's production history, initial reception, aesthetics, and legacy in order to understand its place within the cult film canon. In examining the film's cult pedigree, it explores a number of threads that fed into the film - including New York downtown culture of the early 1980s and Jarmusch's involvement in music - as well as reflecting on how the film's status has developed alongside Jarmusch's subsequent output and reputation.

About the Author
Jamie Sexton is senior lecturer in film and television studies at Northumbria University. He is the co-author of Cult Cinema (2011).

Reviews
An excellent, lucid account that maps the position of Stranger Than Paradise via a number of intersections between the realms of cult, art, independent, and punk-related cinema. Offers an accessible but substantial analysis of industrial, formal, and thematic dimensions of what remains an enduring indie classic. -- Geoff King, Brunel University
This volume [is] the first book length study of an important and frequently taught art-cult movie. Arguing that Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise didn't come to cult status in the usual way, the volume makes an important intervention in the way we define cult movies and assign cult status, and an intervention in the way we frame the entire "cult" discussion. -- Joan Hawkins, Indiana University



Book Information
ISBN 9780231180559
Author Jamie Sexton
Format Paperback
Page Count 136
Imprint Wallflower Press
Publisher Columbia University Press