house of psychotic women expanded edition

The collection includes a range of entries from obscure curiosities like Autopsy and The Mafu Cage to mainstream Oscar winners such as Misery and Black Swan.

This lush collage is followed by an extensive appendix in which Janisse lists an astonishing number of films each featuring a memorable and usually unhinged female character. The memoir is followed by a gorgeous Image Gallery filled with poster art, stills, and promotional imagery from films mentioned elsewhere in the book. Janisse’s vulnerable and unflinchingly honest writing invites the reader into her psyche while inspiring a deeper look into our own lives. Each stage of her life is paired with at least one movie in which she seeks to understand her own experiences by comparing them with a character facing a similar issue. Janisse begins by examining significant moments in her own life, confronting generational trauma, a troubled childhood, her teenage years as a juvenile delinquent, and her journey to festival programming through the lens of narrative film. House of Psychotic Women is split into two sections: memoir and appendix.

Subtitled An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis, the book is an exhaustive look at films from all genres, each featuring one or more female characters with some degree of mental instability. In 2012, Kier-La Janisse published House of Psychotic Women and forever changed the landscape of film analysis.

House of psychotic women expanded edition