"Abel Ferrara", Nicole Brenez
Abel Ferrara (1951) is an independent American filmmaker, known for his violent films with psychologically disturbed protagonists looking for redemption. With its claustrophobic urban environments, hallucinatory sequences, schizoid characters and plastic excesses, his films have encountered difficulties in being accessed by more mainstream audiences, although they are very appreciated by European film critics. Like Martin Scorsese, Ferrara sets his films on the streets of New York, as a depiction of the capitalist suffocation and chaotic climate that lead his imperfect protagonists to go through a paranoid and self-destructive journey. But Ferrara never culminates his films with a Bressonian grace (as, for example, Paul Schrader, another director who approaches Ferrara in characterization), but with ambiguous and sacrificial endings. Revenge ( Ms. 45 , 1981), collective historical guilt ( The Addiction , 1995), the Apocalypse ( Body Snatchers , 1993; 4:44 Last Day on Earth , 20...