History Main / LeFilmArtistique

It has to be said, however that this trope applies heavily to people with SmallReferencePools. For instance, although Creator/IngmarBergman is regarded as an "arty" director, in his lifetime his films were consistent box-office hits as were some of Creator/FedericoFellini's and Creator/AkiraKurosawa's films along with UsefulNotes/FrenchNewWave films from Creator/FrancoisTruffaut, Creator/JeanLucGodard, etc. Also, there are cultural differences which mean that high concepts, artistic influences and education levels may make some audiences have larger reference pools than others, though there is plenty of debate over which is which. Put simply, what's obscure to some is commonplace in other places and vice versa (which doesn't mean ViewersAreMorons or ViewersAreGeniuses unless you're a TrueArt snob or AntiIntellectualism slob).[[[note]]It is important to emphasize this, since there are many countries that use this trope as a [[LoopholeAbuse legal loophole]] to limit the distribution of films with controversial subject matter in a market or to avoid complying with other local legal requirements such as taxes or adding a dub if the local distributor lacks the budget to include one, especially in countries when dubbing is mandatory by law. This is painfully common for non-western movies or from Eastern European countries, through there are rare cases when this trope also happens with mainstream Hollywood films, especially in markets with a love-hate relationship with the western culture, like the Sinosphere (China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc.)[[/note]]

* From ''Series/TheMuppetShow'' special ''The Muppets Go to the Movies'': Sam the American Eagle is translating what he thinks is the latest masterpiece by Creator/IngmarBergman, ''Silent Strawberries''. (It's actually by his brother, Gummo.) It stars the Swedish Chef (who else?), who confronts Beaker, who is the Angel of Death. When the Swedish Chef asks to not die, Death gives him a rubber chicken instead. Now he can join a traveling show, and sure enough, in comes a Swedish Kermit presenting a Swedish Fozzie Bear, who tells a joke about Swedish meatballs. It ends with a sing-along to a Swedish version of "Hooray for Hollywood"; by then, Sam has left the stage in disgust.

** In the movie version, the film has more to it, including being more about the HIV certain members are dying from and being dedicated to Angel, [[spoiler:who passes away from AIDS]], but the end result is still mainly a montage.

* The ''WebVideo/GameGrumps'' invoke this trope while playing a Playstation game based off the ''Series/{{Teletubbies}}''. Arin and Danny sarcastically say the game is so artistic that it should be black and white and in French. The video then briefly shows gameplay footage with a black and white grainy film filter and Arin and Danny saying random phrases in French over it.

It has to be said that though that this trope applies to people with SmallReferencePools. For instance, although Creator/IngmarBergman is regarded as an "arty" director, in his lifetime his films were consistent box-office hits as were some of Creator/FedericoFellini's and Creator/AkiraKurosawa's films along with UsefulNotes/FrenchNewWave films from Creator/FrancoisTruffaut, Creator/JeanLucGodard, etc. Also, there's cultural differences in that high concepts and artistic influences as well as education levels may make some audiences have larger reference pools than others, though there is plenty of debate over which is which. Put it simply, what's obscure to some is common in other places and vice versa (which doesn't mean ViewersAreMorons or ViewersAreGeniuses unless you're a TrueArt snob or AntiIntellectualism slob).[[[note]]This is important to emphasize this, since there are many countries that use this trope as a [[LoopholeAbuse legal loophole]] to limit the distribution of films with controversial subject matter in a market or to avoid complying with other legal requirements imposed by the target market, such as taxes or adding a dub if the local distrubutor lacks the budget to include one, especially in countries when dubbing is mandatory by law. This is painfully common for non-western movies or from Eastern European countries, through there rare cases when this trope also happens with mainstream Hollywood films, especially in markets with a love-hate relationship with the western culture, like the Sinosphere (China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc.)[[/note]]

* A scene in ''Film/ThePresidentsAnalyst'' (seen on network tv runs but since removed) has Creator/JamesCoburn's character visit an avant-garde movie house. The film is a string of random, squalid imagery that repulses the small audience who all walk out, leaving him and a young lady who grows to share his enjoyment of it. The director angrily confronts them, stating it was meant to be offensive.

* ''Film/MurderParty'' gives us Lexi's [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible bizarre]] and [[TrueArtIsAngsty moody]] student art film, Valediction in Black. This is played entirely for laughs of course, given the satirical tone of the movie.

* Diane Chambers does this in an episode of ''Series/{{Cheers}}''. She creates the short film "''Manchild in Beantown''" to persuade Woody's parents to allow him to stay in Boston and work at the bar. (Woody's father finds the film too derivative of Creator/JeanLucGodard's work.)
* Parodied in ''Series/TheGoodies'' episode "The Movies". After the Goodies have purchased Britain's remaining film studio, they are watching the films it is producing, which include the very long and very slow ''Death in Bognor'' (a spoof of Creator/LuchinoVisconti's ''Death in Venice''), and the surreal ''Life of Pablo Casals'' by Creator/KenRussell, a spoof of his composer biopics (especially ''Mahler'') featuring a nun stripping to a frenzied cello accompaniment, but revealing a whiteface mime.

** In the episodes "iQ", Carly falls for a boy, that is presented as highly intelligent and cultured, enjoys these kinds of movies and takes her to one for their date. Carly is horrified to find out that what she thought was the end of the film after several boring hours was only the intermission.

* ''Series/{{Cheers}}'': In order to convince Woody's parents to let him stay in Boston, the bar gang tries putting together a home movie. Unfortunately, Diane gets her hands on the recording and decides to give it a "touch up". The end result is a pretentious attempt at an artistic film, with the gang's footage interlaced with stock footage and classical music. Diane is convinced it will persuade Mr. Boyd to let Woody stay. SmashCut to Woody bidding everyone goodbye, though Diane never gets that she's responsible.

** In the movie version the film has more to it, including being more about the HIV certain members are dying from and being dedicated to Angel, [[spoiler:who passes away from AIDS]], but the end result is still mainly a montage.

* Creator/SarahSilverman did a one of these for JASH and Website/YouTube called ''[[https://youtu.be/NlQA17vK7AY Fête des Pets]]'' (literally, "Fart Party"), as well as a [[Creator/CriterionCollection Criterion]]-style "[[https://youtu.be/aIa2oH0N8sA Behind the Scenes]]" feature.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'' at one point [[PlayedForLaughs plays this for laughs]] in an episode themed around a drive-in theater, with [[https://youtu.be/xmlmBmgo6T4 one film]] that matches up the description. It was in black-and-white, and in French, but the dialogue was made up entirely of lines from Alouette- resulting in three people in a train car talking about preparing a bird for the oven as if it was a matter of dire importance. Later on, they quote Frere Jaques, with the bearded man becoming overly tearful while crying out "Ding dang DONG!" (Quoth Yakko, "This is the worst French film I've ever seen! It's also the only French film I've ever seen.")

* ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'': In the episode "Animaniacs!", Shirley the Loon's entry in the student film festival is "Song of the Loon", which is 17 hours and 34 minutes of surreal images accompanied by an endless loop of "Morning Mood" by Edvard Grieg. Shirley even rigged up an electric trap on the doorknob to prevent the judges (Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Daffy Duck) from running away.

* The critically acclaimed Russian animated short [[https://youtu.be/Taltn1aLtsM ''Tale Of Tales'']] directed by Yuri Norstein, which is filled with many [[WorldOfSymbolism allegories and symbolic]] scenes which are open to many different kinds of interpretation. The scenes also don't seem to appear in chronological order but are recalled by the association of one thing with another, in order to reflect the structure of a human memory. It's one of the greatest animated shorts of all time and one of the better examples of this trope.

* ''[[Film/CelineAndJulieGoBoating Céline et Julie vont en bateau]]'' (''Celine and Julie Go Boating'') is a perfectly straight example of this trope. It's French, three hours long, includes seemingly completely unnecessary scenes, has a plot (when you get to it) whose closest comparison would be ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'', and the ending... borrows heavily from Theater of the Absurd, that's all we'll say. It's actually un film très charmant if you're patient with it. In fact, it is director Creator/JacquesRivette's most commercially successful and accessible film. If you want a real challenge, see if you can sit through all 13 hours of "Out 1" -- if you can find a screening, that is.

* The Soviet Armenian film ''Film/TheColorOfPomegranates'', which you might be familiar with from the [[https://youtu.be/5144-MQV0bU clips]] that were used in a Juno Reactor music video. It's a biopic, kind of, about a famous medieval Armenian wool-dyer/courtier/monk/poet/troubadour/martyr (in approximately that order). It's filmed to resemble an illuminated manuscript, there's almost no dialogue, and a female actor plays six roles, including the poet himself at one point. It's undeniably a work of integrity, and of significant artistic and spiritual accomplishment, as well as a fascinating ethnography of Armenian costume, art, music, textiles, folklore, monastic life, and religious custom. (A lot to get done in an hour and a half!). Quite beautiful, too. But if you aren't at least vaguely familiar with Sayat Nova's life, the film will make no sense, and if you are, it'll only make maybe 85% sense on a good day. It was initially banned in the USSR it because they couldn't figure out what the hell it was about, and decided that therefore it was probably some kind of dangerous nationalist parable. So they cut a few minutes from it at random, and released it under the title ''Red Pomegranates''.

* ''Film/VaseDeNoces''. A lone farmer who may be the last man on earth slots the heads of dolls onto the heads of doves, collects vegetable matter in jars, sodomizes his pig -- which gives birth to what are presumably human/pig hybrids, tries to raise said hybrids as humans by feeding them at the dinner table, hangs them when he is unable to -- prompting the pig to commit suicide, buries himself alongside the pig with his clothes on and reemerges -- clothes now mysteriously absent, tosses all the vegetable matter from the jars into a pond, fills them with his feces and urine instead, makes tea out of said feces and urine and consumes it, hangs himself. Belgian, [[DeliberatelyMonochrome black and white]], [[SilenceIsGolden no dialogue]], the church choir chanting of medieval composers Perotinus and Monteverdi supplies the soundtrack alongside electrically-generated bleeps and bloops. According to the director, it's about an alchemical quest for immortality.

* ''[[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceval_le_Gallois_(film) Perceval le Gallois]]'' from Creator/EricRohmer is very much this. In a attempt to stay faithful to Chrétien de Troyes's text (and to be as literary and unrealistic as possible), it's very distanced: all the effects are intentionally obvious, all the decors are made of monochrome painted cardboard and aren't to scale (to emulate Medieval illustration), the background is plain blue, etc. To be more up to the trope, Rohmer modernized the text of Chrétien de Troyes in a way that it is technically modern French, but with the original syntax and metric (octosyllabic versification) and often with an archaic (but correct) vocabulary.

Compare {{Euroshlock}} which often overlaps with this trope especially if it means most or all of the criteria of a Le Film Artistique.

Compare {{Euroschlock}} which often overlaps with this trope especially if it means most or all of the criteria of a Le Film Artistique.

In the best cases, use of this trope is an AffectionateParody or a sharp TakeThat to a particular work, director or movement. In other examples, though, it's quite obvious that [[ShallowParody the writers didn't know what they were referencing]].

It has to be said that though that this trope applies to people with SmallReferencePools. For instance, although Creator/IngmarBergman is regarded as an "arty" director, in his lifetime his films were consistent box-office hits as were some of Creator/FedericoFellini's and Creator/AkiraKurosawa's films along with UsefulNotes/FrenchNewWave films from Creator/FrancoisTruffaut, Creator/JeanLucGodard, etc. Also, there's cultural differences in that high concepts and artistic influences as well as education levels may make some audiences have larger reference pools than others, though there is plenty of debate over which is which. Put it simply, what's obscure to some is common in other places and vice versa (which doesn't mean ViewersAreMorons or ViewersAreGeniuses unless you're a TrueArt snob or AntiIntellectualism slob).[[[note]]This is important to emphasize this, since there are many countries that use this trope as a [[LoopholeAbuse legal loophole]] to limit the distribution of films with a controversials subjecst in a market or to avoid complying with other legal requirements imposed by the target market, such as taxes or adding a dub if the local distrubutor lacks the budget to include one, especially in countries when dubbing is mandatory by law. This is painfully common for non-western movies or from Eastern European countries, through there rare cases when this trope also happens with mainstream Hollywood films, especially in markets with a love-hate relationship with the western culture, like the Sinosphere (China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc.)[[/note]]

* Many movies directed by Creator/LarsVonTier, especially ''Film/{{Antichrist}}'' and ''Film/{{Dogville}}''.

* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/MonkeyDust'' where the lead actor in such a movie stops and tells the director he can't go on filming because there is no plot whatsoever to the movie. When the director says that the leading lady's breasts are the plot, the actor threatens to take it up with the scriptwriters -- only to find out that the entire thing has been written by chickens on a typewriter.

* The Creator/NicolasCage [[GenreBusting Action/Horror]] film ''[[Film/Mandy2018 Mandy]]'' might be the first time in movie history where a film both qualifies for this label and also features ''[[RuleOfCool a sword fight with chainsaws]]''.

* ''WesternAnimation/WakingLife'' is basically ''Film/MyDinnerWithAndre'' taking place in a surreal DreamLand setting featuring several [[NamelessNarrative nameless]] characters discussing about philosophy,and several MindScrew scenes. The movie does not follow a traditional narrative structure, having the same kind of disjointed randomness a dream would have.

* When ''Series/TwinPeaks The Return'' was released, [[https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/12/8/16742798/twin-peaks-movie-or-tv-show a number of critics argued]] that it shouldn't be considered a TV show but a movie. If you accept that ''The Return'' is a film, it certainly fits with its 17-hour runtime alone. Heavily inspired by David Lynch's later work, the series/film features many silent scenes of characters struggling to communicate and plenty of SurrealHorror. In particular, the infamous MindScrew Episode 8 features so much {{Chiaroscuro}} it appears black and white, and a 20 minute, plot-irrelevant scene of an extra sweeping the floor.

* ''Anime/TheBigO'' does this with Memories in general, but specifically there is a short film with relative importance to the plot done in the French style, complete with [[DeliberatelyMonochrome Deliberate Monochrome]], subtitles (because the dialogue is silent), and a big curlicue "Fin" at the end. But it's more of a FilmNoir with art-house symbolism than a true art house film.

* Medea's film in [[Film/OttoOrUpWithDeadPeople Otto; or up with dead people]] are like this. One is composed only by people dancing weirdly with their faces painted, other is about revolutionary communist gay zombies and the other is about a zombie that roams the city with a FauxlosophicNarration and they are all in black and white.

* During the mexican film "''El Crimen del Cacaro Gumaro''", one of the main character attempts to revive his father's old movie theatre by making a film festival and we get to see a brief part of one of them: an european family sitting on a couch watching a wall that only has a cuckoo clock. After a brief moment the clock falls and the father laments that they have nothing else to watch.

* ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'': In the episode "Animanaics", Shirley the Loon's entry in the student film festival is "Song of the Loon", which is 17 hours and 34 minutes of surreal images accompanied by an endless loop of "Morning Mood" by Edvard Grieg. Shirley even rigged up an electric trap on the doorknob to prevent the judges (Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Daffy Duck) from running away.

* The animated shorts of the Brothers Quay offer examples of this: Most of them doesn´t feature any dialogue at all, always take place in a WorldOfSymbolism and sometimes are DeliberatelyMonochrome.

* The Critically acclaimed Russian animated short [[https://youtu.be/Taltn1aLtsM ''Tale Of Tales'']] directed by Yuri Norstein, which is filled with many [[WorldOfSymbolism allegories and symbolic]] scenes which are open to many different kinds of interpretation. The scenes also don't seem to appear in chronological order but are recalled by the association of one thing with another, in order to structure itself like a human memory. It's one of the greatest animated shorts of all time and one of the better examples of this trope.

* Creator/IngmarBergman's ''Film/{{Persona 1966}}'' (thanks to PopCulturalOsmosis pretty much everyone doing this trope makes fun of it). Film focuses on two women, one of which made a conscious decision not to ever talk, and the second is her nurse. The first part of film is pretty easy and straightforward, but later it descends into seemingly absurd talks between two women and long, incomprehensible silent scenes of, for example, [[spoiler: nurse cutting her wrist, forcing the other woman to lick her blood and then slapping her face a few dozen times.]]

** Similarly, Bergman's ''Film/TheSeventhSeal'' is often parodied to mock artsy European cinema, but the film itself, while heavily symbol-laden, is quite straight-forward plot-wise, deals with very relatable, if depressing, themes, and contains a fair bit of comedy, [[BlackComedy though of a fairly grim sort]].

* ''[[Film/CelineAndJulieGoBoating Céline et Julie vont en bateau]]'' (''Celine and Julie Go Boating'') is a perfectly straight example of this trope. It's French, three hours long, includes seemingly completely unnecessary scenes, has a plot (when you get to it) whose closest comparison would be ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'', and the ending... borrows heavily from Theater of the Absurd, that's all we'll say. It's actually un film très charmant if you're patient with it. In fact, it is director Creator/JacquesRivette's most commercially successful and accessible film. If you want a real challenge, see if you can sit through all 13 hours of "Out 1" if you can find a screening that is.
** Actually it has been described as having an almost identical, though comedic, story which ''Film/MulhollandDrive'' later revisited, adding a more explicit lesbian subtext.
* Creator/AlejandroJodorowsky made many such movies. His first, ''Fando and Lis'', fulfills all criteria other than "absurd length or brevity" and putting a BlackComedy spin on the angstiness. ''Film/TheHolyMountain'' [[UpToEleven boosts the imagery to such freakish heights of psychadelia]] that even the sternest viewer ''will not get all of it''.

* ''Film/MyDinnerWithAndre'' is 110 minutes of Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory sitting in a restaurant and talking. Aside from a brief voice-over at the beginning and end, as Wallace Shawn is travelling to/from the restaurant, that's it. Thanks to director Creator/LouisMalle's dynamic camera work, and the sheer intensity of Wallace and Andre's conversation, the movie is quite engaging. It helps that the movie averts many of the more "incomprehensible" aspects of this trope; while the two discuss some rather high-falulin' subjects, as the movie actually ''is'' just two guys in a restaurant having a pleasant conversation it's naturally fairly straightforward as most conversations tend to be.

* The ''Film/TetsuoTheIronMan'' series uses unusual film techniques, such as stop motion, fast editing, POV shots that look like video on TV, and have [[SilenceIsGolden very minimal dialogue]] as well as a small budget.

* Ironically, due to being French, silent, and black and white, a lot of people mistook ''Film/TheArtist'' sight unseen as one of these when it's actually an incredibly simple and accessible comedy to the point a lot of critics thought it was too light to be deserving of Best Picture and campaigned for the actual LeFilmArtistique in the running that year.

* ''[[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceval_le_Gallois_(film) Perceval le Gallois]]'' from Creator/EricRohmer is very much this. In a attempt to stay faithful to Chrétien de Troyes's text (and to be as literary and unrealistic as possible), it's very distanced: all the effects are intentionally obvious, all the decors are made of monochrome painted cardboard and aren't on scale (to emulate Medieval illustration), the background is plain blue, etc. To be more up to the trope, Rohmer modernized the text of Chrétien de Troyes in a way that it is technically modern French, but with the original syntax and metric (octosyllabic versification) and often with an archaic (but correct) vocabulary.

** The funny thing though is that Rohmer's ''Perceval'' was not a typical film. It was a GenreShift and [[OverlyNarrowSuperlative it is obscure even among Rohmer fans]]. He was famous for making realistic romantic [[{{Dramedy}} dramedies]] about regular people. His movies were popular in the 60s and 70s, but among non-fans, they had a reputation as talky and pretentious, to the point that a Hollywood movie like ''Film/NightMoves'' could make a specific TakeThat to them (via Gene Hackman): "I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kinda like watching paint dry".

* Just about everything ever made by American Writer-Director Creator/HarmonyKorine, most known for ''Film/{{Gummo}}'', ''Film/JulienDonkeyBoy'', ''Film/SpringBreakers'', [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg and]] ''Film/TrashHumpers''.

* [[https://tv.nrk.no/serie/fjernsynsteatret/FTEA65000265/12-10-1965 This gem]] from the early period of Norwegian television, marked a breakthrough for artistic endeavour, highly experimental TV, and almost no dialogue at all. This sort of television drama paved way for quite a lot of parodies in due time.

* Film school student films can be intensely creative and oblique in their style. For instance, Creator/GeorgeLucas blew his teachers away with what he was able to create with his assignments. For instances, ''Look at Life'' was originally supposed to be simply a 1 minute film he would test the camera in various shots. This is what Lucas [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGyopseEKRE created with that assignment instead]].

* When ''Series/TwinPeaks The Return'' was released, [[https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/12/8/16742798/twin-peaks-movie-or-tv-show a number of critics argued]] that it shouldn't be considered a TV Show but a movie. If you accept that ''The Return'' is a film, it certainly fits with its 17-hour runtime alone. Heavily inspired by David Lynch's later work, the series/film features many silent scenes of characters struggling to communicate and plenty of SurrealHorror. In particular, the infamous MindScrew Episode 8 features so much {{Chiaroscuro}} it appears black and white, and a 20 minute, plot-irrelevant scene of an extra sweeping the floor.

* Catherine Breillat's ''Sleeping Beauty'' starts out similarly to its namesake fairytale with the eponymous beauty being cursed to sleep by a malevolent witch, but very soon, the movie diverges into a strange sort of crossover between ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'', ''Film/TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe'', and ''Film/PansLabyrinth'' as its child protagonist goes on an inexplicable and fantastic adventure that, allegedly, [[WhatDoYouMeanitsNotSymbolic represents a woman's sexuality]]. When she wakes up from her enchanted sleep, she finds she is suddenly a full-grown adult (despite having slept for one hundred years), and she is quick to [[SuddenlySexuality randomly engage in sexual acts with]] both a young man and a young woman. To add to the MindScrew, the man is the grandson of her adoptive brother and the woman is a grown-up version of a childhood friend, both of whom ''[[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext are characters she met in her dream]]''. And that's all without even mentioning the movie's [[GainaxEnding very inconclusive ending]]...

* Many fictional examples seem to borrow inspiration from "French New Wave", a film movement that used many of characteristics shown above. The movie ''Film/LastYearAtMarienbad'' is a good example of this.

* "Berlin Alexanderplatz", clocking in at 15 hours, is generally agreed to be the longest movie with an actual plot. There's roughly a dozen or so movies even longer, but all of them qualify as this. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_films Look here.]]

* [[WebVideo/BrowsHeldHigh Kyle Kallgren's]] student film ''[[http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/oancitizen/miscellany-and-hodge-podge/33635-notes-from-film-school-pretension PREtension]]'' is a clear-cut parody of this.

* ''Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicIDW'': Pinkie Pie, of all ponies, makes one in [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicIDWIssue66 Issue 66, "Applewood Follies"]].

It has to be said that though that this trope applies to people with SmallReferencePools. For instance, although Creator/IngmarBergman is regarded as an "arty" director, in his lifetime his films were consistent box-office hits as were some of Creator/FedericoFellini's and Creator/AkiraKurosawa's films along with UsefulNotes/FrenchNewWave films from Creator/FrancoisTruffaut, Creator/JeanLucGodard, etc. Also, there's cultural differences in that high concepts and artistic influences as well as education levels may make some audiences have larger reference pools than others, though Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment applies there as to which is which. Put it simply, what's obscure to some is common in other places and vice versa (which doesn't mean ViewersAreMorons or ViewersAreGeniuses unless you're a TrueArt snob or AntiIntellectualism slob).[[[note]]This is important to emphasize this, since there are many countries that use this trope as a [[LoopholeAbuse legal loophole]] to limit the distribution of films with a controversials subjecst in a market or to avoid complying with other legal requirements imposed by the target market, such as taxes or adding a dub if the local distrubutor lacks the budget to include one, especially in countries when dubbing is mandatory by law. This is painfully common for non-western movies or from Eastern European countries, through there rare cases when this trope also happens with mainstream Hollywood films, especially in markets with a love-hate relationship with the western culture, like the Sinosphere (China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc.)[[/note]]

* Matthew Barney's ''Cremaster Cycle'' is a series of five feature-length films, [[AllThereInTheManual accompanied by supplementary material]] ranging from art books to drawings and sculptures. Not only are the films [[NumberedSequels numbered out of order]] (''Cremaster 4'' was the first one released), they feature strange sexual imagery (the film cycle is named after the muscle found in human males that raises and lowers the testes in response to temperature) and such bizarre characters as the Loughton Candidate, a floppy-eared, tap-dancing satyr whose gender is decided by a race around the Isle of Man.