Refocus: The Films of Steve McQueen

Working across a range of formats, from video art and gallery installations to independent cinema, Hollywood and the BBC, Steve McQueen's prodigious output has been marked by formal ambition and political urgency. ReFocus: The Films of Steve McQueen interrogates the director's body of work, its political, aesthetic and institutional dimensions, and the interfaces between them. It offers critical insights into McQueen's engagements with race, gender, the body, love and pain, and his abiding self-reflexive interest in the potential of multiple audio-visual forms. The first director to win both the Turner Prize and an Oscar for best picture, McQueen is probably the most important working British filmmaker. This vital collection explores the controversies as well as the achievements in McQueen's stellar career to date. Thomas Austin is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Sussex, UK.