Stephen Frears has a career approaching over half-a-century, directing films of astonishing variety, beauty, and daring, and yet many often have trouble remembering his name. The Ironic Filmmaking of Stephen Frears celebrates this great filmmaker, beginning with a short biography of Frears, general observations on unifying themes and styles in his oeuvre, and the characterization of his manner of directing. By focusing on 10 key films, Lesley Brill finds coherence in Frears' characteristic irony and in his concentration on many kinds of love. In movies such as My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity, The Queen, Philomena, and many others, Frears portrays widely varied situations and characters with a combination of insight, skepticism, and sympathy. He has the passionate, unjudgmental focus of an artist who stands simultaneously at a distance from his subjects and within their worlds. Through Frears' work is widely admired, Brill argues that he has attracted little scholarly writing because of a combination of the diffidence of his self-presentation and the difficulty of explicating the complex ideas and characters of his films. The Ironic Filmmaking of Stephen Frears is meant to inspire others to further examine his films individually and his career as a whole.

This is a collection of personal interviews with colleagues, friends and family members of the director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He directed films such as The Marriage of Maria Braun, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Querelle, and Veronika Voss.

This book distinguishes itself from earlier books on David Lynch by taking in-depth consideration of his entire oeuvre. Besides his films and the Twin Peaks series, David Lynch: Blurred Boundaries includes discussions of Lynch's paintings and drawings, music videos, commercials, short experimental works, digital projects on the YouTube channel David Lynch Theater and the Internet documentary The Interview Project, as well as the exhibition The Air is on Fire, which Jerslev regards as one of Lynch's main works. David Lynch: Blurred Boundaries offers a view of Lynch's total work, in which one medium or genre is no more important than the other. It discusses the ways in which Lynch has worked throughout his career with different art forms and has right from the start experimented with the blurring of boundaries between media and genres. And it discusses ways Lynch creates atmospheres by different audio-visual and visual means.

Since the death of the French film director Eric Rohmer in 2010, interest in his work has reignited. Known as the last of the established directors in the French New Wave, Rohmer took complete control over all his films, acting as his own producer throughout his career, and writing the scripts. He also made his mark by taking the lead in casting and location scouting - as French seaside resorts with beautiful young people are some of the elements present in most of his films. Combining history and criticism, Jacob Leigh pens the first chronological survey of this understudied filmmaker in order to give readers clear insights into how Rohmer's films came about and what he intended them to be. The book provides in-depth analysis of the themes and ideas of Rohmer's twenty-three feature films, and illustrates the complexity of their cinematic style. Leigh's study is the perfect introduction to the work of this great filmmaker, for both students and the general reader.

(Limelight). "Reading like a who's who of Broadway and Hollywood... this] is a valuable piece of theatrical history...Lloyd is a self-effacing, articulate actor-director-producer whose stories are as insightful as they are warm and often humorous." Choice

I want my films to explode with life. aMira Nair. This the first book to examine the films of the acclaimed and popular Indian-born and Harvard educated filmmaker Mira Nair. A unique voice in cinema today she is one of the few female directors who made it to the top of a male-dominated profession. Her films feature an incomparably sensuous visual style yet at the same time often record the injustice of the disenfranchised and the cross-pollination of East and West. Her twin themes of realism and romance make for dazzling cinema.THJohn Kenneth Muir analyzes all of Nair's work including:THU ESalaam Bombay!E (1988) the groundbreaking story of a young boy abandoned by his family on the streets of Bombay.THU EMississippi MasalaE (1991) an interracial small town romance between an Indian woman (Sarita Choudhury) and an African American businessman (Denzel Washington).THU EMonsoon WeddingE (2001) featuring a Bollywood carnival atmosphere one of the most successful foreign films ever released in the United States.THU EHysterical BlindnessE (2002) the HBO film featuring Uma Thurman and Juliette Lewis looking for love in all the wrong places.THU The big-budget Hollywood adaptation of the Thackery novel EVanity FairE (2004) starring Reese Witherspoon Gabriel Byrne and Eileen Atkins.

In her ever-evolving career, the legendary filmmaker Agnes Varda has gone from being a photographer at the Avignon festival in the late 1940s, through being a director celebrated at the Cannes festival (Cleo de 5 a 7, 1962), to her more ironic self-proclaimed status as a 'jeune artiste plasticienne'. She has recently staged mixed-media projects and exhibitions all over the world from Paris (2006) to Los Angeles (2013-14) and the latest 'tour de France' with JR (2015-16). Agnes Varda Unlimited: Image, Music, Media reconsiders the legacy and potential of Varda's radical tour de force cinematique, as seen in the 22-DVD 'definitive' Tout(e) Varda, and her enduring artistic presence. These essays discuss not just when, but also how and why, Varda's renewed artistic forms have ignited with such creative force, and have been so inspiring an influence. The volume concludes with two remarkable interviews: one with Varda herself, and another rare contribution from the leading actress of Cleo de 5 a 7, Corinne Marchand. Marie-Claire Barnet is Senior Lecturer in French at Durham University.

Jean Renoir (1894-1979) is widely regarded as one of the most distinguished directors in the history of world cinema. In the 1930s he directed a string of films which stretched the formal, intellectual, political and aesthetic boundaries of the art form, including works such as Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, La Grande Illusion, La Bete humaine and La Regle du jeu. However, the great director's early work from the 1920s remains almost completely unknown, even to film specialists. If it is discussed at all, it is often seen to be of interest only insofar as it anticipates themes and techniques perfected in the later masterpieces. Renoir's films of the 1920s were sometimes unfinished, commercially unsuccessful, or unreleased at the time of their production. This book argues that to regard them merely as prefigurations of later achievements entails a failure to view them on their own terms, as searching, unsettled experiments in the meaning and potential of film art.

This is a comprehensive, original and accessible account of all aspects of Jean Cocteau's work in the cinema. It is the first major study in English to appear for over forty years and casts new light on Cocteau's most celebrated films as well as those often neglected or little known. Jean Cocteau is not only one of French cinema's greatest and most influential auteurs whose work covered all the major genres but also an experimenter, collaborator, theorist and all-round ambassador of film. The often applied label of 'literary filmmaker' is insufficient to describe Cocteau, who operates on so many different levels and is interested in the fundamentals of time, space, motion, speed and sound. This lucid account provides a complete introduction to Cocteau's cinematic project in the context of his entire oeuvre, detailed analysis of individual films like 'Le Sang d'un poete' and 'Orphee', and a thematic engagement with all his cinema from a range of interdisciplinary approaches, including film history, war and politics, authorship, collaboration (in particular with Jean Marais), the body in performance, and gender and sexuality. The Cocteau that emerges is at once a materialist filmmaker and visionary who is committed to realism in all its guises and reveals the wonder and mystery of what he called 'the cinematograph'. This clear and challenging new study will appeal to first-year students, film-lovers and specialists alike. It will also be of interest to those working in gay studies, cultural studies, star studies and performance studies.

Until his early retirement at age 50, Hasse Ekman was one of the leading lights of Swedish cinema, an actor, writer, and director of prodigious talents. Yet today his work is virtually unknown outside of Sweden, eclipsed by the filmography of his occasional collaborator (and frequent rival) Ingmar Bergman. This comprehensive introduction-the first ever in English-follows Ekman's career from his early days as a film journalist, through landmark films such as Girl with Hyacinths (1950), to his retirement amid exhaustion and disillusionment. Combining historical context with insightful analyses of Ekman's styles and themes, this long overdue study considerably enriches our understanding of Swedish film history.

In 1968, Stanley Kubrick completed and released his magnum opus motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey; a time that was also tremendously important in the formation of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Bringing these figures together, Bristow offers a study that goes beyond, as the film did. He extends Lacan's late topological insights, delves into conceptualisations of desire, in G. W. F. Hegel, Alexandre Kojeve, and Lacan himself, and deals with the major themes of cuts (filmic and psychoanalytic); space; silence; surreality; and 'das Ding', in relation to the movie's enigmatic monolith. This book is a tour de force of psychoanalytic theory and space odyssey that will appeal to academics and practitioners of psychoanalysis and film studies, as well as to any fan of Kubrick's work.

This study of Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, and Billy Wilder focuses on what the common ethical themes in their Hollywood films unveil about the cultural and intellectual heritage of these German and Austrian emigres and their influence on American culture. Aware of the influential power of their films, these filmmakers strove to raise the intellectual standard and the positive educational value of the American film. Brief individual biographies describe their heritage, major influences, and goals and draw connections among the three filmmakers in their preference for German and Austrian literature, which focuses on social criticism, ethics, and the problem of identity. Detailed analyses of their individual styles of filmmaking and readings of selected films reveal how they put their philosophies into practice and to what extent they influenced one another. Films analyzed include "The Merry Widow, " "The Wedding March," "Heaven can Wait, To Be or Not To Be, Sunset Boulevard, "and "The Fortune Cookie "among others. By delineating their contributions to the development of modern film, this research explores the filmmakers impact on film and cultural history.

The convergence of social and philosophical inquiry film-history in this study of Lubitsch, Wilder, and von Stroheim will appeal to scholars of film, of German literature and culture, and of American cultural history. Separate chapters discuss each filmmaker and his movies. A glossary of technical terms and a selected filmography are included.

This book explores how Bakhtin's ideas can illuminate the compelling but uneasy fusion of Shakespeare and cinema. With a wide variety of tones, languages, cultural orientations, and thematic concerns, film directors have updated, translated, transposed, fragmented, parodied, and geographically re-situated Shakespeare. Keith Harrison illustrates how Bakhtin's interlinked writings in various fields can fruitfully be applied to an understanding of how the ongoing responsiveness of filmmakers to Shakespeare's historically remote words can shape self-expressive acts of co-authoring in another medium. Through the use of such Bakhtinian concepts as the chronotope, heteroglossia, the carnivalesque, and polyphony, Harrison details how filmmakers-faithful to their specific cultures, genders, geographies, and historical moments-dialogically locate their particularity through Shakespeare's presence.

From the Academy Award--winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Academy Award--nominated Adaptation (2002) to the cult classic Being John Malkovich (1999), writer Charlie Kaufman is widely admired for his innovative, philosophically resonant films. Although he only recently made his directorial debut with Synecdoche, New York (2008), most fans and critics refer to "Kaufman films" the way they would otherwise discuss works by directors Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, or the Coen brothers. Not only has Kaufman transformed our sense of what can take place in a film, but he also has made a significant impact on our understanding of the role of the screenwriter. The Philosophy of Charlie Kaufman, edited by David LaRocca, is a collection of essays devoted to a rigorous philosophical exploration of Kaufman's work by a team of accomplished scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Including a new preface by the editor, this volume offers original philosophical analyses as well as extended reflections on the nature of film and innovative models of film criticism.

Conflict. Scorsese examines what men do when they are in conflict with themselves. Taxi Driver Travis Bickle is disgusted by the mean streets and wants to wash them clean. After all, what was the point of him going to Vietnam if it wasn't to make things better? Self-destructive Jake La Motta unleashes the Raging Bull within him both inside and outside the boxing ring. Wiseguy Henry Hill thinks that he can be one of the GoodFellas, but he eventually realises that there is nothing good or wise about a life of organised crime. Spirit. There is more to Scorsese's work than crime and violence. His characters are trying to attain some kind of spiritual peace with society, their family and themselves. In the end they try to make a decision they can live with. In Kundun, the Dalai Lama leaves Tibet. In The Last Temptation Of Christ, Jesus forgoes a normal family life to fulfil his destiny. In The Age Of Innocence, Newland Archer decides to be a hypocrite within society rather than truthful outside of it. In Mean Streets, Charlie must choose whether to keep his volatile friend Johnny Boy and his epileptic lover, or to propel himself up the ladder of success. Hailed as America's greatest living film director, Martin Scorsese is an innovative storyteller at the height of his intellectual and emotional powers. This Pocket Essential examines his life and work.

Children and youth perform both innocence and knowingness within Hitchcock's complex cinematic texts. Though the child often plays a small part, their significance - symbolically, theoretically, and philosophically - offers a unique opportunity to illuminate and interrogate the child presence within the cinematic complexity of Hitchcock's films.

The secular, pluralist culture of the West encourages a subjective approach to spiritual truth where stimulating emotional experiences, such as those provided by film, can contribute to personal conceptions of the sacred. Examining Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as the principal case-study and Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void (2009) and Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) as comparative examples, Sarah Balstrup argues that these directors harness the affective properties of film to generate altered states of perception in a manner analogous to religious practice. Powerful feelings of dissociation and indescribable significance typical of mystical testimony appear in viewer responses to these films, demonstrating the continued sacralisation of such states of mind. In their own way, each film confronts the viewer with an apocalyptic revelation of the impersonal forces of the universe, moving away from personhood and the human narrative, into pure sensation. They present a non-deterministic spiritual truth that can be intuited but not explained, mirroring developments in the religious sphere. Investigating the relationship between cinematic technique and religious experience, Spiritual Sensations offers an alternative approach to the study of religion and film that has been principally focused on narrative symbolism and the dramatisation of values. Spiritual Sensations makes a further contribution to the field by analysing films contextually, considering viewers' subjective responses in light of religious and cultural change.

This analysis of the films of Wim Wenders from the early 1970's through the 1990's attempts to place his work in the cultural and political context of the time. Feminist analysis, cultural theory, and psychoanalysis combine to explore the major themes in the films with an emphasis on gender and narrative and on Wenders' concern with the representation of "otherness." Wenders' earlier films reflect concerns with identity and with issues of masculinity and detachment. His later films reveal a preoccupation with seeing, images, and love, which culminated in the international success of "The Buena Vista Social Club." As this study suggests, Wenders' later works manifest a shift in direction away from indifference and toward reconciliation, ethical practice, and relationships.

This study will appeal to film scholars, to those with a special interest in German cinema and culture and to admirers of Wenders' films. Thematically arranged, chapters begin with the early films and trace the masculinity, identity, and lost narrative motifs throughout Wenders' oeuvre.

No other silent film director has been so extensively studied as D. W. Griffith. However, only a small group of his more than 500 films has been the subject of a systematic analysis and the vast majority of his other works stills await proper examination. For the first time in film studies, the complete creative output of Griffith - from Professional Jealousy (1907) to The Struggle (1931) - will be explored in this multi-volume collection of contributions from an international team of leading scholars in the field. Created as a companion to the on-going retrospective held by the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, The Griffith Project is an indispensable guide to the work of a crucial figure in the arts of the nineteenth century.

This work is translated by John Flower. There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors. Francois Truffaut's famous statement defined a new way of seeing cinema as an art form and its directors as artists or auteurs. The Hollywood Interviews brings together five of the greatest of contemporary auteur directors - Francis Ford Coppola, Brian de Palma, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood and Tim Burton - and the directorial team of the Coen brothers. Together, they represent some of the leading directors of the last twenty years of cinema. All are auteurs, directors with vision whose movies reflect their particular obsessions and ways of seeing the world. The interviews were all commissioned for the legendary film collective, Cahiers du Cinema, the first group of critics to treat films, particularly Hollywood films, as a serious art form. Conducted in the tradition of Cahiers' famously in-depth, critical and engaged style, these interviews catch each director at a crucial juncture in their development."

Referentiality and the Films of Woody Allen is a scholarly collection that provides expansive exploration of the auteur's use of intertexuality, referentiality, and fusion of media forms. Its scope is framed by Allen's intermedial phase beginning in 1983 with Zelig and his most recent film.