Michael Powell lived intimately, and abundantly, with the movies - entering the business at the end of the silent era, growing up in the industry, becoming one of Britain's most respected and influential directors. This first volume of his autobiography captures the startling momentum of his mercurial early career: from apprenticeship with Hitchcock, to the fateful meeting with the man who became his principal collaborator Emeric Pressburger; to the glories of "A Matter of Life and Death", "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes". Powell's writing has the same brilliant feel for time, place and story as his amazing films.

"The Cinema of Ken Loach" examines the connection between art and politics that distinguishes the work of this leading British film director, whose work includes such landmarks of British cinema as "Kes," "Land and Freedom," and "Bread and Roses." Each chapter explores changes in his style by interpreting one or two films, augmented with original archive research and new interviews.

Few individuals have made as much of an impact upon a single medium as has Sergei Eisenstein upon cinema. His ground-breaking movies, such as "Battleship Potemkin", "October" and "Aleksandr Nevskii" make regular appearances upon 'all-time best movie' lists, whilst classic sequences from these movies, such as the baby in the pram on the Odessa steps ("Battleship Potemkin"), and the battle on the ice ("Aleksandr Nevskii"), have entered the public consciousness and are referenced constantly by artists and film-makers alike, from Fellini, Hitchcock and Godard, to Martin Scorsese. "Sergei Eisenstein" analyses the complex life and works of Eisenstein as film-maker, artist and writer. Drawing heavily upon Eisenstein's extensive writings, both published and unpublished, Mike O'Mahony explores the major pathways and stages within his career. Unlike previous studies the author evaluates the life and work against the context of the social and historical circumstances of the first three decades of Soviet rule. He considers the director's major film releases alongside his other works, including his uncompleted film projects and his copious writings and drawings, to bring to light the singular personality of the subject and the unique circumstances in which his work was produced and received. A wide-ranging, deeply-researched and yet accessible account of a key figure in twentieth-century film, this book will appeal to the broad audience for film history.

Ingmar Bergman was the last and arguably the greatest of the old-style European auteurs and his influence across all areas of contemporary cinema has continued to be considerable since his death in July 2007. Drawing on interviews with collaborators and original research, this book puts Bergman's career into the context of his life and offers a new and revealing portrait of this great filmmaker. Geoffrey Macnab explores the often painfully autobiographical nature of his work, while also looking in detail at Bergman as a craftsman. He considers Bergman's working relationship with his actors (especially the actresses he helped make into international stars), his passion for theatre, literature and classical music and his obsession with death and cruelty. The book traces his traumatic childhood, asking how his experiences growing up as the son of a strict Lutheran pastor fed into his later writing and filmmaking. It also looks at his political life, chronicling his teenage flirtation with Nazism, his bitter spat in the mid-70s with the Swedish authorities over his tax affairs and his often vexed relationship with his fellow Swedes. Geoffrey Macnab also considers how Bergman's work was financed and distributed, his relationship with US agents and how close he came to working in Hollywood. 'When I was 10 years old I received my first rattling film projector with its chimney and lamp which went round and round and round. I found it both mystifying and fascinating' - Ingmar Bergman.

Since his release of The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries in 1957, Ingmar Bergman has been one of the leading figures in international cinema. In a career that spanned 60 years, he wrote, produced, and directed 50 films that defined how we see ourselves and how we interact with the people we love, through works like Persona, Scenes from a Marriage, and Fanny and Alexander. Before his death in 2007, Bergman gave TASCHEN and the Swedish publishing house Max Stroem complete access to his archives at the Bergman Foundation as well as permission to reprint his writings and interviews, many of which have never been seen outside of Sweden. Picture researcher Bengt Wanselius, who was Bergman's photographer for 20 years, scoured photo archives all over Sweden, discovered previously unseen images from Bergman's films, and selected unpublished images from many photographers' personal archives. This re-edition draws from our out-of-print Bergman Archives, the most complete book on the director to date. For this award-winning production, TASCHEN Editor Paul Duncan gathered a team of Bergman experts who have researched and written a narrative that, for the first time, combined all of Bergman's working life in film. Such is the depth of Bergman's writings that most of the story is told in his own words. This book also features an introduction by Bergman's close friend and collaborator, actor Erland Josephson. On November 24, 2008, Paul Duncan and Bengt Wanselius won the 2008 August Prize for the Best Non-Fiction Book published in Sweden. This is the most prestigious literary prize in Sweden, voted on by booksellers and librarians throughout the country.

Jack Cardiff tells the story of his life in films, first as a cameraman and then as a director. He was one of the first to use the Technicolor film camera, and the book provides a record of how colour cinematography developed in Britain. He also provides a humorous account of his days on the music-hall circuit during the 1920s and '30s, and anecdotes about his experiences photographing actresses such as Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe.

Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965), starring Catherine Deneuve as a repressed and tormented manicurist, is a gripping, visually inventive descent into paranoia and self-destructive alienation. Emblematic of recurrent Polanski motifs, evinced in his student short films, in his striking debut feature, Knife in the Water (1962), and in subsequent features like Death and the Maiden (1994), Repulsion is a tour de force examination of crippling anxiety and the sinister potency of inanimate objects. Repulsion amplifies the realm of psychological horror by evoking the seething impact of increasing delusion, literal and figurative seclusion, and the consequences of one woman's foreboding sensitivity to the unsettling world that surrounds her. This Devil's Advocate considers Repulsion within the context of familiar horror tropes and the prevailing qualities of Polanski's broader oeuvre. Drawing on the research of Sigmund Freud, Julia Kristeva, Barbara Creed and others, concerning issues of abjection, the 'monstrous-feminine', and the psychology of horror spectatorship, this text focuses on central themes of isolation, sexuality and setting. Bookended by introductory biographical details and concluding with a roundup of the film's reception, Jeremy Carr situates Repulsion within the horror genre at large as well as its various off-shoots, such as the rape/revenge subgenre. There is also an analysis of the film's technical qualities, from its sound design to its brilliantly low-key special effects, all of which define the film as Polanski's most audaciously stylish realisation of dread and unease.

The rare woman director working in second-wave exploitation, Stephanie Rothman (b. 1936) directed seven successful feature films, served as the vice president of an independent film company, and was the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America's student filmmaking prize. Despite these career accomplishments, Rothman retired into relative obscurity. In The Cinema of Stephanie Rothman: Radical Acts in Filmmaking, author Alicia Kozma uses Rothman's career as an in-depth case study, intertwining historical, archival, industrial, and filmic analysis to grapple with the past, present, and future of women's filmmaking labor in Hollywood. Understanding second wave exploitation filmmaking as a transitory space for the industrial development of contemporary Hollywood that also opened up opportunities for women practitioners, Kozma argues that understudied film production cycles provide untapped spaces for discovering women's directorial work. The professional career and filmography of Rothman exemplify this claim. Rothman also serves as an apt example for connecting the structure of film histories to the persistent strictures of rhetorical language used to mark women filmmakers and their labor. Kozma traces these imbrications across historical archives. Adopting a diverse methodological approach, The Cinema of Stephanie Rothman shines a needed spotlight on the problems and successes of the memorialization of women's directorial labor, connecting historical and contemporary patterns of gendered labor disparity in the film industry. This book is simultaneously the first in-depth scholarly consideration of Rothman, the debut of the most substantive archival materials collected on Rothman, and a feminist political intervention into the construction of film histories.

"The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer" explores the legacy of this legendary Czech surrealist filmmaker, a key influence on directors such as Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton, and one of the greatest animators in cinema history. This updated second edition -- still the only full-length study of his work--features contributions from scholars and colleagues within the Czech Surrealist movement, as well as a new chapter on Svankmajer's feature films and an extended interview with Svankmajer himself. This volume is required reading for all budding animators and disciples of surrealism.

"Harmony Korine: Interviews" tracks filmmaker Korine's stunning rise, fall, and rise again through his own evolving voice. Bringing together interviews collected from over two decades, this unique chronicle includes rare interviews unavailable in print for years and an extensive, new conversation recorded at the filmmaker's home in Nashville.

After more than twenty years, Harmony Korine (b. 1973) remains one of the most prominent and yet subversive filmmakers in America. Ever since his entry into the independent film scene as the irrepressible prodigy who wrote the screenplay for Larry Clark's "Kids" in 1992, Korine has retained his stature as the ultimate cinematic provocateur. He both intelligently observes modern social milieus and simultaneously thumbs his nose at them. Now approaching middle age, and more influential than ever, Korine remains intentionally sensationalistic and ceaselessly creative.

In 1995, Korine was discovered while skateboarding and became the bad boy teen writer behind "Kids." He parlayed this success into directing the dreamy portrait of neglect "Gummo" two years later. With his audacious 1999 digital video drama "Julien Donkey-Boy," Korine continued to demonstrate a penchant for fusing experimental, subversive interests with lyrical narrative techniques. Surviving an early career burnout, he resurfaced with a trifecta of insightful works that built on his earlier aesthetic leanings: a surprisingly delicate rumination on identity ("Mister Lonely," 2007), a gritty quasi-diary film ("Trash Humpers," 2009) and a blistering portrait of American hedonism ("Spring Breakers," 2013), which yielded significant commercial success. Throughout his career he has also continued as a mixed media artist whose fields included music videos, paintings, photography, publishing, songwriting, and performance art.

The Oxford Handbook of Children's Film is the most comprehensive study of international children's cinema published to date. Overturning common prejudices that films for children are unworthy of serious attention, it presents nuanced and wide-ranging discussions from senior and junior scholars alike of iconic and neglected productions from Hollywood, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Hungary, Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Iran, Kenya, and several other countries. Featuring contributions by leading scholars in the field, the volume considers a range of issues central to the study of children's film, including questions of form and definition; representations of childhood and growing up; music, stardom, and performance; how children's films reflect national identity or serve as vehicles of state ideology and propaganda; the phenomenon of Hollywood 'family entertainment', especially the role of the Disney company; and how children and young people (as well as older audiences) engage with children's film culture. As a whole, the volume makes a substantial contribution to the emerging field of children's film studies, and will be of great interest to scholars of children's media and culture more broadly.

When Armando Bo and Isabel Sarli began making sexploitation films together in 1956, they provoked audiences by featuring explicit nudity that would increasingly become more audacious, constantly challenging contemporary norms. Their Argentine films developed a large and international fan base. Analyzing the couple's films and their subsequent censorship, Violated Frames develops a new, roughly constructed, and "bad" archive of relocated materials to debate questions of performance, authorship, stardom, sexuality, and circulation. Victoria Ruetalo situates Bo and Sarli's films amidst the popular culture and sexual norms in post-1955 Argentina, and explores these films through the lens of bodies engaged in labor and leisure in a context of growing censorship. Under Peron, manual labor produced an affect that fixed a specific type of body to the populist movement of Peronism: a type of body that was young, lower-classed, and highly gendered. The excesses of leisure in exhibition, enjoyment, and ecstasy in Bo and Sarli's films interrupted the already fragmented film narratives of the day and created alternative sexual possibilities.

Latin American women filmmakers have achieved unprecedented international prominence in recent years. Notably political in their approach, figures such as Lucrecia Martel, Claudia Llosa and Bertha Navarro have created innovative and often challenging films, enjoying global acclaim from critics and festival audiences alike. They undeniably mark a 'moment' for Latin American cinema.Bringing together distinguished scholars in the field - and prefaced by B. Ruby Rich - this is a much-needed account and analysis of the rise of female-led film in Latin America. Chapters detail the collaboration that characterises Latin American women's filmmaking - in many ways distinct from the largely 'Third Cinema' auteurism from the region - as well as the transnational production contexts, unique aesthetics and socio-political landscape of the key industry figures. Through close attention to the particular features of national film cultures, from women's documentary filmmaking in Chile to comedic critique in Brazil, and from US Latina screen culture to the burgeoning popularity of Peruvian film, this timely study demonstrates the remarkable possibilities for film in the region. This book will allow scholars and students of Latin American cinema and culture, as well as industry professionals, a deeper understanding of the emergence and impact of the filmmakers and their work, which has particular relevance for contemporary debates on feminism.

Film maker Nuri Bilge Ceylan's meditative, visually stunning contributions to the 'New Turkish Cinema' have marked him out as a pioneer of his medium. Reaping success from his prize-winning, breakout film Uzak (2002), and from later festival favourites Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) and Winter Sleep (2014), he has quickly established himself as an original and provocative writer, director and producer of 21st century cinema. In an age where Turkey's modernisation has created societal tensions and departures from past tradition, Ceylan's films present a cinema of dislocation and a vision of 'nostalgia' understood as homesickness: sick of being away from home; sick of being at home. This book offers an overdue study of Ceylan's work and a critical examination of the principle themes therein. In particular, chapters focus on time and space, melancholy and loneliness, absence, rural and urban experience, and notions of paradox, as explored through films which are often slow and uncompromising in their pessimistic outlook. Moving on from the tendency to situate Ceylan's oeuvre exclusively within the canon of 'New Turkish Cinema', one of this book's major achievements is also to assess the influence of classic European thought, literature and film and how such a notably minimal - and in many ways nationally-specific - approach translates to an increasingly transnational context for film. This will prove an important book for film students and scholars, and those interested in Turkish visual culture.

In this comprehensive portrait of horror's definitive director, Tony Williams ties George A. Romero's films to the development of literary naturalism and American culture, expanding the artist's creative footprint beyond his mastery of the "splatter movie" genre. Williams locates Romero's influences in the work of Emile Zola, the Entertainment Comics of the 1950s, and the novels of Stephen King, revealing the interdisciplinary depth of his seminal films Night of the Living Dead (1968), Creepshow (1982), Monkey Shines (1988), and The Dark Half (1992). For this second edition, Williams reads Romero's Bruiser (2000) against his more recent Land of the Dead (2005) and takes a fresh look at Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009), two overlooked films that feature Romero's greatest achievements yet.

The definitive look at one of the most important Black art films and original filmmakers of the 1970s. Bill Gunn's Ganja & Hess (1973) has across the decades attained a sizable cult following among African American cinema devotees, art house aficionados, and horror fans, thanks to its formal complexity and rich allegory. Pleading the Blood is the first full-length study of this cult classic. Ganja & Hess was withdrawn almost immediately after its New York premiere by its distributor because Gunn's poetic re-fashioning of the vampire genre allegedly failed to satisfy the firm's desire for a by-the-numbers "blaxploitation" horror flick for quick sell-off in the urban market. Its current status as one of the classic works of African American cinema has recently been confirmed by the Blu-ray release of its restored version, by its continued success in screenings at repertory houses, museums, and universities, and by an official remake, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014), directed by Spike Lee, one of the original picture's longtime champions. Pleading the Blood draws on Gunn's archived papers, screenplay drafts, and storyboards, as well as interviews with the living major creative participants to offer a comprehensive, absorbing account of the influential movie and its highly original filmmaker.

Luchino Visconti (1906-1976) was one of Europe's most prestigious filmmakers, who rose to prominence as part of the Italian neo-realist movement, alongside contemporaries Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini. Famous for his elegant lifestyle, as friend of Jean Renoir and Coco Chanel amongst others, his vibrant technicolour dramas are also known for their decadence and stunning display of aesthetic mastery and sensory pleasure. Looking beyond this colourful facade, however, Resina explores the philosophical implications of decadence with a particular focus on three films from the late phase in Visconti's production, Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), and Ludwig (1972). From the incestuous relationship between decadence and power to decadence as an outcome of straining toward formal perfection, Resina uncovers the unity and philosophical cohesiveness of these films that deal with different subjects and historical periods. Reading these films and their decadence in light of the time of filming and Visconti's own sense of cultural doom, Resina further demonstrates the relevance of Visconti's philosophy today and how much they still have to say to our contemporary situation.

Animated by a singularly subversive spirit, the fiendishly intelligent works of Stuart Gordon (1947-2020) are distinguished by their arrant boldness and scab-picking wit. Provocative gems such as Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dolls, The Pit and the Pendulum, and Dagon consolidated his fearsome reputation as one of the masters of the contemporary horror film, bringing an unfamiliar archness, political complexity, and critical respect to a genre so often bereft of these virtues. A versatile filmmaker, one who resolutely refused to mellow with age, Gordon proved equally adept at crafting pointed science fiction (Robot Jox, Fortress, Space Truckers), sweet-tempered fantasy (The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit), and nihilistic thrillers (King of the Ants, Edmond, Stuck), customarily scrubbing the sharply drawn lines between exploitation and arthouse cinema. The first collection of interviews ever to be published on the director, Stuart Gordon: Interviews contains thirty-six articles spanning a period of fifty years. Bountiful in anecdote and information, these candid conversations chronicle the trajectory of a fascinating career-one that courted controversy from its very beginning. Among the topics Gordon discusses are his youth and early influences, his founding of Chicago's legendary Organic Theatre (where he collaborated with such luminaries as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Mamet), and his transition into filmmaking where he created a body of work that injected fresh blood into several ailing staples of American cinema. He also reveals details of his working methods, his steadfast relationships with frequent collaborators, his great love for the works of Lovecraft and Poe, and how horror stories can masquerade as sociopolitical commentaries.

Despite the increasing popularity of academic filmmaking programs in the United States, some of contemporary America's most exciting film directors have emerged from the theater world. "Directors: From Stage to Screen and Back Again" features a series of interviews with directors who did just that, transitioning from work on stage productions to work in television and on full-length features. Taken together, these interviews demonstrate the myriad ways in which a theater background can engender innovative and stimulating work in film. As unique and idiosyncratic as the personalities they feature, the directors' conversations with Susan Lehman range over a vast field of topics. Each one traces its subject's personal artistic journey and explores how he or she handled the challenge of moving from stage to screen. Combined with a foreword by Emmy award-winning screenwriter Steve Brown, the directors' collective knowledge and experience will be invaluable to scholars, aspiring filmmakers, theater aficionados, and film enthusiasts.