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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema > Individual film directors, film-makers
One of the most versatile Hollywood filmmmakers, Robert Wise had a number of renowned films under his directorial belt, including The Day The Earth Stood Still, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Nonetheless, Wise remains a rarely studied Hollywood figure--while many filmgoers know and love his films, few recognize his name. This book, the first in-depth analysis of Wise's cinematic achievement, uncovers the elements linking the director's diverse cinematic subjects and examines in detail the manifold ways in which Wise explored the tensions between individuals and their societies. His films are seen from a new and more complex perspective, one which will heighten the viewer's appreciation for the range and depth of Wise's overall body of work.
Hailed as the Brazilian Chaplin, Amacio Mazzaropi is one of the most popular Brazilian filmmakers of all time. Looking beyond Cinema Novo films, Amacio Mazzaropi in the Film and Culture of Brazil analyzes the cultural impact and critical reception of Mazzaropi's work. A former circus and radio artist, Mazzaropi started his cinema career in 1951, with the Companhia Cinematografica Vera Cruz; in 1958 he founded his own company, PAM Filmes. He acted in, produced, and directed more than thirty films in which he presents his beloved character, Jeca Tatu, and discusses race, class, gender, religion, and the meaning of nation. Bueno discusses how the films approach issues facing a changing country that was becoming more urban, how ex-centric Brazilians ("caipiras") resolved their position in this new society, and how they fit in the politics and in the history of the country.
The cinephile community knows Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016) as one of the most important filmmakers of the previous decades. This volume illustrates why the Iranian filmmaker achieved critical acclaim around the globe and details his many contributions to the art of filmmaking. Kiarostami began his illustrious career in his native Iran in the 1970s, although European and American audiences did not begin to take notice until he released his 1987 feature Where's the Friend's House? His films defy established conventions, placing audiences as active viewers who must make decisions about actions and characters while watching the narratives unfold. He asks viewers to question the genre construct (Close-Up) and challenges them to determine how to watch and imagine a narrative (Ten and Shirin). In recognition for his approach to the craft, Kiarostami was awarded many honors during his lifetime, including the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 for Taste of Cherry. In Abbas Kiarostami: Interviews, editor Monika Raesch collects eighteen interviews (several translated into English for the first time), lectures, and other materials that span Kiarostami's career in the film industry. In addition to exploring his expertise, the texts provide insight into his life philosophy. This volume offers a well-rounded picture of the filmmaker through his conversations with journalists, film scholars, critics, students, and audience members.
Hitchcock and Contemporary Art introduces readers to the fascinating and diverse range of artistic practices devoted to Alfred Hitchcock's films. These practices are more than celebrations of his cinematic achievements. The artworks considered here are motivated by a cinephilia often deeply imprinted by epistemophilia, that is, a love of cinema charged by a desire to know more about it and to revel in the pleasures of discovery. As such, these works have the capacity to activate sophisticated engagements with Hitchcock's films and cinema more generally, tackling issues of time and space, memory and history, and sound and image.
Embargoed to 30th March 2017 The Art of Smurfs presents hundreds of storyboards, character design, and location concept pieces. With a foreword by Veronique Culliford, daughter of Pierrot "Peyo" Culliford, this insider's guide celebrates her father's cherished Smurfs and provides a glimpse into the creative process that turned his popular comics into a feature-length, animated film. In this fully animated, all-new take on the Smurfs, a mysterious map sets Smurfette and her friends Brainy, Clumsy and Hefty on an exciting race through the Forbidden Forest leading to the discovery of the biggest secret in Smurf history.
WALERIAN BOROWCZYK by JEREMY MARK ROBINSON Walerian Borowczyk (known as 'Boro') is one of cinema's one-offs. Quite simply, there is no filmmaker quite like Borowczyk. Borowczyk's films have an astonishing, magical quality. They reach a place very rare in contemporary cinema, and are quite unlike the films of any other auteur. Borowczyk's films create their own space, with imagery, sounds and music of a really exceptional power. Jeremy Robinson discusses each Borowczyk film in detail, sometimes going through scenes shot by shot. Fully illustrated, with stills from Borowczyk's movies, and from the history of erotica, a bibliography, filmography and notes. 252pp. The text has been updated for this new (2nd) edition. www.crmoon.com EXTRACT FROM THE INTRODUCTION Goto: Island of Love was the first Walerian Borowczyk film that made a big impression on audiences and critics, winning a number of prizes. I first saw Goto: Island of Love in 1982, at Bournemouth Film School, when we watched 16mm prints as part of our film history programme. You could see there was an astonishing vision at work here. I remember above all the creation of a visceral, idiosyncratic and original world. If I had to single out some films, I'd cite Blanche, Immoral Tales, Behind Convent Walls, The Beast and Goto: Island of Love, for their painterly sense, the use of props and costumes, and the incredible attention to detail. Very stylish, mysterious, poetic. Not forgetting the acute awareness of the history of religion and literature. Borowczyk produced some of the most memorable images in European cinema, the equal of Ingmar Bergman, Sergei Paradjanov or Andrei Tarkovsky. AUTHOR'S NOTE: I spent a long time researching and compiling this book. It contains a huge amount of information on the amazing filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk, much of which is very, very hard to find. You have to really dig around to discover valuable information on Boro. The book relates Borowczyk to many other filmmakers and movies, from the European art movie tradition, but also the horror genre, and animation; it analyzes each of Borowcyk's movie in depth (from the sublime - Goto and Immoral Tales - to the downright terrible - Emmanuelle 5); it assesses the critical reception of Borowczyk, and the current perception of Borowcyk as a director; it contains many illustrations (some of which are rare); it considers Borowczyk's love of erotica (with illustrations); and it contains a useful bibliography and list of sources. Lastly, my book on Walerian Borowczyk is clearly written in an entertaining style, which I hope will encourage the reader to seek out some of Borowczyk's strange, lyrical, hallucinatory and erotic movies. And if you've already seen them, I hope my book will offer some fresh insights into Borowcyk.
Get an intimate look at the cult filmmaker of our generation. Packaged in a handsome slipcase and loaded with stunning pictures from the Kobal archives, this biography explores the genesis of Tarantino's unique directorial style and provides insight into his inspirations and his frequent collaborations with favoured actors. An 8-page foldout timeline presents Tarantino's entire filmography in the heart of the book. Through in-depth and informative text written by renowned film journalist Ian Nathan, this book examines the entirety of Tarantino's work, including his early writing on screenplays such as True Romance and Natural Born Killers, his break-out directorial debut Reservoir Dogs and the career-defining Pulp Fiction, as well as his later iconic films, such as Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. You'll also go behind the scenes of Tarantino's latest epic, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. As you make your way through Tarantino's incredible career, discover what inspired him, his working methods and the breadth of his talent. With a visually arresting design that mimics Tarantino's approach to film-making and chapters organized by film, the pages are brimming with images taken on set and behind the scenes. This is the ultimate celebration for any Tarantino fan. Unauthorised and Unofficial.
..".provides a hugely readable, insightful examination of Billy Wilder's American films as the product of transnational cultural exchange." . Monatshefte "Gemunden's vital decoding of Wilder's translation of himself into the American vernacular offers stimulating new material and perspectives that will no doubt shape Wilder scholarship to come." . Austrian Studies Newsletter "Billy Wilder is hard to trump, because everything one writes about him is only half as entertaining as his great sense of humor. Gerd Gemunden, however, achieves a small miracle: his A Foreign Affair is a highly readable yet serious critical study that reveals Wilder, the alleged cynic, as the moralist he really was." . Volker Schlondorff With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish emigre from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low. Gerd Gemunden is Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities and Professor of German Studies, Film Studies, and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Framed Visions: Popular Culture, Americanization and the Contemporary German and Austrian Imagination (1998) and editor of volumes on Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Douglas Sirk, as well as an anthology of critical writings on Marlene Dietrich.
Inspired by the fabled journals in which acclaimed filmmaker Guillermo del Toro records his innermost thoughts and unleashes his vivid imagination, Insight Editions has created a replica sketchbook aimed at the director's legion of fans. Similar in design to del Toro's leather-bound volumes, this sketchbook features an inspirational message from the director along with selected examples of his incredible art.
One of the most distinguished filmmakers working today, David Lynch is a director whose vision of cinema is firmly rooted in fine art. He was motivated to make his first film as a student because he wanted a painting that "would really be able to move." Most existing studies of Lynch, however, fail to engage fully with the complexities of his films' relationship to other art forms. "The Film Paintings of David Lynch "fills this void, arguing that Lynch's cinematic output needs to be considered within a broad range of cultural references. Aiming at both Lynch fans and film studies specialists, Allister Mactaggart addresses Lynch's films from the perspective of the relationship between commercial film, avant-garde art, and cultural theory. Individual Lynch films--"The Elephant Man," "Blue Velvet," "Twin Peaks," "Lost Highway, The Straight Story," "Mulholland Drive," "Inland Empire"--are discussed in relation to other films and directors, illustrating that the solitary, or seemingly isolated, experience of film is itself socially, culturally, and politically important. "The Film Paintings of David Lynch "offers a unique perspective on an influential director, weaving together a range of theoretical approaches to Lynch's films to make exciting new connections among film theory, art history, psychoanalysis, and cinema.
Michael Curtiz (1888-1962) is considered to be one of the most important directors in film history. "The Casablanca Man" surveys Curtiz's mastery over a variety of genres which included biography, comedy, horror, melodrama, musical, swashbuckler and western, and looks at his relationship with the Hollywood studio moguls on the basis of documentary evidence gleaned from archive research at Warner Brothers, rather than the hearsay on which so much of his reputation rests. This access to the production and financial details of Curtiz's Warner Brothers films from 1926 to 1953 is the most distinctive feature of Jim Robertson's work, most of it never having been made available to the general public. Concentrating on Curtiz's best-known films - "Casablanca", "Angels with Dirty Faces", "Mildred Pearce" and "King Creole" among them - Robertson explores his practical struggles over, for example, screenplays, his use of reality footage in his feature films, and the instinctive visual sense which governed his work.
Eisenstein's reputation has long been secure as creator of the
Soviet cinema's earliest and most enduring classics, and as a
pioneer theorist and teacher. Yet the English-speaking world has
not kept pace with a rising tide of Eisenstein scholarship further
enriched by new publications emerging from the former Soviet Union.
This volume of spellbinding essays explores the tense relationship between Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, providing new perspectives on their collaboration. Featuring chapters by leading scholars of Hitchcock's work, including Richard Allen, Charles Barr, Murray Pomerance, Sidney Gottlieb and Jack Sullivan, the collection examines the working relationship between the pair and the contribution that Herrmann's work brings to Hitchcock's idiom. Examining key works, including The Man Who Knew Too Much, Psycho, Marnie and Vertigo, the essays explore approaches to sound, music, collaborative authorship and the distinctive contribution that Herrmann's work with Hitchcock brought to this body of films, examining the significance, meanings, histories and enduring legacies of one of film history's most important partnerships. By engaging with the collaborative work of Hitchcock and Herrmann, the book explores the ways in which film directors and composers collaborate, how this collaboration is experienced in the film text, and the ways in which such partnerships inspire later work. -- .
Alejandro Jodorowsky is a theatre director, writer of graphic novels and comics, novelist, poet, and an expert in the Tarot. He is also an auteur filmmaker who garnered attention with his breakthrough film El Topo in 1970. He has been called a "cult" filmmaker, whose films are surreal, hallucinatory, and provocative. The Transformative Cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky explores the ways in which Jodorowsky's films are transformative in a psychologically therapeutic way. It also examines his signature style, which includes the symbolic meaning of various colors in which he clothes his actors, the use of his own family members in the films, and his casting of himself in leading roles. This total involvement of himself and his family in his auteur films led to his psycho-therapeutic theories and practices: metagenealogy and psychomagic. This book is the only the second book in the English language in print that deals with all of Jodorowsky's films, beginning with his earliest mime film in 1957 and ending with his 2019 film on psychomagic. It also connects his work as a writer and therapist to his films, which themselves attempt to obliterate the line between fantasy and reality.
The long and prolific career of Steven Soderbergh (b. 1963) defies easy categorization. From his breakout beginnings in 1989 with sex, lies, and videotape to 2013, when he retired from big-screen movie-making to focus on other pursuits including television, the director's output resembles nothing less than an elaborate experiment. Soderbergh's Hollywood vehicles such as the Ocean's Eleven movies, Contagion and Magic Mike appear just as risky and outside-the-box as low-budget exercises such as Schizopolis, Bubble, and The Girlfriend Experience. This updated edition details key career moments: his creative crisis surrounding his fourth film, The Underneath; his rejuvenation with the ultra-low-budget free-style Schizopolis; the mainstream achievements Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the Ocean's Eleven films; and his continuing dedication to pushing his craft forward with films as diverse as conspiracy thrillers, sexy dramas, and biopics on Che Guevara and Liberace. Spanning twenty-five years, these conversations reveal Soderbergh to be as self-effacing and lighthearted in his later more established years as he was when just beginning to make movies. He comes across as a man undaunted by the glitz and power of Hollywood, remaining, above all, a truly independent filmmaker unafraid to get his hands dirty and pick up the camera himself.
Noted for his charisma, talent, and striking good looks, director Rex Ingram (1893-1950) is ranked alongside D. W. Griffith, Marshall Neilan, and Erich von Stroheim as one of the greatest artists of the silent cinema. Ingram briefly studied sculpture at the Yale University School of Art after emigrating from Ireland to the United States in 1911; but he was soon seduced by the new medium of moving pictures and abandoned his studies for a series of jobs in the film industry. Over the next decade, he became one of the most popular directors in Hollywood, directing smash hits such as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), and Scaramouche (1923). In Rex Ingram, Ruth Barton explores the life and legacy of the pioneering filmmaker, following him from his childhood in Dublin to his life at the top of early Hollywood's A-list and his eventual self-imposed exile on the French Riviera. Ingram excelled in bringing visions of adventure and fantasy to eager audiences, and his films made stars of actors like Rudolph Valentino, Ram?n Novarro, and Alice Terry -- his second wife and leading lady. With his name a virtual guarantee of box office success, Ingram's career flourished in the 1920s despite the constraints of an increasingly regulated industry and the hostility of Louis B. Mayer, who regarded him as a dangerous maverick. Barton examines the virtuoso director's career and controversial personal life -- including his conversion to Islam, the rumors surrounding his ambiguous sexuality, and the circumstances of his untimely death. This definitive biography not only restores the visionary filmmaker to the spotlight but also provides an absorbing look at the daring and exhilarating days of silent-era Hollywood.
Wes Anderson's films can be divisive, but he is widely recognized as the inspiration for several recent trends in indie films. Using both practical and theoretical lenses, the contributors address and explain the recurring stylistic techniques, motifs, and themes that dominate Anderson's films and have had such an impact on current filmmaking.
This book analyzes the rise of socially and politically engaged Algerian documentaries, created in the period immediately following the end of the Algerian civil war (1991-1999). It uses case studies to highlight the works of four Algerian filmmakers, and devotes a chapter to each: Malek Bensmail, Hassen Ferhani, Djamel Kerkar, and Karim Sayad. The book makes visible productions that have been overlooked not only in distribution circuits but also within academia, and examines the political significance and the esthetic power of some of the most influential Algerian documentaries produced since the 2000s.
Best known for his 1979 film David, Peter Lilienthal was an unusual figure within postwar filmmaking circles. A child refugee from Nazi Germany who grew up in Uruguay, he was uniquely situated at the crossroads of German, Jewish, and Latin American cultures: while his work emerged from West German auteur filmmaking, his films bore the unmistakable imprints of Jewish thought and the militant character of New Latin American cinema. Peter Lilienthal is the first comprehensive study of Lilienthal's life and career, highlighting the distinctively cross-cultural and transnational dimensions of his oeuvre, and exploring his role as an early exemplar of a more vibrant, inclusive European film culture. |
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