James Cameron has blazed a trail through the cinematic landscape with a series of groundbreaking films that have each become deeply embedded in the popular imagination. But while Cameron has created and employed advanced filmmaking technologies to realize his unique vision, his process of creative ideation began with pen, pencil and paints long before he picked up a camera. Inspired by his mother, an artist, Cameron displayed remarkable ability at an early age, filling sketchbooks with illustrations of alien creatures, faraway worlds, and technological wonders. As he grew older, his art became increasingly sophisticated, exploring major themes that would imbue his later work-from the threat of nuclear catastrophe to the dangers inherent in the development of artificial intelligence, to a fascination with ecology that would foreshadow his storied career in science and exploration. Working in the film industry in his early twenties, Cameron supported himself by illustrating theatrical posters and concept art for low-budget films before creating the visionary concept pieces that would help greenlight his first major feature, The Terminator. For the first time, Tech Noir brings together a dazzling and diverse array of personal and commercial art from Cameron's own collection, showing the trajectory of ideas which led to such modern classics as The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic and Avatar. Starting with his earliest sketches through to unrealized projects and to his later work, the book features the filmmaker's personal commentary on his creative and artistic evolution throughout the years. A unique journey into the mind of a singular creative powerhouse, Tech Noir is a true publishing event and the ultimate exploration of one of cinema's most imaginative innovators.

Alain Resnais, director of "Hiroshima Mon Amour" (1959) and "L'Annee Derniere a Marienbad" (1961), has transformed the representation of memory, fantasy and desire in modern cinema. This illuminating introduction to his work, extending from his earliest documentaries to the musical films of the last decade, traces the evolving patterns of his filmmaking, its changing reflections on mortality, guilt, chance and human doubt. Exploring questions of the time-image, of trauma, of the senses, this volume sets Resnais's films in the context of important current debates in film theory, and provides a concise account of critical discussions of his work in France and beyond. Yet it also offers a highly personal and detailed engagement with individual images and scenes in Resnais's films. A passionate and partial defence of Resnais's work, old and new, this volume stands apart in its attention to the more tangible and moving pleasures of his films, their pathos, rigour and visual beauty.

Best known for powerful 1950s melodramas like All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind, The Tarnished Angels, and Imitation of Life, Douglas Sirk (1897-1987) brought to all his work a distinctive style that led to his reputation as one of twentieth-century film's great directors. Sirk worked in Europe during the 1930s, mainly for Germany's UFA studios, and then in America in the 1940s and '50s. The Films of Douglas Sirk: Exquisite Ironies and Magnificent Obsessions provides an overview of his entire career, including Sirk's work on musicals, comedies, thrillers, war movies, and westerns. One of the great ironists of the cinema, Sirk believed rules were there to be broken. Whether defying the decrees of Nazi authorities trying to turn film into propaganda or arguing with studios that insisted characters' problems should always be solved and that endings should always restore order, what Sirk called "emergency exits" for audiences, Sirk always fought for his vision. Offering fresh insights into all of the director's films and situating them in the culture of their times, critic Tom Ryan also incorporates extensive interview material drawn from a variety of sources, including his own conversations with the director. Furthermore, his enlightening study undertakes a detailed reconsideration of the generally overlooked novels and plays that served as sources for Sirk's films, as well as providing a critical survey of previous Sirk commentary, from the time of the director's "rediscovery" in the late 1960s up to the present day.

Based on the famous series of dialogues between Francois Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock from the 1960s, the book moves chronologically through Hitchcock's films to discuss his career, techniques, and effects he achieved. It changed the way Hitchcock was perceived, as a popular director of suspense films - such as Psycho and The Birds - and revealed to moviegoers and critics, the depth of Hitchcock's perception and his mastery of the art form. As a result of the changed perceptions about Hitchcock, his masterpiece, Vertigo, hit the No 1 slot in Sight & Sound's recent poll of film-makers and critics, displacing Citizen Kane as the Best Film of all time.

Now fully updated, Lynch on Lynch describes the career of a cinematic genius who has continued to astonish filmgoers with the lovely and life-affirming The Straight Story and the luxurious dread of the Academy Award-nominated Mulholland Drive. David Lynch erupted onto the cinema landscape with Eraserhead, establishing himself as one of the most original, imaginative, and truly personal directors at work in contemporary film. He is a surrealist, in the tradition of the great Spanish director Luis Bunuel. Over the course of a career that includes such films as The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, and the seminal TV series Twin Peaks, Lynch has remained true to an artistic vision of innocence lost or adrift in the direst states of darkness and confusion. Nobody else sees the world quite as David Lynch does. Once seen, his films are never forgotten, nor does the world about us seem quite as it did before. In this definitive career-length interview book, Lynch speaks openly about the full breadth of his creative work, which encompasses not only movies but also a lifelong commitment to painting, a continuing exploration of photography, extensive work in television, and musical collaborations with composer Angelo Badalamenti and singer Julee Cruise.

Steven Spielberg is known as the most powerful man in New Hollywood and a pioneer of the contemporary blockbuster, America's most successful export. His career began a new chapter in mass culture. At the same time, American post war liberalism was breaking down. This fascinating new book explains the complex relationship between film and politics through the prism of an iconic filmmaker.

Spielberg's early films were a triumphant emergence of the Sunbelt aesthetic that valued visceral kicks and basic emotions over the ambiguities of history. Such blockbusters have inspired much debate about their negative effect on politics and have been charged as being an expression of the corporatization of life. Here Frederick Wasser argues that the older Spielberg has not fully gone this way, suggesting that the filmmaker recycles the populist vision of older Hollywood because he sincerely believes in both big time moviemaking and liberal democracy. Nonetheless, his stories are burdened by his generation's hostility to public life, and the book shows how he uses filmmaking tricks to keep his audience with him and to smooth over the ideological contradictions. His audiences have become more global, as his films engage history.

This fresh and provocative take on Spielberg in the context of globalization, rampant market capitalism and the hardening socio-political landscape of the United States will be fascinating reading for students of film and for anyone interested in contemporary America and its culture.

Ingmar Bergman's films had a very broad and rich relationship with the rest of European cinema, contrary to the myth that Bergman was a peripheral figure, culturally and aesthetically isolated from the rest of Europe. This book contends that he should be put at the very center of European film history by chronologically comparing Bergman's relationship to key European directors such as Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Andrei Tarkovsky, and also looks at Bergman's critical relationship to key movements in film history such as the French New Wave. In so doing, it demonstrates how Ingmar Bergman's films illustrate the demonic struggle in modernity between faith and secularity through "his intense preoccupation with the malaise of intimacy."

Film and television offer important insights into social outlooks on borders in France and Europe more generally. This book undertakes a visual cultural history of contemporary borders through a film and television tour. It traces on-screen borders from the Gare du Nord train station in Paris to Calais, London, Lampedusa and Lapland. It contends that different types of mobilities and immobilities (refugees, urban commuters, workers in a post-industrial landscape) and vantage points (from borderland forests, ports, train stations, airports, refugee centers) are all part of a complex French and European border narrative. It covers a wide range of examples, from popular films and TV series to auteur fiction and documentaries by well-known directors from across Europe and beyond. -- .

Slow Places in Bela Tarr's Films explores Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr's approach to creating geographies of indifference through slow cinema techniques. Through a close examination of Tarr's filmography, Clara Orban observes that his interiors provide claustrophobic environments in which human relationships have difficult flourishing, while his exteriors become landscapes through which characters wander endlessly. Furthermore, Orban argues, Tarr's sparse use of animals provides contrast to the humans who inhabit these spaces, as they, too, are indifferent to humans' fates. Orban utilizes close readings of Tarr's films-including his earlier short films-along with relevant poems, a thorough filmography, and an interview with Tarr about aspects of this book to aid in her analysis. Ultimately, this book offers an accessible but detailed look at the geographic locations and ecological implications of the entire compendium of Tarr's productions.

A Critical Companion to Stanley Kubrick offers a thorough and detailed study of the works of Stanley Kubrick. Labeled a recluse, a provocateur, and a perfectionist, Kubrick remains one of the greatest legends of cinema who continues to influence contemporary filmmakers and visual culture. An unequaled visionary, Kubrick revolutionized film genres, the use of music in film, narrative pacing and structure, and depictions of war and violence. This book delves into the complexities of his work and examines the wide range of topics and the multiple interpretations that his films inspire. The eighteen chapters in this book use different methodologies, explore new trends of research in film studies, providing a series of unique and novel perspectives on all of Kubrick's thirteen feature films, from Fear and Desire (1953) to Eyes Wide Shut (1999), as well as his work on A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001).

The winner of two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film in only five years, Asghar Farhadi (b. 1972) has become Iran's most prominent director since the late Abbas Kiarostami. Around the world, especially in the international festival circuit, Farhadi is considered one of the great dramatist filmmakers of his generation. His reputation and influence in his home country is even greater, though also prone to misunderstandings, controversies, and divided critical reception. This volume offers a unique perspective into Farhadi's career in several key respects. Beginning with his work in television, the interviews collected here chart his rise from theater student to Iranian dramatist to celebrated international filmmaker. The majority of the interviews were conducted in Persian and have been translated into English for the first time. In the course of his career, Farhadi has become the new hope for Iran. On both nights of his Oscar wins, Iranians flooded the streets with joy in a rare (and illegal) celebration. Yet, like other contemporary Iranian filmmakers who have struggled to reconcile their national identity with their global repute as international filmmakers, Farhadi is at once feted and under fire by his own government. In addition to making recent films outside Iran, he has taken advantage of his celebrity status to make controversial statements on topics ranging from Donald Trump to poverty and capital punishment in Iran. He even asked Iran's Judiciary to pardon Jafar Panahi, prompting the government to temporarily withdraw permission to shoot his renowned 2011 film A Separation. Asghar Farhadi: Interviews addresses the important dimensions that characterize contemporary Iranian filmmaking and shed light on what Farhadi sees as his role and responsibilities as an Iranian filmmaker in a global age.

Regarded by many filmmakers and critics as one of the greatest directors in cinema history, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889--1968) achieved worldwide acclaim after the debut of his masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), which was named the most influential film of all time at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. In 1955 Dreyer granted twenty-three-year-old American student Jan Wahl the extraordinary opportunity to spend a unique and unforgettable summer with him during the filming of Ordet ( The Word [1955]). Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ordet: My Summer with the Danish Filmmaker is a captivating account of Wahl's time with the director, based on Wahl's daily journal accounts and transcriptions of his conversations with Dreyer. Offering a glimpse into the filmmaker's world, Wahl fashions a portrait of Dreyer as a man, mentor, friend, and director. Wahl's unique and charming account is supplemented by exquisite photos of the filming and by selections from Dreyer's papers, including his notes on film style, his introduction for the actors before the filming of Ordet, and a visionary lecture he delivered at Edinburgh. Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ordet details one student's remarkable experiences with a legendary director and the unlikely bond formed over a summer.

A member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s, Claude Chabrol has received the least amount of critical and scholarly attention, although he was the more prolific and commercially successful of them all. Jacob Leigh fills this lacuna by focusing on the last nine feature films of Chabrol's career, exploring his imagery, camerawork, use of sound and music, and performances, revealing the stylistic characteristics of his films while identifying the fundamental thematic issues that lie at the heart of his career-length exploration of the relationship between individuals and societies. Key areas of focus includes Chabrol's careful depiction of upper-class settings in films such as La Ceremonie (1995), Merci pour le chocolat (2000) and La Fille coupee en deux (2007) and on what Robin Wood and Michael Walker call 'the beast in man' (1970), the quasi-sympathetic 'id-figures' of which Le Boucher's Popaul is the most celebrated. Chabrol's 'id-figures' inherit the traits of Shadow of a Doubt's Uncle Charlie, Rope's Brandon and Strangers on a Train's Bruno, all three of whom have characteristics of the Nietzsche-quoting psychopath familiar in crime fiction. Additionally, The Late Films of Claude Chabrol considers the influence on Chabrol of a range of significant writers, including Patrick Hamilton, Patricia Highsmith, Charlotte Armstrong and Ruth Rendell.

The life and work of legendary cult-film director Sam Raimi Raimi has three film in production/post-production for 2004-5 release Film historian and popular writer JK Muir turns his attention to the life and work of legendary cult-film director Sam Raimi who exploded onto the movie scene in 1982, when he was 23, with the audacious, independently produced horror film The Evil Dead. There were two Evil Dead sequels, the critically acclaimed A Simple Plan starring Billy Bob Thornton (1999), The Gift starring Kate Blanchett (2000), and in 2002 Raimi's Spider-Man had the biggest opening weekend in film history - netting USD114 million at the box office. The Unseen Force also features a sneak peek at the much-anticipated Spider-Man 2. Raimi's influence on other filmmakers continues to be enormous - from the "shaky cam" shots of the Coen brothers to the early oeuvre of Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, both of whom have been termed the "direct progeny" of Raimi's works.

Surveys Quentin Tarantino's enthralling career at the heart of cult filmmaking, from Reservoir Dogs to his latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino is one of the most influential and distinctive filmmakers at work in the world today. His films are so admired that nearly every one he makes becomes an instant cult classic. Here, Tom Shone presents in-depth commentaries on each of the ten films Tarantino has directed, from Reservoir Dogs to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, as well as looking at his early life, acting career, and his indisputable talent for scriptwriting. Illustrated with more than two hundred film stills and behind-the-scenes images, Tarantino: A Retrospective is a fitting tribute to the great auteur’s unique talent.

'A rule of mine is this', said William Goldman in 1983, 'there are always three hot directors and one of them is always David Lean.' One of the best known and most admired of British film makers, David Lean had a directorial career that spanned five decades and encompassed everything from the intimate black-and-white romance of Brief Encounter (1945) to the spectacular Technicolor epic of Lawrence of Arabia (1962). This book offers comprehensive coverage of every feature film directed by Lean, yielding new insights on the established classics of his career as well as its lesser-known treasures. Its analysis prioritises questions of gender and emphasises the often-overlooked but highly significant recurrence of female-centred narratives throughout Lean's career. Drawing extensively on archival historical materials while also presenting nuanced close readings of individual films, David Lean offers a fascinating and original account of the work of a remarkable British film maker. -- .

This volume celebrates one of the best known and most loved Italian directors in the world, one of the great masters of tension and horror: Dario Argento. Over the years his cinema has established itself - among cinephiles but not only - for its visionary power, for the search for an aesthetic dimension which is reached through excess. And this excess is not so much what materialises in the virtuosity of the staging of murder and death, as in treating such a brutal and disturbing material in such a way that it becomes something abstract, almost a baroque stylisation. The volume, full of critical essays that investigate the poetics and imagination of Dario Argento, retraces the director's complete filmography. It also welcomes the testimonies of collaborators and the statements of great directors and actors who shared his long career. Biographies complete the volume. With texts by: Mick Garris, Domenico De Gaetano, Marcello Garofalo, Stefano Della Casa, Piera Detassis, Roberto Pugliese, Alan Jones, Domenico Monetti; testimonianze di: Stefania Casini, Franco Bellomo, Luigi Cozzi, Claudio Simonetti, Sergio Stivaletti, Luciano Tovoli, Antonello Geleng, Pupi Oggiano; fotogrammi tematici: Grazia Paganelli, Matteo Pollone, and Fabio Pezzetti Tonion. Text in English and Italian.

Using critical race theory and film studies to explore the interconnectedness between cinema and society, Zelie Asava traces the history of mixed-race representations in American and French filmmaking from early and silent cinema to the present day. Mixed Race Cinemas covers over a hundred years of filmmaking to chart the development of (black/white) mixed representations onscreen. With the 21st century being labelled the Mulatto Millennium, mixed bodies are more prevalent than ever in the public sphere, yet all too often they continue to be positioned as exotic, strange and otherworldly, according to 'tragic mulatto' tropes. This book evaluates the potential for moving beyond fixed racial binaries both onscreen and off by exploring actors and characters who embody the in-between. Through analyses of over 40 movies, and case studies of key films from the 1910s on, Mixed Race Cinemas illuminates landmark shifts in local and global cinema, exploring discourses of subjectivity, race, gender, sexuality and class. In doing so, it reveals the similarities and contrasts between American and French cinema in relation to recognising, visualising and constructing mixedness. Mixed Race Cinemas contextualizes and critiques raced and 'post-race' visual culture, using cinematic representations to illustrate changing definitions of mixed identity across different historical and geographical contexts.

Esfir Shub was the only prominent female director of nonfiction film present at the dawning of the Soviet film industry. She was, in fact, the first woman both to write critical texts on cinema and then practically apply these theorisations in her own films. As such, her syncretism of cinema theory and praxis inspired her to ask questions regarding both the nature of nonfiction film, such as the problem of authenticity and reality, and the function of the artist in society; issues which are still relevant in contemporary discussions about the documentary. Accordingly, this book demonstrates Shub's position not only as a significant filmmaker and recognised member of the early Soviet avant-garde but also as a key figure in global cinema history. Shub deserves recognition both as the founder and ardent promoter of the compilation film genre and as a pioneer of the theory and practice of documentary filmmaking.

This book offers a comprehensive film-by-film analysis of Spain's most famous living director, Pedro Almodovar. It shows how Almodovar's films draw on various national cinemas and genres, including Spanish cinema of the dictatorship, European art cinema, Hollywood melodrama and film noir. It also argues that Almodovar's work is a form of social critique, his films consistently engaging with and challenging stereotypes about traditional and contemporary Spain in order to address Spain's traumatic historical past and how it continues to inform the present. Drawing on scholarship in both English and Spanish, the book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of film studies and Hispanic studies, scholars of contemporary cinema and general readers with a passion for the films of Pedro Almodovar. -- .

An American in Paris (1951) was a landmark film in the careers of Vincente Minnelli, Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. A joyous celebration of George Gershwin's music, French art, the beauty of dance and the fabled City of Light, the film was heralded as a rare example of entertainment 'for mass and class alike'. Choreographed by Kelly at the height of his career, it gave new stature to the Hollywood musical, and showcased as never before the artistic ambition, technical skills, creative imagination and collaborative ethos of MGM's pioneering Arthur Freed Unit. Sue Harris draws on archival material to trace the film's development from conception to screen. Offering new insights into the design process in particular, she shows how An American in Paris established the cinematic template for a city with which Hollywood would become increasingly infatuated in the decades to follow.

Newly available in paperback, this study provides a scholarly yet accessible account of the work of Marcel Carne, one of the great directors of classical French cinema and the key figure behind the poetic realist film movement of the 1930s. His films, a number of which were made in collaboration with the poet-turned-scriptwriter Jacques Prevert, include such well-known works as Le quai des brumes, Le jour se leve and Les enfants du paradis. As the first book to be written on Carne for a number of years, it offers a fresh perspective on his cinema, particularly through a re-examination of his post-war work - although many of these films were very popular and offer a fascinating insight into France at the time, they have, until now, largely been neglected. Adopting a carefully crafted aesthetic, his films explore a tension between pessimism and entrapment on the one hand, and transcendence, idealised romantic love and a populist celebration of working-class life on the other. His career traversed key moments in French cinema, including poetic realism, the tradition of quality and the French New Wave, and spanned important historical moments such as the Popular Front of the 1930s, the Second World War and France's post-war modernisation. This book will be of interest to scholars, students and film-lovers alike. -- .

Available in paperback for the first time, this is a full-length study of the films of Francois Ozon, director of such diverse films as 8 femmes, Swimming Pool, 5x2 and Les amants criminels. Andrew Asibong's passionate and critical analysis focuses on the extent to which Ozon's seemingly light touch never ceases to engage with the fundamentally weighty issue of existential transformation, a transformation that affects both his protagonists and his audiences. A central question emerges: what is at stake, cinematically, ethically and politically, in Ozon's alternatively utopian and cynical flirtation with the construction and deconstruction of contemporary social relations. Revealing Ozon as a highly adept 'fan' of a whole range of thought, literature and cinema, Asibong places the precocious French auteur in an intellectual yet highly accessible critical framework, allowing Ozon's importance for a thoroughly postmodern filmgoing generation to be given the attention it deserves. -- .