While The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari became an international film classic, its director, Robert Wiene, was disparaged and even forgotten. Wiene's oeuvre, however, exhibits a a surprising versatility and quality, featuring Raskolnikov, an expressionist adaptation of Dostoevsky's novel, INRI, a monumental Bible epic, Orlac's Hands, a psychological thriller, and Der Rosenkavalier, an ambitious opera film. His last film, Ultimatum (1938), is a vehement warning of the approaching war, which remains relevant today. With painstaking research of the major European film archives, the author's detailed portrait reveals a career far more differentiated than hitherto acknowledged. Caligari though rated the second most important film in German film history in a recent critic's and scholar's poll -- was a landmark rather than a culmination in a career that successfully oscillated between artistic and commercial interests.

As the field of film studies rediscovers film history and the value of historical context for the analysis of individual films, monographs on filmmakers are increasingly valuable to scholars and students of both film history and cultural studies. Through the provocative and prolific career of Robert Wiene, a wider, more dynamic view of fantasy production in the Weimar Republic is revealed, enabling the reader to better appreciate the complex shapes of Weimar cinema, its inimitable blend of modernism and mass culture, of avant-garde enterprise, and generic production.

Tsui Hark, one of China's most famous film artists, is little known outside of Asia even though he has directed, produced, written, or acted in 64 films over the last twenty years, some of which are considered to be classics of modern Asian cinema. This work, the first of its kind about Tsui Hark, begins with a biography of the man and a look at his place in Hong Kong and world cinema, his influences, and his thematic obsessions. Each major film of his career is then reviewed, with thematic comparisons made among them (lesser films are included but receive smaller reviews). Also provided are production details, comments from Tsui Hark himself, box office and awards information, anecdotes, and various other particulars. Also included are a complete listings of Hong Kong locations where information on Tsui Hark can be found, and where his films can be found outside of Hong Kong.

Timothy Asch (1932-1994) was probably the greatest ethnographic filmmaker of the latter twentieth century, and one of the best-known anthropologists of his generation. He worked with Margaret Mead, John Marshall and Napoleon Chagnon, lived and filmed on every continent except Antarctica, and won numerous international prizes. His work, which includes 'The Ax Fight' and more than 50 other films of the Yanomamo Indians of Venezuela, comprises the most widely used resource in the teaching of anthropology today. Timothy Asch and Ethnographic Film combines a biographical overview of Asch's life with theoretical and critical perspectives, giving a definitive guide to his background, aims and ideas, methodology and major projects. Beautifully illustrated with 60 photos, and featuring articles from many of Asch's friends, colleagues and collaborators as well as an important interview with Asch himself, it is an ideal introduction to his work and to a range of key issues in ethnographic film."

Laleen Jayamanne examines the major works of leading Indian film director, Kumar Shahani, and explores the reaches of modernist film aesthetics in its international form. More than an auteur study, Jayamanne approaches Shahani's films conceptually, as those that reveal cinema's synaesthetic capabilities, or "cinaesthesia." As the author shows, Shahani's cinematic project entails a modern reformulation of the ancient oral tradition of epic narration and performance in order to address the contemporary world, establishing a new cinematic expression, "an epic idiom." As evidenced by his films, constructing cinematic history becomes more than an archival project of retrieval, and is instead a living history of the present which can intervene in the current moment through sensory experiences, propelling thought.

Abel Gance's silent masterpiece, Napoleon, was given a limited run on its debut in 1927, but soon afterwards distributors in France and America, unwilling to deal with its nine-hour running time, subjected it to savage cuts - with devastating results for the movie and for film history. The struggle across ensuing decades to restore and reintegrate Gance's film has formed a backdrop to an array of formal, contextual, and ideological battles. In this book, Paul Cuff takes account of those battles and challenges received opinion on Gance's view of both his film and its subject.

The films of Darren Aronofsky invite emotional engagement by means of affective resonance between the film and the spectator's lived body. Aronofsky's films, which include a rich range of production from Requiem for a Dream to Black Swan, are often considered "cerebral" because they explore topics like mathematics, madness, hallucinations, obsessions, social anxiety, addiction, psychosis, schizophrenia, and neuroscience. Yet this interest in intelligence and mental processes is deeply embedded in the operations of the body, shared with the spectator by means of a distinctively corporeal audiovisual style. Bodies in Pain looks at how Aronofsky's films engage the spectator in an affective form of viewing that involves all the senses, ultimately engendering a process of (self) reflection through their emotional dynamics.

The Films of Charles and Ray Eames traces the history of the Eameses work, examining their evolution away from the design of mass-produced goods and toward projects created as educational experiences. Closely examining how the Eameses described their work reveals how the films and exhibitions they generated were completely at odds with the earlier objectives exemplified in their furniture designs. Shifting away from promoting the consumer-culture, they turned their attention to the presentation of complex sets of scientific, artistic, and philosophical ideas.

During a critical period from the late 1950s to the early 1960s there was a moment of introspective self-reflection in the West stemming from the events of the Cold War. This moment of uncertainty was crucial, for it provided the incentive to question the values and concerns of society as a whole. In turn, designers began to question their own sense of purpose, temporarily expanding the purview of design to a broader field of inquiry. In the case of the Eameses, they identified an overriding problem related to consumerism and excess in America and sought to resolve the issue by creating a network of communication between universities, governments, institutions, and corporations. The solution of promoting greater education experiences as an alternative to consumerism in America required that different sectors of society functioned in unison to address political, social, economic, and educational concerns. "The Films of Charles and Ray Eames" reconsiders how design intersects with humanity, culture, and the sciences.

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Film Studies in China 2 is a collection of selected articles chosen from issues of the journal Contemporary Cinema published throughout the year and translated for an English-speaking audience. As one of the most prestigious academic film studies journals in China, Contemporary Cinema has been active not only in publishing Chinese scholarship for Chinese readers but also in reaching out to academics from across the globe. This anthology hopes to encourage a cross-cultural academic conversation on the fields of Chinese cinema and media studies. Following the successful release of the first volume this is the second collection to be released in the Film Studies in China series.

For Francois Truffaut, the lost secret of cinematic art is in the ability to generate emotion and reveal repressed fantasies through cinematic representation. Available in English for the first time, Anne Gillain's Francois Truffaut: The Lost Secret is considered by many to be the best book on the interpretation of Truffaut's films. Taking a psycho-biographical approach, Gillain shows how Truffaut's creative impulse was anchored in his personal experience of a traumatic childhood that left him lonely and emotionally deprived. In a series of brilliant, nuanced readings of each of his films, she demonstrates how involuntary memories arising from Truffaut's childhood not only furnish a succession of motifs that are repeated from film to film, but also govern every aspect of his mise en scene and cinematic technique."

Hal Ashby (1929-1988) is considered to be the lost genius of the New Hollywood generation. While his name does not bear the familiarity of, say, Robert Altman or Martin Scorsese, his diverse films are among the best known and most beloved of the era. From the cult classic "Harold and Maude" (1971) to the iconic political satire "Being There" (1979), from the subversive sex comedy "Shampoo" (1975) to the anti-Vietnam romance "Coming Home" (1979), Ashby rejected mainstream conventions while his films attracted both popular and critical praise.

A true actors' director, Ashby drew A-list stars and elicited powerful performances from Jack Nicholson in "The Last Detail" (1973), Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in "Shampoo," Jon Voight and Jane Fonda in "Coming Home," and Peter Sellers in "Being There."

"Hal Ashby: Interviews" for the first time brings together the best interviews conducted over the course of Ashby's career. Ashby discusses his filmmaking philosophy, memories of working his way up the Hollywood ladder in the 1950s, and his troubled productions in the 1980s.

The inimitable, haunting films of Alfred Hitchcock took place in settings, both exterior and interior, that deeply impacted our experiences of his most unforgettable works. From the enclosed spaces of Rope and Rear Window to the wide-open expanses of North by Northwest, the physical worlds inhabited by desperate characters are a crucial element in our perception of the Hitchcockian universe. As Christine Madrid French reveals in this original and indispensable book, Hitchcock's relation to the built world was informed by an intense engagement with location and architectural form-in an era marked by modernism's advance-fueled by some of the most creative midcentury designers in film. Hitchcock saw elements of the built world not just as scenic devices but as interactive areas to frame narrative exchanges. In his films, building forms also serve a sentient purpose-to capture and convey feelings, sensations, and moments that generate an emotive response from the viewer. Visualizing the contemporary built landscape allowed the director to illuminate Americans' everyday experiences as well as their own uncertain relationship with their environment and with each other. French shares several untold stories, such as the real-life suicide outside the Hotel Empire in Vertigo (which foreshadowed uncannily that film's tragic finale), and takes us to the actual buildings that served as the inspiration for Psycho's infamous Bates Motel. Her analysis of North by Northwest uncovers the Frank Lloyd Wright underpinnings for Robert Boyle's design of the modernist house from the film's celebrated Mount Rushmore sequence and ingeniously establishes the Vandamm House as the prototype of the cinematic trope of the villain's lair. She also shows how the widespread unemployment of the 1930s resulted in a surge of gifted architects transplanting their careers into the film industry. These practitioners created sets that drew from contemporary design schools of thought and referenced real structures, both modern and historic. The Architecture of Suspense is the first book to document how these great architectural minds found expression in Hitchcock's films and how the director used their talents and his own unique vision to create an enduring and evocative cinematic world.

A leading film theorist and a filmmaker discuss the lasting contributions of the most prominent living filmmaker, Jean Luc-Godard Probably the most prominent living filmmaker, and one of the foremost directors of the postwar era, Jean Luc-Godard has received astonishingly little critical attention in the United States. With Speaking about Godard, leading film theorist Kaja Silverman and filmmaker Harun Farocki have made one of the most significant contributions to film studies in recent memory: a lively set of conversations about Godard and his major films, from Contempt to Passion. Combining the insights of a feminist film theorist with those of an avant-garde filmmaker, these eight dialogues-each representing a different period of Godard's film production, and together spanning his entire career-get at the very heart of his formal and theoretical innovations, teasing out, with probity and grace, the ways in which image and text inform one another throughout Godard's oeuvre. Indeed, the dialogic format here serves as the perfect means of capturing the rhythm of Godard's ongoing conversation with his own medium, in addition to shedding light on how a critic and a director of films respectively interpret his work. As it takes us through Godard's films in real time, Speaking about Godard conveys the sense that we are at the movies with Silverman and Farocki, and that we, as both student and participant, are the ultimate beneficiaries of the performance of this critique. Accessible, informative, witty, and, most of all, entertaining, the conversations assembled here form a testament to the continuing power of Godard's work to spark intense debate, and reinvigorate the study of one of the great artists of our time.

Fleeing a Hollywood that spurned him, Orson Welles arrived in Italy in 1947 to begin his career anew. Far from being welcomed as the celebrity who directed and starred in Citizen Kane, his six-year exile in Italy was riddled with controversy, financial struggles, disastrous love affairs, and failed projects. Alberto Anile's book depicts the artist's life and work in Italy, including his reception by the Italian press, his contentious interactions with key political figures, and his artistic output, which culminated in the filming of Othello. Drawing on revelatory new material on the artist's personal and professional life abroad, Orson Welles in Italy also chronicles Italian cinema's transition from the social concerns of neorealism to the alienated characters in films such as Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, amid the cultural politics of postwar Europe and the beginnings of the cold war.

Based on more than a half dozen interviews with the director himself, this unauthorized biography recounts Spielberg's childhood, education, career, philanthropic and charitable endeavors, and his extremely private personal life. This updated edition explores Spielberg's latest filmmaking efforts, from Schindler's List to Men in Black 2.

In Eisenstein Rediscovered Ian Christie and Richard Taylor present the first true East-West symposium on Eisenstein with an unparalleled diversity of views and methodologies. Two newly discovered texts by Eisenstein are here translated fro the first time, and all the contributors make extensive use of material only recently available - variant scripts, drawings, diaries and other writings - to probe behind the familiar facade. The `new' Eisenstein that emerges is in all respects a more engaging and contemporary figure than is traditionally perceived, his wit, eroticism and exlectic passions defining a distinctively modern sensibility whose rediscovey is long overdue.

Jean Vigo is one of the legendary figures of world cinema, whose films L'Atalante and Zero de conduite still inspire young audiences today. Film historian Michael Temple explores Vigo's intense career and asks why it has had such a long-lasting impact on film culture, not just in France, but also for generations of filmmakers, critics and moviegoers around the world. Each film is examined under four headings: - social and political context - the making of the film, from conception to release - detailed analysis of narrative structure, main stylistic features and dominant themes - the reception of the film and its critical reputation Accessibly written, this will be essential reading for students, teachers, film enthusiasts and researchers, indeed for anyone who is interested in the cinema as a living art form. -- .

In the early 1900s, so-called race filmmakers set out to produce black-oriented pictures to counteract the racist caricatures that had dominated cinema from its inception. Richard E. Norman, a southern-born white filmmaker, was one such pioneer. From humble beginnings as a roving "home talent" filmmaker, recreating photoplays that starred local citizens, Norman would go on to produce high-quality feature-length race pictures. Together with his better-known contemporaries Oscar Micheaux and Noble and George Johnson, Richard E. Norman helped to define early race filmmaking. Making use of unique archival resources, including Norman's personal and professional correspondence, detailed distribution records, and newly discovered original shooting scripts, this book offers a vibrant portrait of race in early cinema.

Years after his death, American filmmaker John Huston (1906-1987) remains an enigmatic and compelling figure. This wide-ranging collection of new essays encompasses a variety of topics relating to Huston's lifestyle, political activities and cinematic legacy. Fresh analyses of such films as Key Largo, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen, The Misfits and Prizzi's Honor are included along with insightful studies of Huston's oft-overlooked literary adaptations In This Our Life, Moby Dick and A Walk With Love and Death. Also evaluated are Huston's controversial World War II documentary Let There Be Light, and two a clef portraits of the ""real"" Huston in the films The Way We Were and White Hunter, Black Heart. Bookending these essays are revealing interviews with John's actress daughter Angelica Huston and film producer Wieland Schultz-Keil.

With a career spanning four decades, Wes Craven (1939-2015) bridged independent exploitation cinema and Hollywood big-budget horror. A pioneer of the modern horror cinema, Craven directed such landmark films as The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream-considered not only classics of the genre, but examples of masterful filmmaking. Producing an impressive oeuvre that mixed intellectual concerns and political ideas, Craven utilized high-tension suspense, devastating visual brutality, and dark humor to evoke a unique brand of fear. Moreover, his films draw attention to the horror of American society-Namely racism, classism, and the traumas often associated with family. This collection of twenty-nine interviews-spanning from 1980 until his final interview in 2015-traces Craven's life and career, from his upbringing in a strict religious family and his life as an academic to his years toiling in exploitation cinema. The volume also chronicles Craven's ascendancy as an independent director, his work within the studio system, and his eventual triumph in mainstream cinema. Within the interviews gathered here, including three previously unpublished pieces, Craven reflects on failed projects and the challenges of working with studios while offering thoughtful meditations on the dynamics and appeal of horror. Wes Craven: Interviews cements Craven's legacy as a master of horror who left an indelible mark on the genre by forever altering expectations of-and approaches to-the cinema of fear.

Since the cinema first began to be taken seriously as an art form, there has been a constant debate on the question: who is the real creator of the film, the writer or the director? This study of a group of key film-makers in the sixties suggests that during this decade there was an emergence of a generation of film-makers who conceived a whole film in their minds just as an architect conceives a whole cathedral or a composer a whole symphony. The book presents detailed critical studies of the work of six commanding figures in the international cinema: four who have made their major reputations since 1950, the Italians Frederico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, the Frenchman Robert Bresson and the Swede Ingmar Bergman; and two film-makers of an older generation, the Spaniard Luis Bunuel and the Anglo-American Alfred Hitchcock, who have reached the height of their powers and exerted their most important influence on the cinema during the same period. There is also a section on the new talents to emerge more recently in the French 'New Wave', in particular Francois Truffaut, Jen-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais. In addition, the book contains detailed filmographies of the directors discussed.

From his early horror movies, including Scanners, Videodrome, Rabid, and The Fly-with their exploding heads, mutating sex organs, rampaging parasites, and scientists turning into insects-to his inventive adaptations of books by William Burroughs (Naked Lunch), Don DeLillo (Cosmopolis), and Bruce Wagner (Maps to the Stars), Canadian director David Cronenberg (b. 1943) has consistently dramatized the struggle between the aspirations of the mind and the messy realities of the flesh. ""I think of human beings as a strange mixture of the physical and the non-physical, and both of these things have their say at every moment we're alive,"" says Cronenberg. ""My films are some kind of strange metaphysical passion play."" Moving deftly between genre and arthouse filmmaking and between original screenplays and literary adaptations, Cronenberg's work is thematically consistent and marked by a rigorous intelligence, a keen sense of humor, and a fearless engagement with the nature of human existence. He has been exploring the most primal themes since the beginning of his career and continues to probe them with growing maturity and depth. Cronenberg's work has drawn the interest of some of the most intelligent contemporary film critics, and the fifteen interviews in this volume feature remarkably in-depth and insightful conversations with such acclaimed writers as Amy Taubin, Gary Indiana, David Breskin, Dennis Lim, Richard Porton, Gavin Smith, and more. The pieces herein reveal Cronenberg to be one of the most articulate and deeply philosophical directors now working, and they comprise an essential companion to an endlessly provocative and thoughtful body of work.

Mike Leigh may well be Britain's greatest living film director; his worldview has permeated our national consciousness. This book gives detailed readings of the nine feature films he has made for the cinema, as well as an overview of his work for television. Written with the co-operation of Leigh himself, this is the first study of his work to challenge the critical privileging of realism in histories of the British cinema, placing the emphasis instead on the importance of comedy and humour: of jokes and their functions, of laughter as a survival mechanism, and of characterisations and situations that disrupt our preconceptions of 'realism'. Striving for the all-important quality of truth in everything he does, Leigh has consistently shown how ordinary lives are too complex to fit snugly into the conventions of narrative art. From the bittersweet observation of Life is Sweet or Secrets and Lies, to the blistering satire of Naked and the manifest compassion of Vera Drake, he has demonstrated a matchless ability to perceive life's funny side as well as its tragedies. -- .

A key figure in early avant-garde cinema, Walter Ruttmann was a pioneer of experimental animation and the creative force behind one of the silent era's most celebrated montage films, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. Yet even as he was making experimental films, Ruttmann had a day job. He worked regularly in advertising -and he would go on to make industrial films, medical films, and even Nazi propaganda films. Michael Cowan offers here the first study of Ruttmann in English, not only shedding light on his commercial, industrial, and propaganda work, but also rethinking his significance in light of recent transformations in film studies. Cowan brilliantly teases out the linkages between the avant-garde and industrial society in the early twentieth century, showing how Ruttmann's films incorporated and enacted strategies for managing the multiplicities of mass society. This book has won the Willy Haas Award 2014 for its outstanding contribution to the study of German cinema.

The 34 essays of this collection by leading international scholars reassess Truffaut's impact on cinema as they locate the unique quality of his thematic obsessions and his remarkable narrative techniques. Almost 30 years after his death, we are presented with strikingly original perspectives on his background, influences, and importance.Bridges a gap in film scholarship with a series of 34 original essays by leading film scholars that assess the lasting impact of Truffaut s work * Provides striking new readings of individual films, and new perspectives on Truffaut s background, influences, and importance * Offers a wide choice of critical perspectives ranging from current reflections in film theories to articles applying methodologies that have recently been neglected or considered controversial * Includes international viewpoints from a range of European countries, and from Japan, New Zealand, and Brazil * Draws on Truffaut s archives at the BiFI (Bibliotheque du film) in Paris * Includes an extended interview with French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin concerning Truffaut s shifting stature in French film culture and his manner of thought and work as a director

Few mainstream filmmakers have as pronounced a disregard for the supposed rules of filmmaking as Martin Scorsese. His inventiveness displays a reaction against the "right" way to make a movie, frequently eschewing traditional cinematic language in favor of something flashy, unexpected and contrary to the way "proper" films are done. Yet despite this, he's become one of the most influential directors of the last fifty years, a critical darling (though rarely a box office titan), and a fan favorite. On the surface, Scorsese's work is defined by shocking violence and rampant profanity. These are often loud, brash films that appear to glorify the worst kinds of people. He makes heroes of mobsters, thugs, con men, and murderers. Yet dig deeper and you find the true beating heart of his oeuvre: guilt, collapse, self-destruction, spiritual turmoil, and the complicated hypocrisies of faith, among other themes that are a constant in his work. In this book, San Juan guides readers through the crooks, the mobsters, the loners, the moguls, and the nobodies of Scorsese's 26-movie filmography. The Films of Martin Scorsese examines the techniques that have made him one of the most innovative directors in history: needle-drop soundtracks, outbursts of violence, daring camera work, and more. The book further looks at the themes that are the engine driving all of this, including themes of self-sabotage, alienation, faith, and guilt. What is Martin Scorsese trying to tell us through his work? Can we learn something about the human conditions via works like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, and The Irishman? With that goal in mind, between these covers you'll find fodder for discussion, dissection, and debate, all of it driven by insightful-yet-approachable analysis of Martin Scorsese's entire filmography, from 1967s Who's That Knocking At My Door? to 2019's The Irishman, as well as carefully chosen excerpts from five decades worth of Martin Scorsese interviews and rare behind-the-scenes photos.