For nearly 40 years, David Lynch's works have enthralled, mystified, and provoked viewers. Lynch's films delve into the subjective consciousness of his characters to reveal both the depraved darkness and luminous spirituality of human nature. From his experimental shorts of the 1960s to feature films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and INLAND EMPIRE, Lynch has pushed the boundaries of cinematic storytelling. In David Lynch: Beautiful Dark, author Greg Olson explores the surreal intricacies of the director's unique visual and visceral style not only in his full-length films but also his early forays into painting and short films, as well as his television landmark, Twin Peaks. This in-depth exploration is the first full-length work to analyze the intimate symbiosis between Lynch's life experience and artistic expressions: from the small-town child to the teenage painter to the 60-year-old Internet and digital media experimenter. To fully delineate the director's life and art, Olson received unprecedented participation from Lynch, his parents, siblings, old school friends, romantic partners, children, and decades of professional colleagues, as well as on-set access to the director during the production of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Throughout this study, Olson provides thorough analyses of the filmmaker's works as Lynch conceived, crafted, and completed them. Consequently, David Lynch: Beautiful Dark is the definitive study of one of the most influential and idiosyncratic directors of the last four decades.

Transmedia Directors focuses on artist-practitioners who work across media, platforms and disciplines, including film, television, music video, commercials and the internet. Working in the age of media convergence, today's em/impresarios project a distinctive style that points toward a new contemporary aesthetics. The media they engage with enrich their practices - through film and television (with its potential for world-building and sense of the past and future), music video (with its audiovisual aesthetics and rhythm), commercials (with their ability to project a message quickly) and the internet (with its refreshed concepts of audience and participation), to larger forms like restaurants and amusement parks (with their materiality alongside today's digital aesthetics). These directors encourage us to reassess concepts of authorship, assemblage, transmedia, audiovisual aesthetics and world-building. Providing a vital resource for scholars and practitioners, this collection weaves together insights about artist-practitioners' collaborative processes as well as strategies for composition, representation, subversion and resistance.

Offers alternative insights into the complex relationship between politics and intelligentsia in revolutionary Cuba. This work offers an alternative insight into the longstanding and conflicting relationship between politics and the (gay) intelligentsia in Cuba by looking closely at political texts, film, documentaries and literature from priorto Fidel Castro's regime until the present day. The book offers new readings of the work, letters and interviews of two influential voices, Reinaldo Arenas and Tomas Gutierrez Alea. Arenas's material reveals a new account of the nature of 'the voice of the invisibles' and the key elements of the construction of a Cuban national rhetoric that looks at (governmental) power and (gay) resistance as being in perpetual tension, which often increases the feelingof moral panic and even social exclusion and displacement among citizens. The book also offers a new interpretation of Gutierrez Alea's renowned film Fresa y Chocolate (1994), resulting from the use of unpublished and revealing testimonies of the Cuban dance critic and writer Roger Salas and the secret messages inferred in his short story 'Helados de pasion: El cordero, la lluvia y el hombre desnudo' (1998). Dr MARIA E. LOPEZ is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Sociology at London Metropolitan University and an Associate Fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of London.

In John Dahl and Neo-Noir: Examining Auteurism and Genre, Paul Monaco provides a focused inquiry into the first three feature films that director John Dahl made for theatrical release: Kill Me Again (1989), Red Rock West (1993), and The Last Seduction (1994). Subsequent to their releases, these three films became identified in academic film criticism as neo-noir, and Dahl was labeled a "noir-meister" who made "a cottage industry of neo-noir." The importance of these three films, and Monaco's investigation of them, is how they illuminate a modern director's creative process in relation to an emerging genre. Dahl is rightly recognized for his directorial vision and his creative style. His approach to film direction, and his distinctiveness of vision, is thoroughly explored in the book. Using interviews with the professionals with whom Dahl has worked closely, Monaco also explores basic notions about auteurism and how genre is defined. Considering Dahl's extensive directing for television alongside his first three films, John Dahl and Neo-Noir ultimately demonstrates how this groundbreaking director is a prime example of a modern "director for hire."

Neil Hurley demonstrates Hitchcock's covert preoccupation with spiritual themes conscience, guilt, false accusation, crises as catalysts of character development, personal romance, the salvation of nations, and the "unjustly accused." This last theme is linked in profound ways to Hitchcock's secular Christ types, who find purpose and undiscovered courage and companionship in having to disprove falsely imputed guilt in I Confess, The Wrong Man, Veritgo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, and Frenzy. (The last three also feature feminine Christ parallels who undergo Passion/Resurrection experiences marked with visual religious clues.)

This collection convenes diverse analyses of David Lynch's newly conceived, dreamlike neo-noir representations of the American West, a first in studies of regionalism and indigeneity in his films. Twelve essays and three interviews address Lynch's image of the American West and its impact on the genre. Fans and scholars of David Lynch's work will find a study of his interpretations of the West as place and myth, spanning from his first feature film, Eraserhead (1977), through the third season of Twin Peaks in 2017. Symbols of the West in Lynch's work can be as obvious as an Odessa, Texas street sign or as subtle as the visual themes rooted in indigenous artistry. Explorations of cowboy masculinity, violence, modern frontier narratives and representations of indigeneity are all included in this collection.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was British-born Alfred Hitchcock's sixth American film and the one that he at various times identified as his favourite and his best. It seems likely that one of the reasons he liked Shadow so much is that is an extraordinarily well-ordered narrative system, a meticulous cause and effect chain that melds its various scenes and sequences together to form a unified narrative that is highly effective in building suspense and cultivating identification with characters. This scrupulously organized film operates as a masterclass on principles of narrative design while generating resonant commentary on the nature of family life. This book redresses the deficit of sustained critical attention paid to Shadow even in the large corpus of Hitchcock scholarship. Analysing the film's narrative system, issues of genre, authorship, social history, homesickness and 'family values', Diane Negra shows how the film's impeccable narrative structure is wedded to radical ideological content, linking the film's terrors to the punishing effects of looking beyond conventional family and gender roles. This book understands Shadow as an unconventionally female-centred Hitchcock text and a milestone film that marks the director's emergent engagement with the pathologies of violence in American life and opens a window into the placement of femininity in World War II consensus culture and more broadly into the politics of mid-century gender and family life.

In a burst of creativity unmatched in Hollywood history, Preston Sturges directed a string of all-time classic comedies from 1939 through 1948-The Great McGinty, The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek among them-all from screenplays he alone had written. Cynical and sophisticated, romantic and sexually frank, crazily breakneck and endlessly witty, his movies continue to influence filmmakers and remain popular to this day. Yet despite this acclaim, Sturges's achievements remain underappreciated: he is too often categorized as a dialogue writer and plot engineer more than a director, or belittled as an irresponsible spinner of laughs. In Crooked, but Never Common, Stuart Klawans combines a critic's insight and a fan's enthusiasm to offer deeper ways to think about and enjoy Sturges's work. He provides an in-depth appreciation of all ten of the writer-director's major movies, presenting Sturges as a filmmaker whose work balanced slapstick and social critique, American and European traditions, and cynicism and affection for his characters. Tugging at loose threads-discontinuities, puzzles, and allusions that have dangled in plain sight-and putting the films into a broader cultural context, Klawans reveals structures, motives, and meanings underlying the uproarious pleasures of Sturges's movies. In this new light, Sturges emerges at last as one of the truly great filmmakers-and funnier than ever.

"Eye-opening and addictively readable." Total Film Who and what decides if a film gets funded? How do those who control the purse strings also determine a film's content and even its message? Writing as the director of award-winning feature films including Welcome to Sarajevo, 24 Hour Party People and The Road to Guantanamo as well as the hugely popular The Trip series, Michael Winterbottom provides an insider's view of the workings of international film funding and distribution, revealing how the studios that fund film production and control distribution networks also work against a sustainable independent film culture and limit innovation in filmmaking style and content. In addition to reflecting upon his own filmmaking career, featuring critical and commercial successes alongside a 'very long list' of films that didn't get made, Winterbottom also interviews leading contemporary filmmakers including Lynne Ramsay, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Asif Kapadia and Joanna Hogg about their filmmaking practice. The book closes with a vision of how the contemporary filmmaking landscape could be reformed for the better with fairer funding and payment practices allowing for a more innovative and sustainable 21st century industry.

The name of Mohsen Makhmalbaf is almost synonymous with the dramatic rise of Iranian cinema in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, and over the last quarter of a century, his career as filmmaker and writer has reflected the tumultuous history of his homeland and the fate of its neighbours. Hamid Dabashi draws from his friendship with Makhmalbaf, as well as his direct involvement with Makhmalbaf's films and thought, to give us this deeply engaging book on the tumultuous life and spectacular career of a great filmmaker. This is also the account of Makhmalbaf's transformation, from committed Muslim revolutionary, who was jailed for his part in the revolution, into an artistic humanist of great energy and elegance. His films, including "The Peddler" and "The Time for Love", "Salaam Cinema", "Gabbeh", "Silence" and "Kandahar", confound conventional genres and are always surprising. They represent his own journey and take part in it, in ways that Dabashi explores with great insight. Makhmalbaf's cinematic career started in Iran and has since expanded into Turkey, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and into Europe. Dabashi uncovers how, moving across boundaries, Makhmalbaf's creative genius can illuminate our contemporary world. And this book is in part the story of a friendship. As Mohsen Makhmalbaf writes in its Preface: 'Hamid Dabashi - this pious atheist friend of mine, the man who loves cinema and hates art, this political activist who abhors politics, this thinking, pondering, critical intellect...I have learned much from him. Perhaps he too, has learned from me. The times he and I have spent together have been occasions of discovery and illumination.'

The screenplays and films of Quentin Tarantino raise profound comic and ethical dilemmas. Developing ideas from Lacanian psychoanalysis, Botting and Wilson explore ethical issues in relation to Tarantino's work, postmodernity and recent cultural theory. They argue that Tarantino's texts provide a provocative and telling contribution to theorized accounts of contemporary culture.

The term `Tarantinian' has been coined to refer to a set of sampled, self-authorizing signs that are cinematically assembled in processes of `consuming-producing-expending' in the general context of a postmodern capitalism that enjoins excess. The Tarantinian ethics are elaborated, in the midst of a homogenized fast-food, movie and video culture, in relation to heterogeneous events of violence, horror and laughter.

Witty and incisive, the book illuminates and interrogates contemporary structures of identity, desire and consumption. It will be of great interest to students of cultural studies, social theory and communication.

Becoming a TV director is nothing like other professions. There is no road map. Traditionally, the only way to break in was through access to a powerful mentor to show you the way ... until now! This book of interviews with working TV directors provides 16 mentors who show you exactly how they did it. No two stories are exactly alike. These deeply personal interviews are honest and insightful in-depth portraits of a diverse range of successful women and men. For the first time in the 100-plus year history of the entertainment industry there are increasing opportunities to rise into the director's chair. This book reflects the hope and promise of a new era. Half of the directors interviewed are women, and half men. Together they represent a broadly diverse group. Open the cover and discover the mentor you deserve.

Widely recognized in his character of the Tramp, Charlie Chaplin transcended the role of actor to become screenwriter, director, composer, producer, and finally studio head. The subject of numerous biographical studies, Chaplin has been examined as both myth and man, but these treatments fail to adequately address the often-overlooked complexity of his filmmaking. Refocusing Chaplin: A Screen Icon through Critical Lenses features essays that examine the actor and director through various theoretical perspectives-including Marxism, feminism, gender studies, deconstruction, psychoanalytic criticism, new historicism, performance studies, and cultural criticism. Complementing this range of intellectual inquiry is the wide reach of films discussed, from The Circus (1928), The Gold Rush (1925), and City Lights (1931) to Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940), Monsieur Verdoux (1947), and Limelight (1952). Shorter films, such as "The Pawnshop" (1916), "The Rink" (1916), and "A Dog's Life" (1918) are also examined. These essays analyze the tensions between the carefully constructed worlds of Chaplin's films and their cultural contexts. The varied approaches and range of materials in this volume not only comprehensively assess the screen icon but also foster a conversation that exemplifies the best of intellectual exchange. Refocusing Chaplin provides a unique view into the work of one of cinema's most important and influential artists.

John Ford is a monumental figure in Hollywood and world cinema. Throughout his long and varied career spanning the silent and sound era, he produced nearly 150 films of which Iron Horse (1924), Stagecoach (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) are classics of cinema. Ford was also an influential figure in developing, and extending Hollywood's traditions. Stylistically Ford was instrumental in developing new camera techniques, atmospheric lighting and diverse narrative devices. Thematically, long before it became conventional wisdom, Ford was exploring issues that concern us today, such as gender, race, the treatment of ethnic minorities and social outcasts, the nature of history and the relationship of myth and reality. For all these reasons, John Ford the man and his films reward thought and study, both for the general reader and the academic student. Ford's pictures express the world in which they were made, and have contributed to making what Hollywood is today. This book illustrates the excitement, importance, influence, creativity, deviousness and complexity of the man and his films.

With a sharp eye for social detail and the pressures of class inequality, Alfred Hitchcock brought to the American scene a perspicacity and analytical shrewdness unparalleled in American cinema. Murray Pomerance works from a basis in cultural analysis and a detailed knowledge of Alfred Hitchcock's films and production techniques to explore how America of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s is revealed and critically commented upon in Hitchcock's work. Alfred Hitchcock's America is full of stunning details that bring new light to Hitchcock's method and works. The American "spirit of place," is seen here in light of the titanic American personality, American values in a consumer age, social class and American social form, and the characteristic American marriage. The book s analysis ranges across a wide array of films from Rebecca to Family Plot, and examines in depth the location sequences, characterological types, and complex social expectations that riddled American society while Hitchcock thrived there.

Producer, distributor, and director Doris Wishman (1912-2002) was a pioneering woman in the film industry, leaving a body of work almost 30 films strong. Largely overlooked by critical and cultural analysis, Wishman worked in the normatively neglected film genre of sexploitation and adult film, but works like Hideout in the Sun (1960), Bad Girls Go To Hell (1965), Double Agent 73 (1974) and Each Time I Kill (2007) demonstrate an interest in complicated, ideological and often troubling social performances of the contemporary human condition. ReFocus: The Films of Doris Wishman positions Wishman as a significant and overlooked force in American independent film, with an impact on how we currently understand the categories of cult, exploitation, horror, experimental and avant-garde cinema.

Nicholas Haeffner provides a comprehensive introduction to Alfred Hitchcock's major British and Hollywood films and usefully navigates the reader through a wealth of critical commentaries. One of the acknowledged giants of film, Hitchcock's prolific half-century career spanned the silent and sound eras and resulted in 53 films of which Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960) are now seen as classics within the suspense, melodrama and horror genres. In contrast to previous works, which have attempted to get inside Hitchcock's mind and psychoanalyse his films, this book takes a more materialist stance. As Haeffner makes clear, Hitchcock was simultaneously a professional film maker working as part of a team in the film factories of Hollywood, a media celebrity, and an aspiring artist gifted with considerable entrepreneurial flair for marketing himself and his films. The book makes a case for locating the director's remarkable body of work within traditions of highbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow culture, appealing to different audience constituencies in a calculated strategy. The book upholds the case for taking Hitchcock's work seriously and challenges his popular reputation as a misogynist through detailed analyses of his most controversial films.

Before becoming one of the most successful filmmakers in Hollywood, Judd Apatow was the original comedy nerd. At fifteen, he took a job washing dishes in a local comedy club-just so he could watch endless stand-up for free. At sixteen, he was hosting a show for his local high school radio station in Syosset, Long Island-a show that consisted of Q&As with his comedy heroes, from Garry Shandling to Jerry Seinfeld. Thirty years later, Apatow is still that same comedy nerd-and he's still interviewing funny people about why they do what they do. Sick in the Head gathers Apatow's most memorable and revealing conversations into one hilarious, wide-ranging and incredibly candid collection. Here are the comedy legends who inspired and shaped him, the contemporaries he grew up with in Hollywood, and the brightest stars in comedy today, from Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Martin to Chris Rock, Seth Rogen and Lena Dunham. Sick in the Head is Apatow's gift to comedy nerds everywhere.

Originally published in 1990, this book brought a new rigor and subtlety to the interpretation of film adaptations of Shakespeare. Drawing on traditional literary analysis, psychoanalysis, and current film theory about gender and subjectivity, the author combines close readings of seven films with historical and biographical studies of the directors who made them. Offering substantial readings of Jean-Luc Godard's controversial deconstructed King Lear and of Liz White's independent African-American Othello, Donaldson also applies his provocative and contemporary point of view to more familiar films. He reads Olivier's Henry V in relation to its treatment of sexual difference; Olivier's Hamlet in part as an expression of the director's childhood sexual trauma; Kurosawa's Throne of Blood as an allegory of the relationship between Western and Japanese cinema; and Zeffirelli's immensely popular Romeo and Juliet in the light of its powerful homoerotic subtext. With striking perspectives on Shakespeare, on the movies as an expressive medium, and on the complex processes of cultural change, this is timeless useful reading for teachers and students of film and literature.

The behind-the-scenes story of the making of The Godfather, fifty years after the classic film's original release. The story of how The Godfather was made is as dramatic, operatic, and entertaining as the film itself. Over the years, many versions of various aspects of the movie's fiery creation have been told-sometimes conflicting, but always compelling. Mark Seal sifts through the evidence, has extensive new conversations with director Francis Ford Coppola and several heretofore silent sources, and complements them with colorful interviews with key players including actors Al Pacino, James Caan, Talia Shire, and others for irresistible insights into how the movie whose success some initially doubted roared to glory. On top of the usual complications of filmmaking, the creators of The Godfather had to contend with the real-life members of its subject matter: the Mob. During production of the movie, location permits were inexplicably revoked, author Mario Puzo got into a public brawl with an irate Frank Sinatra, producer Al Ruddy's car was found riddled with bullets, men with "connections" vied to be in the cast, and some were given film roles. As Seal notes, this is the tale of "a classic movie that revolutionized filmmaking, saved Paramount Pictures, minted a new generation of movie stars, made its struggling author Mario Puzo rich and famous, and sparked a war between two of the mightiest powers in America: the sharks of Hollywood and the highest echelons of the Mob." Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli is the lively and complete story of how a masterpiece was made, perfect for anyone who loves the movies.

First published in 1975, this book examines the career of one of the leading post-war Czech filmmakers Milos Forman through his own testimony. After recollecting his childhood and early artistic ventures, Forman gives accounts of the making of his major films, interspersed with contemporaneous reviews by the author, and in the final chapter he sums up his 'lessons along the way'. A section entitled 'Stories behind the Stories' fills in details on the events and people mentioned in Forman's narrative. The author's commentary provides valuable insights not only into the aesthetics of filmmaking but also the social and political environment in contemporary Czechoslovakia.

Including never-before-seen photographs and ephemera, a behind-the-scenes look into The Beatles' acclaimed first film.

In March of 1964, director Richard Lester began shooting A Hard Day's Night, a feature film starring The Beatles. With fast, sharp humour and a brilliant soundtrack, the movie depicts the excitement and chaos of thirty-six hours in the life of the Fab Four, and stars John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, with Wilfrid Brambell portraying McCartney's grandfather.

This collection of photographs and unique ephemera captures the infectious energy and anarchic spirit of this groundbreaking film.