"The Cinema of Nanni Moretti" provides an analysis and interpretation of the work of the most important Italian film-maker of the past thirty years and an outstanding figure in contemporary European cinema. Interdisciplinary and wide-ranging, the book uses Moretti's films as a lens to view and discuss contemporary phenomena such as the crisis of masculinity and authority, the crisis of the political Left and the transformation of the citizen's relationship to the State. Films discussed include "Aprile, Dear Diary" and "The Son's Room," winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2001.

ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze is the first collection of essays on this important and original contemporary filmmaker. It looks at his ground-breaking work in both features and short forms, exploring the impact of his filmmaking across a range of philosophical and cultural discussions. Each of Jonze's feature films, from Being John Malkovich (1999) to Her (2013), is discussed at length, focusing on issues of authorship, narration, genre and adaptation. As well as the textual aspects of Jonze's feature films, the contributors consider his work in music videos and shorts - investigating his position as a filmmaker on the blurred boundaries between studio and independent modes of production.

Spanning from obscurity to notoriety, the films of director, screenwriter, actor and comic Elaine May have recently experienced a long-overdue renaissance. Although she made only four films -- A New Leaf (1971), The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Mikey and Nicky (1976) and Ishtar (1987) -- and never reached the level of acclaim of her frequent collaborator Mike Nichols, May's work is as enigmatic, sophisticated and unceasingly fascinating as her own complicated, reluctant star persona. This collection focuses both on the films she has directed, and also emphasises her work with other high profile collaborators such as John Cassavetes, Warren Beatty and Otto Preminger.

Since the late 1950s Stan Brakhage has been in the forefront of independent filmmaking. His body of work -- some seventy hours -- is one of the largest of any filmmaker in the history of cinema, and one of the most diverse. Probably the most widely quoted experimental filmmaker in history, his films typify the independent cinema.

Until now, despite well-deserved acclaim, there has been no comprehensive study of Brakhage's oeuvre. "The Films of Stan Brakhage in the American Tradition" fills this void. R. Bruce Elder delineates the aesthetic parallels between Brakhage's films and a broad spectrum of American art from the 1920s through the 1960s.

This book is certain to stir the passions of those interested in artistic critique and interpretation in its broadest terms.

Krzystof Kieslowski's untimely death in 1996 robbed cinema of one of its great visionaries. Decalogue, The Double Life of Veronique, and the Three Colours trilogy earned Kieslowski his reputation as a world-class filmmaker. He was notoriously reticent, and even dismissive of his work and talent, but the frank and detailed discussions collected herein show a passion for filmmaking that animated a life disrupted by Hilter, by Stalin, and by the legacy these figures left in Eastern Europe. Indeed, his struggle to work as a filmmaker mirrors the struggle of Poland to reassert its identity. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall collapsed and Eastern European states overthrew the oppressive Soviet burden, the director's orientation gravitated towards France. Moving between Poland and France, Kieslowski created some of the most important cinematic works of the 1990s.

From A New Hope to The Rise of Skywalker and beyond, this book offers the first complete assessment and philosophical exploration of the Star Wars universe. Lucasfilm examines the ways in which these iconic films were shaped by global cultural mythologies and world cinema, as well as philosophical ideas from the fields of aesthetics and political theory, and now serve as a platform for public philosophy. Cyrus R. K. Patell also looks at how this ever-expanding universe of cultural products and enterprises became a global brand and asks: can a corporate entity be considered a "filmmaker and philosopher"? More than any other film franchise, Lucasfilm's Star Wars has become part of the global cultural imagination. The new generation of Lucasfilm artists is full of passionate fans of the Star Wars universe, who have now been given the chance to build on George Lucas's oeuvre. Within these pages, Patell explores what it means for films and their creators to become part of cultural history in this unprecedented way.

In his films Guy Debord (1931-1994) worked according to the following principle: do nothing you should, do everything you should not. Created between 1952 and 1978, all the films reflect this rule and confirm what he referred to as his "detestable ambition." Gathered in a single volume for the first time in German, this publication unites the texts of all of Guy Debord's films in a new translation: from his first film made in affiliation with the Lettrist group led by Isidore Isou, Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1952), an alteration of black and white sequences devoid of images; to works that originated in the course of his participation in the Situationist International, Sur le passage de quelques personnes a travers une assez courte unite de temps (1959) and Critique de la separation (1961); to the adaptation of his best known theoretical work, La Societe du spectacle (1973), followed by the response to his critics entitled Refutation de tous les jugements, tant elogieux qu'hostiles, qui ont ete jusqu'ici portes sur le film "La Societe du spectacle" (1975) and his resume, intended as an act of closure: In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978). Texts and images are true to the French original edition and complemented by a list of sources for the quotes, Debord's notes on his films, drafts of unrealized film projects, as well as the text of the TV documentary he coauthored, Guy Debord, son art et son temps (1994).

William Greaves is one of the most significant and compelling American filmmakers of the past century. Best known for his experimental film about its own making, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, Greaves was an influential independent documentary filmmaker who produced, directed, shot, and edited more than a hundred films on a variety of social issues and on key African American figures ranging from Muhammad Ali to Ralph Bunche to Ida B. Wells. A multitalented artist, his career also included stints as a songwriter, a member of the Actors Studio, and, during the late 1960s, a producer and cohost of Black Journal, the first national television show focused on African American culture and politics. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of Greaves's remarkable career. It brings together a wide range of material, including a mix of incisive essays from critics and scholars, Greaves's own writings, an extensive meta-interview with Greaves, conversations with his wife and collaborator Louise Archambault Greaves and his son David, and a critical dossier on Symbiopsychotaxiplasm. Together, they illuminate Greaves's mission to use filmmaking as a tool for transforming the ways African Americans were perceived by others and the ways they saw themselves. This landmark book is an essential resource on Greaves's work and his influence on independent cinema and African-American culture.

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.

From the trolley scene in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers's last dance on the silver screen (The Barkleys of Broadway, 1949) to Judy Garland's timeless, tuxedo-clad performance of "Get Happy" (Summer Stock, 1950), Charles Walters staged the iconic musical sequences of Hollywood's golden age. During his career, this Academy Award--nominated director and choreographer showcased the talents of stars such as Gene Kelly, Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, and Frank Sinatra. However, despite his many critical and commercial triumphs, Walters's name often goes unrecognized today.

In the first full-length biography of Walters, Brent Phillips chronicles the artist's career, from his days as a featured Broadway performer and prot?g? of theater legend Robert Alton to his successes at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He takes readers behind the scenes of many of the studio's most beloved musicals, including Easter Parade (1948), Lili (1953), High Society (1956), and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964). In addition, Phillips recounts Walters's associations with Lucille Ball, Joan Crawford, and Gloria Swanson, examines the director's uncredited work on several films, including the blockbuster Gigi (1958), and discusses his contributions to musical theater and American popular culture.

This revealing book also considers Walters's personal life and explores how he navigated the industry as an openly gay man. Drawing on unpublished oral histories, correspondence, and new interviews, this biography offers an entertaining and important new look at an exciting era in Hollywood history.

J.J. Abrams is one of the most successful director-writer-producers working in Hollywood, and now that he is being offered the chance to visit a galaxy far, far away to direct the long-awaited Star Wars sequel, his reputation is set to shoot ever higher. Much like his hero Steven Spielberg, such has been Abrams' success that he has himself become something of a brand, especially since his popular revitalisation of Star Trek as producer of the 2009 blockbuster, as well as its 2013 sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness. However, in the early nineties Abrams began his career writing relatively average movie scripts, such as Regarding Henry and Forever Young, before moving into the world of TV with the college-based drama Felicity. It wasn't until the spy series Alias that his career truly launched. Since the early 2000s, Abrams has dominated genre-TV with the success of cult shows such as Lost and Fringe. At the same time, he found time for the big screen, directing Mission: Impossible III and his personal homage to Spielberg, Super 8 as well as producing the innovative monster movie Cloverfield. Then, not content with distinction in these two fields, 2013 saw the release of his first novel S. with Doug Dorst. While Abrams sceptics note that not everything he has been involved with has worked - after a number of his TV shows have been cancelled and some of his films have received mixed reviews - there's no question that Abrams is one of Hollywood's most powerful people. Set to dominate the world of SF for years to come, this is the first biography of the cult legend.

Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub collaborated on films together from the mid-1960s through the mid-2000s, making formally radical adaptations in several languages of major works of European literature by authors including Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, Friedrich Hoelderlin, Pierre Corneille, Arnold Schoenberg, Cesare Pavese, and Elio Vittorini. The impact of their work comes in part from a search for radical objectivity, a theme present in certain underground currents of modernist art and theory in the writings of Benjamin and Adorno as well as in the "Objectivist" movement, a crucial group within American modernist poetry whose members included Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen, and Charles Reznikoff, with connections to William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. Through a detailed analysis of the films of Straub and Huillet, the works they adapted, and Objectivist poems and essays, Benoit Turquety locates common practices and explores a singular aesthetic approach where a work of art is conceived as an object, the artist an anonymous artisan, and where the force of politics and formal research attempt to reconcile with one another.

"The Stanley Kubrick Archives showed up one morning in our offices, where my editor and I circled it like curious apes." -Time Out, New York This is the first book to explore Stanley Kubrick's archives and the most comprehensive study of the filmmaker to date. In 1968, when Stanley Kubrick was asked to comment on the metaphysical significance of 2001: A Space Odyssey, he replied: "It's not a message I ever intended to convey in words. 2001 is a nonverbal experience.... I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content." The philosophy behind Part 1 of The Stanley Kubrick Archives borrows from this line of thinking: from the opening sequence of Killer's Kiss to the final frames of Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick's complete films are presented chronologically and wordlessly via frame enlargements. A completely nonverbal experience. The second part of the book brings to life the creative process of Kubrick's filmmaking by presenting a remarkable collection of mostly unseen material from his archives, including photographs, props, posters, artwork, set designs, sketches, correspondence, documents, screenplays, drafts, notes, and shooting schedules. Accompanying the visual material are essays by noted Kubrick scholars, articles written by and about Kubrick, and a selection of Kubrick's best interviews.

Four-time winner at the Cannes Film Festival, Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan (b. 1960) began his career while still an undergraduate at the University of Toronto. His first love was playwriting, but he began to see that he could investigate themes emotionally through film- that the camera could play a role. He learned his craft in his own independent films and by directing television episodes before attempting his first feature film, "Next of Kin" (1984). There he explored the themes of family and identity that continue to interest him today.

A frequent winner at film festivals, Egoyan broke through to a general audience with his film "Exotica" (1994). Since then such films as "The Sweet Hereafter" (1997) and "Felicia's Journey" (1999) have gained him wide acclaim. These interviews, collected from the last two decades, reveal Egoyan's unique themes, and his individual, independent approach to filmmaking. He discusses his development as a director, his interest in opera and museum installations, and the expectations he has for his audience. He engages in open, forthright discussions of his work and those who have worked with him.

Pedro Almodovar's influence on European popular culture has been immense. From a small village in rural Spain to international acclaim for his many wonderfully vivid and outrageous films, Almodovar On Almodovar tells the story of the man and his films. Almodovar came from an austere background in rural Spain. It was the 1950s, the age of the Cold War, of mambo, of Balenciaga, of the Korean War, of the Hungarian Revolution, of the death of Stalin. But none of these events bore any impact on his village. In response, Almodovar's films - such as Bad Education, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Tie Me Up!, All About My Mother and Talk to Her to name a few - are colourful and deeply felt celebrations of life and love. In these frank and passionate conversations, Almodovar discusses his astonishing life and career with a humour that is distinctly his own. Pedro Almodovar is widely acclaimed as one of the most successful Spanish film-makers, having won two Academy Awards, six European Film Awards, 2 Golden Globe Awards and 5 BAFTA Awards. His most recent films include Volver (2006), Broken Embraces (2009), The Skin I Live In (2011) and I'm So Excited (2013).

Through intimate encounters with the life and work of five contemporary gay male directors, this book develops a framework for interpreting what it means to make a gay film or adopt a gay point of view. For most of the twentieth century, gay characters and gay themes were both underrepresented and misrepresented in mainstream cinema. Since the 1970s, however, a new generation of openly gay directors has turned the closet inside out, bringing a poignant immediacy to modern cinema and popular culture. Combining his experienced critique with in-depth interviews, Emanuel Levy draws a clear timeline of gay filmmaking over the past four decades and its particular influences and innovations. While recognizing the "queering" of American culture that resulted from these films, Levy also takes stock of the ensuing conservative backlash and its impact on cinematic art, a trend that continues alongside a growing acceptance of homosexuality. He compares the similarities and differences between the "North American" attitudes of Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, and John Waters and the "European" perspectives of Pedro Almodovar and Terence Davies, developing a truly expansive approach to gay filmmaking and auteur cinema.

Academy Award--winning director Martin Scorsese is one of the most significant American filmmakers in the history of cinema. Although best known for his movies about gangsters and violence, such as Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino, and Taxi Driver, Scorsese has addressed a much wider range of themes and topics in the four decades of his career. In The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese, an impressive cast of contributors explores the complex themes and philosophical underpinnings of Martin Scorsese's films. The essays concerning Scorsese's films about crime and violence investigate the nature of friendship, the ethics of vigilantism, and the nature of unhappiness. The authors delve deeply into the minds of Scorsese's tortured characters and explore how the men and women he depicts grapple with moral codes and their emotions. Several of the essays explore specific themes in individual films. The authors describe how Scorsese addresses the nuances of social mores and values in The Age of Innocence, the nature of temptation and self-sacrifice in The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing Out the Dead, and the complexities of innovation and ambition in The Aviator. Other chapters in the collection examine larger philosophical questions. In a world where everything can be interpreted as meaningful, Scorsese at times uses his films to teach audiences about the meaning in life beyond the everyday world depicted in the cinema. For example, his films touching on religious subjects, such as Kundun and The Last Temptation of Christ, allow the director to explore spiritualism and peaceful ways of responding to the chaos in the world.Filled with penetrating insights on Scorsese's body of work, The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese shows the director engaging with many of the most basic questions about our humanity and how we relate to one another in a complex world.

Boats on the Marne offers an original interpretation of Jean Renoir's celebrated films of the 1930s, treating them as a coherent narrative of philosophical response to the social and political crises of the times. Grounded in a reinterpretation of the foundational film-philosopher Andre Bazin, and drawing on work from a range of disciplines (film studies, art history, comparative literature, political and cultural history), the book's coordinated consideration of Renoir's films, writings, and interviews demonstrates his obsession with the concept of romanticism. Renoir saw romanticism to be a defining feature of modernity, a hydra-headed malady which intimately shapes our personal lives, culture, and politics, blinding us and locking us into agonistic relationships and conflict. While mapping the popular manifestations of romanticism that Renoir engaged with at the time, this study restores the philosophic weight of his critique by tracing the phenomenon back to its roots in the work and influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who first articulated conceptions of human desire, identity, community, and history that remain pervasive today. Prakash Younger argues that Renoir's films of the 1930s articulate a multi-stranded narrative through which the director thinks about various aspects of romanticism and explores the liberating possibilities of an alternative paradigm illuminated by the thought of Plato, Montaigne, and the early Enlightenment. When placed in the context of the long and complex dialogue Renoir had with his audience over the course of the decade, masterpieces such as La Grande Illusion and La Regle du Jeu reveal his profound engagement with issues of political philosophy that are still very much with us today.

The Cinema of Tom DiCillo: Include Me Out considers for the first time in a single collection this acclaimed, award-winning director's entire oeuvre, addressing and analyzing themes such as identity, family, and masculinity, supported by in-depth coverage of the generic and aesthetic aspects of DiCillo's distinctive and influential film style. Through exhaustively detailed chapters on each of DiCillo's feature films, presented here is a candid look behind-the-scenes of both the American independent film industry-from the No Wave movement of the 1980s, through the Indie boom of the 1990s, to the contemporary milieu-and the Hollywood studio system. This comprehensive auteur study documents the writing, production, and release of every DiCillo picture, each followed by an extensive Q&A with the director. Also featured is a foreword written by acclaimed actor and filmmaker Steve Buscemi, as well as exclusive interviews and commentary with many cast members and collaborators, including Kevin Corrigan, Maxwell Caulfield, Melonie Diaz, Peter Dinklage, Gina Gershon, Catherine Keener, Alison Lohman, Matthew Modine, Chris Noth, Sam Rockwell, John Turturro, and members of legendary rock group the Doors. Films covered include Johnny Suede, Living In Oblivion, Box of Moonlight, The Real Blonde, Double Whammy, Delirious, When You're Strange, and Down in Shadowland.

Let us rejoice in the genius that is Kevin Smith! This fun and photo-filled biography celebrates the life, films, and fans of the director responsible for such indie cult classics as Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma. Movie-industry veteran David Gati has compiled and edited this humorous and insightful look at Smith's nearly 30-year moviemaking journey. Through Smith's own uncensored stories-taken from podcasts, Q&As, and documentaries-we get to know him as a person, the struggles he's been through, and the people he's worked with. Gati presents a visual facet to these narrative gems in the form of fan art from around the world, along with on-set stills, candid personal photos, and memorabilia. This scrapbook celebration shows how films affect and reflect pop culture, and explores the cultural phenomenon of fandom. The result is not only a tribute to Smith but also a testimony to his amazing and loyal fans.

Cinema's most successful director is a commercial and cultural force demanding serious consideration. Not just triumphant marketing, this international popularity is partly a function of the movies themselves. Polarised critical attitudes largely overlook this, and evidence either unquestioning adulation or vilification--often vitriolic--for epitomising contemporary Hollywood. Detailed textual analyses reveal that alongside conventional commercial appeal, Spielberg's movies function consistently as a self-reflexive commentary on cinema. Rather than straightforwardly consumed realism or fantasy, they invite divergent readings and self-conscious spectatorship which contradict assumptions about their ideological tendencies. Exercising powerful emotional appeal, their ambiguities are profitably advantageous in maximising audiences and generating media attention.

In late autumn 1968, Dorian Bond was tasked with travelling to Yugoslavia to deliver cigars and film stock to the legendary Hollywood director Orson Welles. The pair soon struck up an unlikely friendship, and Welles offered Bond the role of his personal assistant - as well as a part in his next movie. No formal education could prepare him for the journey that would ensue. This fascinating memoir follows Welles and Bond across Europe during the late 1960s as they visit beautiful cities, stay at luxury hotels, and reminisce about Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, among others. It is filled with Welles' characteristic acerbic wit - featuring tales about famous movie stars such as Laurence Olivier, Marlene Dietrich and Steve McQueen - and is a fresh insight into both the man and his film-making. Set against the backdrop of the student riots of '68, the Vietnam War, the Manson killings, the rise of Roman Polanski, the Iron Curtain, and Richard Nixon's presidency, Me and Mr Welles is a unique look at both a turbulent time and one of cinema's most charismatic characters.

'Linn Ullmann has written something of beauty and solace and truth. I don't know how she managed to sail across such dangerous waters' RACHEL CUSK He is a renowned Swedish filmmaker and has a plan for everything. She is his daughter, by the actress he directed and once loved. Each summer of her childhood, the daughter visits the father at his remote Faro island home on the edge of the Baltic Sea. Now that she's grown up - a writer, with children of her own - and he's in his eighties, they envision writing a book together, about old age, language, memory and loss. She will ask the questions. He will answer them. The tape recorder will record. But it's winter now and old age has caught up with him in ways neither could have foreseen. And when the father is gone, only memories, images and words -- both remembered and recorded - remain. And from these the daughter begins to write her own story, in the pages which become this book. Heart-breaking and spell-binding, Unquiet is a seamless blend of fiction and memoir in pursuit of elemental truths about how we live, love, lose and age.

For over forty years, Shyam Benegal has been one the leading forces in Indian cinema. Informed by a rich political and philosophical sensibility and a mastery of the art and craft of filmmaking, Benegal is both of, and not of, Bollywood. As a philosophical filmmaker Benegal brings to life the existential crisis of the downtrodden Indian, the 'subaltern' if you will-the serf, the peasant, the woman-and imposes a distinctive philosophical vision on his cinematic reworkings of literary products. To understand Benegal's cinema is to understand, through his lens, modern India's continued process of political and social becoming. Focusing on the philosophical depth of Benegal's oueuvre, Samir Chopra identifies three key aspects of his work: - A trio of films which signalled to middle-class India that a revolt was brewing in India's hinterlands - Two sets of movies which make powerful feminist statements and bring viewers into the lives of Indian women by showcasing strong, interesting female characters - Benegal the master storyteller, who possessed of a unique fabulist style in a reboot of the Indian epic Mahabharata, a Ruskin Bond novel set during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and a Rashomon-like retelling of an Indian experimental novel, where three perspectives converge to form a unified whole

Federico Fellini (1920-1993) was one of the most inventive filmmakers and to this day one of the best loved. Director of many celebrated films--among them "La Strada "(1954), "The Nights of Cabiria "(1957), "La Dolce Vita "(1960), "Otto e Mezzo "(1963), and "Amarcord "(1973)--he created melancholy, magical worlds peopled by clowns, dreamers, conmen, trumpeters, and werewolves. This book explores the forms and substances, significances and insignificances, and objects and shadows in Fellini's work--the dance and music of his characters, the color, light, and movement in his images. "Fellini Lexicon "accompanies Fellini's films, rather than seeking to possess them, taking pleasure in their incongruities, exaggerations, absur-dities, and surprises. The entries are reversible, overlapping, often unlikely, combining careful analysis of the films with a celebration of their richness. "Fellini Lexicon "is a delightfully original approach to Fellini's work and to the practice of film criticism.