As I step out of the conservatory facing North, supported by my pusher, the first that catches my eye is the dying Sycamore which escapes death every year by producing a healthy crop of leaves, but it looks so decrepit that surely it can't pull that trick yet again. -1 April, 2020 In his eighty-eighth year, John Boorman uses his time in lockdown to reflect on the splendour of the surrounding nature of County Wicklow. Coccooning with his daughter and son among the hills of Annamoe, Boorman chronicles his daily walks and observations of the trees on his estate, writing with heightened appreciation of the beauties of his eyrie using only one eye and one finger. Poetry flows from his pen as he sits chairbound among his trees and flora: sycamores, limes, beech, oak, redwood, shrubs and flowers, birdsong and shifting skies are luminously recorded as the world falls silent. With illustrations by Susan Morley, this slim but meditative volume is a remarkable narrative by the creator of The Emerald Forest, Excalibur and Deliverance - a swansong like no other.

Chosen as one of Sight & Sound's 'Best Film Books of the Year' John Boorman is one of the cinema's authentic visionaries, drawn to myths and dreams. The undisputed heir to David Lean, his films, such as Point Blank, Deliverance and Excalibur, exhibit a continual search for the truth that only art can convey. In Conclusions Boorman summarises what he has learned about the craft of film-making, and wishes to pass on to the next generation of film-makers. Into this tapestry of cinematic memories, he also weaves the story of his kith and kin, including the death of his cherished elder daughter, and an evocation of the forest of trees that he has planted as his final legacy.

Martin Scorsese writes about Robert de Niro, Nick Park gives a rare interview about his work, there's a new piece on the making of low budget indie hit Tarnation and features by and on Clint Eastwood, Wong Kar-Wei, Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, Ray Harryhausen, Paul Thomas Anderson, Jodie Foster and James Stewart. Packed with big names revealing private and fascinating insights into their work, this is the perfect introduction for anyone new to the series and a must-have for cinephiles everywhere.

The Great Spotted Woodpecker first bred in Ireland in 2009. Since then the author has followed the daily lives of this species, a family of whom had taken up residence in a windtorn Spanish chestnut tree near his home in the depths of County Wicklow. This unique and personal account of a family of woodpeckers raising their young brings the reader deep into the world of this fascinating species: a world of hope, love, death, new life and ultimately success. It explores the richness and diversity of the natural wonders found in County Wicklow against a backdrop of a more general overview of the species in Ireland. It includes a foreword by filmmaker John Boorman, and features illustrations by Killian Mullarney and Flemming Christoffersen with stunning colour photographs by Dick Coombes. This book is to be treasured by everyone – not just ornithologists, but those with an interest in the natural world around them.

Justin Keating, son of the artist Sean Keating, attended UCD and TCD. He was a Labour Party politician (Minister for Industry 1973-77), academic, journalist, veterinary surgeon, television pioneer (as Head of Agricultural Broadcasting at RTE) and award-winning documentary filmmaker. In later life he served as Member of the European Parliament and became president of the Humanist Association. President Michael D. Higgins called him ‘a man who saw socialism as both essential and adaptable to change’. Keating introduced the first substantial legislation for the development of Ireland's oil and gas, set up the National Film Studios of Ireland at Ardmore and gave impetus to Kilkenny Design. He wrote extensively – and with opinions well ahead of his time – on the natural world, including women’s health, animal welfare, sustainable energy and ecology. ‘A well made, fit thoroughbred really striding out seems to me one of the most beautiful things on earth, on a par with an orchid or porpoise.’ Edited posthumously by his wife, Barbara Hussey, Justin Keating’s notebooks offer an in-depth, often-impassioned account of the interests, musings and opinions of one of Ireland’s most wide-ranging intellectuals. His dealings with J.D Bernal, Noël Browne, Sean McBride, Charles Haughey, Gerry Fitt and Conor Cruise-O’Brien, form part of this absorbing chronicle, aside from myriad friendships with writers and artists. Nothing Is Written in Stone is a brilliant selfportrait of this multi-dimensional man, who did so much to shape twenty-first century Ireland.

'What a life! What a career!' Harold Pinter 'Boorman is one of the world's great directors, a master storyteller.' Paul Auster John Boorman is one of cinema's authentic visionaries whose travels have taken him from London in the Blitz to the pinnacle of Hollywood success: the man behind filmes such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, Hope and Glory, and The General. Conclusions continues the story of his life that Boorman began with Adventures of a Suburban Boy and shares what has happened since its publication: films made (such as the award-winning The General) and unmade; new knowledge about the craft of film-making; and, ultimately, the story of of his kith and kin, including the death of his cherished elder daughter. Wielding a metaphorical Excalibur, Boorman's career has been a continual search for the truth that only art can convey, and this memoir shows him at his finest.

Published in the year which marks the centenary of the cinema, this fourth issue of an annual diary presents comment by international film-makers on their favourite films. The first edition won the BFI Michael Powell Book Award. James Toback, scriptwriter of "Bugsy" and writer/director of films such of "Fingers" and "Exposed", writes from Hollywood. Arthur Penn, veteran director of "Bonnie and Clyde", discusses his career, as does prop master Eddie Fowlie, whose long association with David Lean enables him to provide insight into that often enigmatic film-maker. The issue concludes with a meditative piece by Fellini, written shortly before his death in 1994.

Projections 2 highlights Robert Altman, whose film The Player restored him to his proper place in cinema's pantheon. Actor Tim Robbins, who memorably incarnated Griffin Mill in The Player, has written, directed and acted in Bob Roberts, the script of which is printed here in full. And another actor, Willem Dafoe, describes how he approaches his craft. There are also pieces by Belgian director Jaco van Dormael, New Zealand director Alison Maclean and Australian director George Miller, who charts the journey he has made from Mad Max to the (then) eagerly awaited Lorenzo's Oil. Finally, Bertrand Tavernier's diary records the evolution of his controversial film L627 against the shifting European cultural landscape.

Following the success of Projections 10, in which Mike Figgis interviewed a host of Hollywood filmmakers about the current state of the business, Projections 11 sets out to talk to those who have decided to live and work in the place many consider to be Hollywood's antithesis—New York City. In an attempt to map out the distinct draw and effect Gotham has on its film artists, writer/filmmaker Tod Lippy has interviewed some of the city's acclaimed indepent filmmakers, as well as established directors, producers, writers, actors, and agents who have made the city their home, and in many cases, their inspiration. What emerges from these interviews with Spike Lee, Tim Robbins, Jim Jarmusch, Frances McDormand, and Nora Ephron, among others, is a chorus of praise for the diversity, energy, and artistic integrity many feel can only be found in New York.

The centrepiece of this issue comes from the celebrated French film magazine, Cahiers du Cinema. For their 500th issue Martin Scorsese contributed material not only about his own work - including his relationship with Robert de Niro - but also about film-makers he admires: those of his generation (Coppola, De Palma, Lucas and Spielberg), as well as those film-makers whose legacy enriches cinema today (Ford, Raoul Walsh, Ida Lupino, Hitchcock, John Cassavetes). He celebrates the glories of the British cinema, and concludes by posing five essential questions about film. Other contributors include: Jamie Lee Curtis - In Conversation with Janet Leigh and Lillian Burns Hippolyte Girardot - Never Forget Mastroianni Frances Mcdormand & Willem Dafoe - Acting is Believing Robert Mitchum - Looking Like Nothing Matters Brian Cox - Manhunter Leslie Caron - The L-Shaped Room Sylvia Syms - Victim Teresa Wright - Shadow of a Doubt Jaco van Dormael - Life Lessons Bebe Barron - Making Music for Forbidden Planet Christopher Porter - Photographing Dead Man Frank Capra/Douglas Sirk - A Centenary Tribute William K. Everson/Marcello Mastroianni - In Memoriam

PROJECTIONS is a forum for film-makers where - like dispatches from the front - practitioners of cinema write about their craft. In this year's issue there is a special focus on the art of animation, with interviews with the father-figure of stop-motion animation, Ray Harryhausen, and its leading exponents in Britain, Nick Park, and in the US, Henry Selick. Jamie Lee Curtis & Tony Curtis - Some Like It Dark Quentin Tarantino & Brian de Palma - Emotion Pictures Ray Harryhausen - Animation and Dynamation Nick Park - A Lot Can Happen in a Second Henry Selick - Bringing Things to Life by Hand Simon Pummell - Cutting Off Their Tails with a Carving Knife Annaud On Annaud Fred Zinnemann - A Little Tea, A Little Chat James Stewart - Learning Your Craft Todd Haynes, Julianne Moore, Christine Vachon - Making Safe Chris Buck - Portfolio William Wellman - A Tribute Walter Donohue - Adventures in a Light Industry Louis Malle - In Memoriam

When the door of the Lumiere factory opened to release the workers, it was more than just the end of the day - it was the beginning of a brand new art form that has shaped the consciousness of the twentieth century. This very first moment of the very first film gave birth to other moments that are cherished in the recollections of people all over the world. In this issue we collaborated with the French film magazine Positif. The centrepiece of this issue came to us from Positif. For their 400th issue Positif asked the film-makers with whom they had forged a special relationship over the past forty years to write about the films, directors and actors who have had a special significance for them. An array of seventy international film-makers - including Altman and Angelopoulos, Chabrol and the Coens, Eastwood and Frears, Kazan and Kieslowski, Leigh and Loach, Makavejev and Marker, Ophuls and Penn, Resnais and Rohmer, Rosi and Rudolph, Tavernier and the Tavianis, Varda and Zulawski, among others - responded, and we present this treasure trove of film-making comment as a way of celebrating the 100 years of cinema. 1995 was also the centenary of Buster Keaton. In honour of this, Kevin Brownlow - noted film-maker, historian and restorer of the silent cinema - recounts the making of Keaton's masterpiece, The General.

Projections is a forum for practitioners of the cinema to write about their work. The first issue includes a journal compiled by John Boorman which records his responses to the events and trends of 1991, and their implications for the future of cinema. Like his Emerald Forest diary, Money into Light, it is a fascinating mix of anecdote, personal reflections, thoughts on the nature of cinema, and comments on the practical business of making films. Projections also contains contributions from cinematographer Nestor Almendros, who describes the craft of photographing the human face, and from Jonathan Demme, who traces the evolution of his career from his early days with Roger Corman to his chilling Silence of the Lambs. River Phoenix and Gus Van Sant discuss their work together on My Own Private Idaho; there is a script from one of the most original talents in American today, Hal Hartley, and a penetrating account by director Michael Mann of his startling new version of Last of the Mohicans.

In Adventures of a Suburban Boy, John Boorman, hailed by the Observer as 'arguably Britain's greatest living director', offers an enthralling memoir of a creative life spent turning dreams into celluloid, and money into light. One of cinema's authentic visionaries, Boorman nevertheless enjoyed an archetypal English suburban boyhood in the 1940s and 50s, attending Catholic school and finding his first employment in a dry-cleaner's. But his abiding passion was for film, and he got his first break during the 'gold rush' era of British television in the 1960s. After directing several innovative documentaries for the BBC, he graduated to motion pictures, first filming pop stars The Dave Clark Five for Catch Us If You Can, before venturing to Los Angeles to make his first Hollywood picture - and his first masterpiece - Point Blank. The film inaugurated Boorman's profound friendship with star Lee Marvin, which also led to a second professional collaboration on Hell in the Pacific. What follows are accounts of Boorman's joys and agonies in the making of such extraordinary pictures as the terrifying backwoods adventure Deliverance, the fantastical epics Zardoz and Exorcist II: The Heretic, the glorious Arthurian legend Excalibur, his magnificent drama of imperilled Amazonian tribes, The Emerald Forest, and his semi-autobiographical, multi-Oscar-nominated Hope and Glory. Among the many friends and collaborators of whom Boorman offers vivid portraits are Lee Marvin, Sean Connery, Richard Burton, Marcello Mastroianni, Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Helen Mirren and Nicol Williamson.