Presents India's greatest film-maker on the art and craft of films. "Speaking of Films" brings together some of Ray's most memorable writings on film and film-making. With the masterly precision and clarity that characterize his films, Ray discusses a wide array of subjects: the structure and language of cinema with special reference to his adaptations of Tagore and Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyay, the appropriate use of background music and dialogue in films, the relationship between a film-maker...
Princess Mononoke (Animation: Key Films/Filmmakers)
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Princess Mononoke (1997) is one of anime’s most important films. Hayao Miyazaki’s epic fantasy broke domestic box office records when it came out in Japan, keeping pace with the success of Hollywood films like Titanic (1997). Princess Mononoke was also the first of Studio Ghibli’s films to be distributed outside Japan as part of a new deal with Disney subsidiary...
A career-spanning introduction to the award-winning director of Small Axe, with contributions from Paul Gilroy, Hamza Walker and more Declared by Time "one of the most influential people in the world" in 2014, British filmmaker Steve McQueen (born 1969) first presented his work in galleries and museums in the early 1990s, with installations and films influenced by Warhol and French New Wave. (An early friendship with Okwui Enwezor was also formative.) His first major work was Bear (1993), in wh...
Refocus: the Films of Joao Pedro Rodrigues and Joao Rui Guerra Da Mata
by José Duarte and Filipa Rosário
Joao Pedro Rodrigues and Joao Rui Guerra da Mata are one of the most cosmopolitan duos in contemporary world cinema. Their films tell us stories of love and human desire, receiving a highly favourable reception among critics and at international festivals. Despite their high profile, Rodrigues and da Mata's work remains relatively understudied. ReFocus: The Films of Joao Pedro Rodrigues and Joao Rui Guerra da Mata, paves the way for the study of the directors' work, critically analysing the var...
The writer, director, and producer who created the Star Wars epic and American Graffiti, among other films, shares his creative vision and unique perspective on the film industry. Simultaneous.
Twenty years since its release, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut remains a complex, visually arresting film about domesticity, sexual disturbance, and dreams. It was on the director's mind for some 50 years before he finally put it into production. Using the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts, London, and interviews with participants in the production, the authors create an archeology of the film that traces the progress of the film from its origins to its completion, receptio...
Framing Hitchcock (Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media)
In its history the ""Hitchcock Annual"" has established itself as a key source of historical information and critical commentary on one of the central figures in film history and arguably one of the most important artists of the 20th century. This selection of writings offers an overview of thinking on the filmmaker and his work. The articles span his career and cover a wide range of topics from archaeological investigation to incisive analyses on the films themselves. The collection begins with...
Claude Chabrol (Conversations with Filmmakers)
Claude Chabrol (1930–2010) was a founding member of the French New Wave, the group of filmmakers that revolutionized French filmmaking in the late 1950s and early 1960s. One of the most prolific directors of his generation, Chabrol averaged more than one film per year from 1958 until his death in 2010. Among his most influential films, Le Beau Serge, Les Cousins, and Les Bonnes Femmes established his central place within the New Wave canon. In contrast to other filmmakers of the New Wave such as...
Jafar Panahi (Conversations with Filmmakers)
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi (b. 1960) is as famous for his remarkable films as for his courageous defiance of Iran's state censorship. Panahi achieved international recognition with his feature film debut, The White Balloon, the first Iranian film to receive an award at the Cannes Film Festival. His subsequent films—The Mirror, The Circle, and Offside—continue to receive acclaim throughout the world, yet they remain largely unseen in his own country due to years of conflict with the Iranian...
Refocus: the Films of Teuvo Tulio (ReFocus: The International Directors)
by Henry Bacon, Kimmo Laine, and Jaakko Seppala
Teuvo Tulio (1912 2000) was one of the most obsessive directors in film history. As an independent producer and an increasingly reclusive personality, he developed his own, excessive brand of melodrama, haunted by irresistible temptations, obsessive desires, mad jealousies and toxic moralism. Combining cultural and historical contextualisation with formalist analysis, ReFocus: The Films of Teuvo Tulio is the first English-language study on this innovative director. Three internationally recogni...
Peter Liechti (1951-2014) was a Swiss film author and director, cinematographer, and producer. Many of his more than 100 documentaries, music and experimental films have been shown at international festivals. His last and unfinished project Dedications he began when he already suffered from his terminal illness. Originally intended to become a trilogy dedicated to the Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956), the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1880), and to "the unknown Sudanese Chief", the...
Sangerindeuvæsenet. En nostalgisk odyssé gennem Københavns berygtede sangerindeknejper i tiden 1820-1920
by Allan Mylius Thomsen
Life never ceases to give homage to Jacques Tati. Be it on the beach, in an old part of town, or in the glamour of a modern city, we find everywhere the gags which have peopled such films as Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot and Playtime. If a silhouette crosses us at a street corner, we are quickly reminded of certain scenes in Mon Oncle. Tati was a great film comic who deserves to be placed on the same level as Keaton and Chaplin. Tati created Monsieur Hulot who has now entered the world of scree...
Film scholar Murray Pomerance presents a series of fascinating and groundbreaking meditations on six films directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock, a master of the cinema. Two of the films, North by Northwest and Vertigo, are extraordinarily famous and have been seen––and misunderstood––countless times. Two others, Marnie and Torn Curtain, have been mostly disregarded by viewers and critics or considered to be colossal mistakes, while the remaining two, Spellbound and I Confess, have received...
This collection, featuring the work of major film theorists and Russian scholars, offers a post-Soviet reconsideration of Sergei Eisenstein's contribution to world cinema. The book addresses such themes as sexuality, religion, gender and politics, and considers the films "Potemkin", "October", "Alexander Nevsky" and "Ivan the Terrible". Of particular concern in this text is Eisenstein's struggle with Soviet censorship, which resulted in a tenuous balance between the pressures of the state and hi...
The Epistemic Archaeology of Ashish Avikunthak
The first book-length study in English of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948), Perpetual Movement offers both a production history that draws extensively upon little-known archival materials, including set drawings and drafts of the screenplay, and a close examination of the film in which Neil Badmington analyzes each of Rope's eleven shots. Writing in an accessible and engaging style, Badmington explores the film's treatment of space, sound, editing, sexuality, source material, design, intertexualit...
Abbas Kiarostami (Conversations with Filmmakers)
The cinephile community knows Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) as one of the most important filmmakers of the previous decades. This volume illustrates why the Iranian filmmaker achieved critical acclaim around the globe and details his many contributions to the art of filmmaking. Kiarostami began his illustrious career in his native Iran in the 1970s, although European and American audiences did not begin to take notice until he released his 1987 feature Where’s the Friend’s House? His films defy e...
At first glance, George Stevens (1904Ð1975) appears to be the quintessential Hollywood director. A closer look at his achievements shows him to be more than just the creator of some of the smartest melodramas and comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, including Annie Oakley, Swing Time, and Gunga Din. Several of his films--Giant, The Diary of Anne Frank, Shane, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and A Place in the Sun--are regarded as some of the most important and enduring dramas of postwar American cinem...
As a visionary and distinctive filmmaker, M. Night Shyamalan (b. 1970) has consistently garnered mixed reception of his work by critics and audiences alike. After the release of The Sixth Sense, one of the most successful films from the turn of the millennium, Shyamalan promptly received two Academy Awards nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Since then, lauded films such as Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), and Split (2016), have alternated with less successful and highly...