Kategoria BISAC: Performing Arts >> Individual Director

Perhaps the most gifted and invigorating of the American independent film directors of the past two decades, Jim Jarmusch (b. 1953) has presented moviegoers with his uniquely personal vision, from his first feature film, Permanent Vacation (1980), to his latest, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999).

As the interviews in this volume reveal, Jarmusch has always been interested in mixing very different cultural ingredients to form something uncategorizably new in films that transcend the boundaries between high and low cultures. Jarmusch half-mockingly described...

This collection of interviews provides a revealing self-portrait of Martin Ritt (1914-1990), America's preeminent maker of social films and one of the most sensitive portraitists of the rural South.

Ritt's Hollywood career began in 1958 with Edge of the City and ended in 1990 with the release of Stanley and Iris. In all, he directed twenty-six movies, including some of Hollywood's most enduring films--Hud, Hombre, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Brotherhood, The Molly Maguires, The Front, and Norma Rae.

Although he...

Thrust into the international spotlight in 1966 when The Hunt, his critique of the Franco regime, won the Silver Bear at Berlin, Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura (b. 1932) has remained an abiding presence and frequent victor at worldwide cinema competitions ever since.

Best known in the United States for his Flamenco trilogy--Blood Wedding, Carmen, and A Love Bewitched--he also received Oscar nominations for Mama Turns a Hundred, Carmen, and Tango. Saura's movies are frequently ambiguous, sometimes controversial, and always narratively...

Brian De Palma (b. 1940) isn't your average Hollywood director.

For years he reigned as the "master of the macabre," the man who massacred the class of '76 in Carrie and stalked Angie Dickinson in Dressed to Kill. By the mid-1980s De Palma found himself assaulting his audience and critics, daring them to watch a chainsaw enter a man's skull in Scarface and a power drill disembowel a defenseless woman in Body Double.

What drove De Palma to such extremes? In the late 1960s, he wanted to be the next Jean-Luc Godard and revolutionize American cinema. Instead,...

With six entries at the Cannes Film Festival thus far, Lars von Trier has been a Cannes award winner four times. Without question, he is the most intriguing film director to emerge in Denmark since the days of his great mentor in spirit Carl Theodor Dreyer. A relentless visionary, von Trier (b. 1956) has succeeded not only in realizing his projects but also in managing to gather substantial audiences to his films. Breaking the Waves (1996) made him a well-known figure to American audiences, as did Dancer in the Dark (2000), winner of the Palme d'Or at...

Even twenty years after his death and nearly fifty or more years after his creative peak, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) is still arguably the most instantly recognizable film director in name, appearance, vision, and voice. Long ago, through a combination of timing, talent, genius, energy, and publicity, he made the key transition from proper noun to adjective that confirms celebrity and true stature. It is a rare film watcher indeed who cannot define -Hitchcockian.-

As the director of such films as Psycho, North by Northwest, Spellbound, Vertigo, Rear...

Few Hollywood directors had a higher profile in the 1930s than Frank Capra (18971991). He served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and of the Screen Directors Guild. He won three Academy Awards as best director and was widely acclaimed as the man most responsible for making Columbia Pictures a success.

This popularity was established and sustained by films that spoke to and for the times--It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Meet John Doe, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. These replicated the nation's...

This collection of interviews with the renowned filmmaker, animator, artist, and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe covers the phases of his career from his early work as a cartoonist and animator through his most recent and most difficult projects.

Among many subjects, Gilliam discusses his formative years as an artist and humor-magazine cartoonist, his move from the United States to England, his entry into British television, and his success as resident animator for the Monty Python's Flying Circus television show.

As co-director of Monty Python and the Holy Grail...

At first glance, George Stevens (19041975) 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 cinema. As a leading producer...

Sidney Lumet (b. 1924) is considered one of the most gifted and socially conscious American filmmakers of his generation. His best-known movies--including Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, 12 Angry Men, and Network--have garnered him an Honorary Academy Award in 2005, multiple Oscar nominations for Best Director, the D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement, and numerous other tributes.

This book features over twenty interviews with the director, including an interview conducted by the editor for this volume. One of the few mainstream...

Artisan, entrepreneur, and impresario, British filmmaker Ridley Scott accepts the profit motive as the only way to thrive in an industry where there is little patience for artistic flourishes or overblown expenses. Yet, while he may pay lip service to the free enterprise system, he is an unapologetic auteur, committed to using every element of film-from evocative lighting to digital composition-to overwhelm our senses and redefine how we perceive the future (Alien, Blade Runner), the past (1492: The Conquest of Paradise, Gladiator), and the present (Thelma &...

Director John Woo (b. 1946) reinvented the modern action movie and helped open the door for Asian filmmakers to the Western world. His hyper-violent, highly choreographed style made him a box office powerhouse, a respected auteur, and a revered figure among fellow directors.

First discovered by Western audiences through his Hong Kong films The Killer and Hard Boiled, Woo introduced the world to a new brand of psychologically frenzied action film. After coming to the United States in the early 1990s, Woo produced a trilogy of hard-charging action films--Broken...

Woody Allen (b. 1935) is one of America's most idiosyncratic filmmakers, with an unparalleled output of nearly one film every year for over three decades. His movies are filled with rapid-fire one-liners, neurotic characters, anguished relationships, and old-time jazz music. Allen's vision of New York--whether in comedies or dramas--has shaped our perception of the city more than any other modern filmmaker. -On the screen, - John Lahr wrote in the New Yorker in 1996, -Allen is a loser who makes much of his inadequacy; off-screen, he has created over the years the most wide-ranging oeuvre...

Roman Polanski (b. 1933) arrived on the international scene in 1962 with his first feature film, Knife in the Water, and his face would be on the cover of Time magazine by the end of that year. His vibrant, disturbing, and often violent films--including the psychological thriller Rosemary's Baby, the film noir classic Chinatown, and the somber Holocaust drama The Pianist--have entertained and sometimes infuriated audiences. Stylistically unsettling and thematically varied, Polanski's films have established him as one of the most talented and controversial...

Joel and Ethan Coen (b. 1954, 1957) started their careers in obscurity on a shoestring budget cajoled from family and friends in Minneapolis. Working entirely outside the studio system, the Coen brothers scored an unlikely first success in 1984 with their postmodern noir film Blood Simple. Two decades and nearly a dozen movies later, the Coens are now among the best-known writer/directors in Hollywood, turning out major studio releases featuring such stars as George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Tom Hanks.

The Coens' films all share a distinctive, quirky ambience that...

For fifteen years before his untimely death, Andrew Britton produced a body of undeniably brilliant film criticism that has been largely ignored within academic circles. Though Britton's writings are extraordinary in their depth and range and are closely attuned to the nuances of the texts they examine, his humanistic approach was at odds with typical theory-based film scholarship. Britton on Film demonstrates that Britton's humanism is also his strength, as it presents all of his published writings together for the first time, including Britton's persuasive readings of such important...