Kategoria BISAC: Performing Arts >> Individual Director

Even by the time Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene (1923-2007) was forty, he had lived an exceptional life. He joined the French army during World War II and moved from Senegal to France in 1948. There he worked for automaker Citroen, as well as on the docks of Marseille. Exposed to Marxism, he participated in railroad strikes and trade union movements. His early novels and short story collections gained him literary recognition both in Senegal and throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

In his fortieth year, Sembene directed the short film Borom Sarret, one of the first films directed by a...

Even by the time Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene (1923-2007) was forty, he had lived an exceptional life. He joined the French army during World War II and moved from Senegal to France in 1948. There he worked for automaker Citroen, as well as on the docks of Marseille. Exposed to Marxism, he participated in railroad strikes and trade union movements. His early novels and short story collections gained him literary recognition both in Senegal and throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

In his fortieth year, Sembene directed the short film Borom Sarret, one of the first films directed by a...

Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984), an accomplished writer and director of television westerns, did not attract media attention until the release of his second feature-length film, the award-winning Ride the High Country. Peckinpah revealed in early interviews his deep knowledge of film history, an uncompromising aesthetic, and an intolerance for any crew members who did not share his capacity for hard work. As his career progressed, he began having increasingly difficult times with producers who did not share his vision. His problems with them emerge as a major focus of his interviews....

Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984), an accomplished writer and director of television westerns, did not attract media attention until the release of his second feature-length film, the award-winning Ride the High Country. Peckinpah revealed in early interviews his deep knowledge of film history, an uncompromising aesthetic, and an intolerance for any crew members who did not share his capacity for hard work. As his career progressed, he began having increasingly difficult times with producers who did not share his vision. His problems with them emerge as a major focus of his interviews....

Beginning in 1957 with the release of his directorial debut The Left Handed Gun, Arthur Penn (b. 1922) quickly became an iconoclastic and influential American film director. Moving deftly between comedy and tragedy, realism and absurdity, his films Mickey One, Bonnie and Clyde, Alice's Restaurant, Little Big Man, and Night Moves speak to the troubled times--the 1960s and 1970s--in which they were made while remaining timeless in their unsettling portrayal of characters on the margins of society.

Arthur Penn: Interviews is the first...

In 2008 No Country for Old Men won the Academy Award for Best Picture, adding to the reputation of filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, who were already known for pushing the boundaries of genre. They had already made films that redefined the gangster movie, the screwball comedy, the fable, and the film noir, among others. No Country is just one of many Coen brothers films to center on the struggles of complex characters to understand themselves and their places in the strange worlds they inhabit. To borrow a phrase from Barton Fink, all Coen films explore "the life of the mind" and show that...

Has any film director had a greater impact on popular culture than Steven Spielberg? Whether filming Holocaust heroes and villains, soldiers, dinosaurs, extraterrestrials, or explorers in search of the Holy Grail, Spielberg has given filmgoers some of the most memorable characters and wrenching moments in the history of cinema. Whatever his subject -- war, cloning, slavery, terrorism, or adventure -- all of Spielberg's films have one aspect in common: a unique view of the moral fabric of humanity. Dean A. Kowalski's Steven Spielberg and Philosophy is like a remarkable conversation after a...

In the course of fifty years, director Stanley Kubrick produced some of the most haunting and indelible images on film. His films touch on a wide range of topics rife with questions about human life, behavior, and emotions: love and sex, war, crime, madness, social conditioning, and technology. Within this great variety of subject matter, Kubrick examines different sides of reality and unifies them into a rich philosophical vision that is similar to existentialism. Perhaps more than any other philosophical concept, existentialism -- the belief that philosophical truth has meaning only if...