Individual film directors Books

Book SynopsisProvides a new framework in which to interpret the films of Michael Haneke, including Funny Games, Caché, and others, and to show how the concept of intermediality can be used to expand the possibilities of film and media studies, tying the two more closely together.

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Book SynopsisExamines wounding as a foundational principle of modernism in literature and film. Theorizing the genre of the narrative wound - texts that aim not only to depict but also to inflict injury - Ian Fleishman reveals harm as an essential aesthetic strategy in ten exemplary authors and filmmakers.Trade ReviewAn incisive and provocative contribution to the history and theory of modern narrative since Baudelaire… Fleishman shows that the idea of an open wound as an allegoric dimension, or an ‘aesthetics of injury,' plays a vital and thus far neglected role in nineteenth and twentieth-century literature."" - Johannes Türk, author of Die Immunität der Literatur""Aesthetics of Injury is insightful, beautifully written, and compelling. It will help shift many discussions in literary, film and feminist studies."" - Kathleen Komar, author of Reclaiming Klytemnestra: Revenge or Reconciliation

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Book SynopsisSpanish filmmaker, Luis Bunuel was an artist known for his surrealist imagery. An exile who produced some of his work in Mexico and France during Franco's dictatorship, he left an imprint on generations of filmmakers - including his friend Claudio Isaac. This book is a portrait of this icon - and a memoir of Isaac's own artistic development.Trade Review"A 'biography' of Luis Bunuel that is structured not by the stepping stones of his career, but by the spider's web of his many contradictions, as they are perceived and assimilated by a chronicler who is himself in motion and full of contradictions." - From the Foreword by James D. Fernandez"

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Book SynopsisThe Commemorative Edition of one of the most trusted and respected nonfiction books about Walt Disney ever written releases in paperback. It includes 4 commemorative essays; a photo insert with 60+ behind-the-scenes images; and an endnotes section with insights from 15 Disney historians.Walt Disney is an American hero. From Mickey Mouse to Disneyland, he changed the face of American culture. His is a success story like no other: a man who developed animated film into an art form and made a massive contribution to the folklore of the world. After years of research, respected Hollywood biographer Bob Thomas produced this definitive biography of the person behind the legend of Disney. Inside the Commemorative Edition paperback:• Special essays by Christopher Miller, Jeff Kurtti, Marcy Carriker Smothers, and Rebecca Cline and an updated index, from the 2023 hardcover Commemorative Edition• Preface by Bob Thomas from the 1994 edition• Foreground, 28 chapters, and sources by Bob Thomas from the 1976 edition• Endnotes excerpting 15 books that have furthered Bob’s research from the 2023 edition• 32-page photo insert with more than 60 behind-the-scenes images from the 2023 edition

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Book SynopsisIn this ground-breaking and provocative book, Roy Grundmann contends that Andy Warhol's notorious 1964 underground film, Blow Job, serves as rich allegory as well as suggestive metaphor for post-war American society's relation to homosexuality. Arguing that Blow Job epitomizes the highly complex position of gay invisibility and visibility, Grundmann uses the film to explore the mechanisms that constructed pre-Stonewall white gay male identity in popular culture, high art, science, and ethnography.Grundmann draws on discourses of art history, film theory, queer studies, and cultural studies to situate Warhol's work at the nexus of Pop art, portrait painting, avant-garde film, and mainstream cinema. His close textual analysis of the film probes into its ambiguities and the ways in which viewers respond to what is and what is not on screen. Presenting rarely reproduced Warhol art and previously unpublished Ed Wallowitch photographs along with now iconic publicity shots of James Dean, Grundmann establishes Blow Job as a consummate example of Warhol's highly insightful engagement with a broad range of representational codes of gender and sexuality.Trade Review"A whole book on one short film may seem excessive, but when the film is Andy Warhol's Blow Job—a pivotal document of the productive tensions between pop and art, pornography and avant-garde, gay and straight, visible and invisible 'sex'—one book hardly seems enough. Roy Grundmann has produced the definitive analysis from every possible perspective of this most fascinating of self-reflexive films. The amazing thing is how vital and compelling each of these perspectives seems."—Linda Williams, Director of Film Studies, U.C. Berkeley, and author of Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson"Roy Grundmann has extended Andy Warhol's diabolical plot to make respectable 1960s film critics say a naughty expression for an illegal sex act, making an academic book title out of it forty years later! He has also done the near impossible, written a book on a single-take film, more talked about than seen for most of those forty years, that is a masterful synthesis of queer history, cultural theory, and film studies. Grundmann has deftly demonstrated the centrality of the minimalist masterpiece that is Blow Job—and of its sly author—to postwar Western avant-gardes and to the sexual and racial cultures they inhabit."—Thomas Waugh, Professor of Film Studies and Director, Programme in Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality, Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University"Finally, the longest reaction shot in film history has found its ideal analyst. Roy Grundmann has written a thoughtful, funny, accessible, yet deeply theorized book that situates Warhol's most (in)famous film in all its polymorphous contexts. This book shows just how rich 'close reading' can be, yet it offers a window on the entire underground of a Warholian century."—Caroline A. Jones teaches contemporary art and theory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has written about Warhol in her Machine in the Studio, among other places"Andy Warhol's Blow Job is a tour de force, a virtuosic elaboration of a myriad of resonances, implications, and subtexts to what appears to be one of the simplest films possible. The control of the film scholarship is impeccable and there's hardly a missed beat in the writing. Grundmann's book is a terrific addition to film studies, Warhol studies and queer studies. It wears its learning lightly and with grace."—David James, Critical Studies, School of Cinema, USC"Grundmann’s strength lies in his theoretical improvisation on a theme, his wandering off into Hollywood film, hypochondria, Mailer, Kinsey, and whatever else his keen analytical eye alights on."—Cineaste"...the book wields its greatest strength from its reader-based cultural studies methodology."—Film International"[T]he book is...impressive vital, even moving."—Film and History"Roy Grundmann, a self-conscious enthusiast of the film, has made a sometimes compelling, always scholarly and I think finally unarguable case for Blow Job's importance and interest.... this book is essential reading for anyone interested in Warhol, and especially the Warhol films."—GENRETable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Myths from the Underground 2. Shadows and Myths 3. White Gay Male Identity Between Passing and Posing 4. Gay Masculinity Between (De)Construction and Demontage 5. Andy Warhol, James Dean, and White Gay Men 6. Darkness as Metaphor Notes Index

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Book Synopsis'Most directors have one film for which they are known or possibly two', Francis Ford Coppola has said, 'Akira Kurosawa has eight or nine.' Through his many masterpieces such as Rashomon, Seven Samurai, High and Low, Yojimbo, Kagemusha and Ran, Kurosawa's (1910-1998) work has influenced the most acclaimed directors working today, from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to Martin Scorsese. His groundbreaking innovations in both cinematography and editing, combined with his storytelling, have made him a cinematic icon. This book both evaluates Kurosawa's films and offers a view of the man behind the camera, covering his family life and his legendary place on the global film-making stage. Throughout Kurosawa's career there were repeated criticisms both from within his own country and abroad: he was too influenced by Western cinema; he was not authentically 'Japanese'; he was too sentimental, naive, arrogant or out of touch. This new study helps us to understand Kurosawa - the man and his films - in his contemporary context.An adroit evaluation, Akira Kurosawa will be essential reading for cinephiles, culture students and general readers alike who are interested in the work of this highly influential, masterful director.

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Book SynopsisKinoSputniks closely analyse some key films from the history of Russian and Soviet cinema. Written by international experts in the field, they are intended for film enthusiasts and students, combining scholarship with an accessible style of writing. This KinoSputnik on Andrei Tarkovsky's debut feature Ivan's Childhood examines the production, context and reception of the film, whilst offering a detailed reading of its key themes. Through a close examination of its intricate narrative structure, unique stylistic approach and deep philosophical underpinnings, this KinoSputnik provides a thorough analysis of a truly remarkable debut film, from an artist now considered a towering figure of Russian culture. Primary readership will be among film studies students and film enthusiasts. A list of all books in the series is here on the Intellect website on the series page KinoSputnikTable of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Note on Transliteration ix Acknowledgements xi Production Information xiii Plot Summary xv Introduction 1 1. Production History and Context 13 2. Film Analysis 49 3. Themes and Motifs 97 4. Reception in the Soviet Union and Abroad 147 Conclusion 161 Notes 165 References 169

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Book Synopsis'The Humphrey Jennings Film reader' tells the story of his brief, varied life in his own words, using many previously unpublished letters, treatments and screen-plays. it reprints all of his unpublished critical writings on literature, painting and other subjects (most of them unavailable in book form since the 1930s), the texts of his radio broadcasts for the BBC, and a selection of his poems.

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Book SynopsisNominated for 2022 South Atlantic Modern Language Association Book award Born in 1964, Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh grew up in the midst of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal reign of terror, which claimed the lives of many of his relatives. After escaping to France, where he attended film school, he returned to his homeland in the late 1980s and began work on the documentaries and fiction films that have made him Cambodia’s most celebrated living director. The fourteen essays in The Cinema of Rithy Panh explore the filmmaker’s unique aesthetic sensibility, examining the dynamic and sensuous images through which he suggests that “everything has a soul.” They consider how Panh represents Cambodia’s traumatic past, combining forms of individual and collective remembrance, and the implications of this past for Cambodia’s transition into a global present. Covering documentary and feature films, including his literary adaptations of Marguerite Duras and Kenzaburō Ōe, they examine how Panh’s attention to local context leads to a deep understanding of such major themes in global cinema as justice, imperialism, diaspora, gender, and labor. Offering fresh takes on masterworks like The Missing Picture and S-21 while also shining a light on the director’s lesser-known films, The Cinema of Rithy Panh will give readers a new appreciation for the boundless creativity and ethical sensitivity of one of Southeast Asia’s cinematic visionaries.Trade Review"In this brilliant volume, sixteen scholars explore camera, voice, memory and witness in Rithy Panh’s extraordinary cinema. Frame by frame, their essays reveal Panh as a global director, and Cambodia’s most gifted chronicler." -- Penny Edwards * author of Cambodge: The cultivation of a nation 1860-1945 *"In this brilliant volume, sixteen scholars explore camera, voice, memory and witness in Rithy Panh’s extraordinary cinema. Frame by frame, their essays reveal Panh as a global director, and Cambodia’s most gifted chronicler." -- Penny Edwards * author of Cambodge: The cultivation of a nation 1860-1945 *Table of ContentsChronology Introduction: Rithy Panh and the Cinematic Image Leslie Barnes and Joseph Mai Part I: Aftermath: A Cinema of Post-War Survival 1. The “Mad Mother” in Rithy Panh’s Films Boreth Ly 2. Resilience in the Ruins: Artistic Practice in Rithy Panh’s The Burnt Theater Joseph Mai 3. The Wounds of Memory: Poetics, Pain, and Possibilities in Rithy Panh’s Exile and Que la barque se brise Khatharya Um Part II: From Colonial to Global Cambodia 4. Rithy Panh’s The Sea Wall: Reinventing Duras in Cambodia Jack A. Yeager and Rachel Harrison 5. Rithy Panh as Chasseur d’images Jennifer Cazenave 6. Aerial Aftermaths and Reckonings from Below: Reseeing Rithy Panh’s Shiiku, the Catch Cathy J. Schlund-Vials 7. Cambodia's "Wandering Souls": Migrant Labor and the Promise of Connection Leslie Barnes Part III: The Question of Justice 8. Archiving the Perpetrator Stéphanie Benzaquen-Gautier and John Kleinen 9. Creating Duch: The Projects of Duch, François Bizot, and Rithy Panh Donald Reid 10. Rithy Panh, Jean Améry, and the Paradigm of Moral Resentment Raya Morag Part IV: Memory, Voice, and Cinematic Practice 11. Looking Back and Projecting Forward from Site 2 Lindsay French 12. Bophana’s Image and Narrative: Tragedy, Accusatory Gaze, and Hidden Treasure Vicente Sánchez-Biosca 13. Memory Translation: Rithy Panh’s Provocations to the Primacy and Virtues of the Documentary Sound/Image Index David LaRocca 14. Rithy Panh: Storyteller of the Extreme Soko Phay Acknowledgments Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisPeter 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 progress of his illness made him to alter his concept to a very personal review and reflection on his life's most significant personal and artistic impressions and moments. Liechti's widow and working partner Jolanda Gsponer, together with a group of his former collaborators, has assembled all the material of Dedications in three parts to preserve it and make the work visible. Part one is a filmed reading by Liechti from the diary he kept during his stays at the hospital and which was intended to be the film's underlying text. Part two is an audio-visual installation of the raw material for Dedications.Part three is this book, a self-contained publication of Liechti's entire diary, illustrated with some 100 video stills with captions, and including a DVD with the film's unedited 15 opening minutes.

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Book Synopsis

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