Search results for ""Author Jean-Claude Carrière""

Although Luis Bunuel, one of the great filmmakers of the century, was notoriously reluctant to discuss his own work in public, he wrote - and wrote well - on many subjects over the years. This collection proceeds chronologically, from poetry and short stories written in Bunuel's youth in Spain to an essay written in 1980, not long before his death. Newly translated into English, the writings offer startling insights into the filmmaker's life and thought. The earliest pieces came well before Bunuel joined the Surrealist movement in Paris and created the landmark film Un chien andalou with Salvador Dali.Yet these and the early Surrealist writings reveal the inventiveness of the mind that would later create such masterpieces of cinema as "L'Age d'or", "Los olvidados", "Viridiana", "The Milky Way", "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie", and "That Obscure Object of Desire". Later writings, which include screenplays and reflections on his own and others' films, illuminate many aspects of Bunuel's career, as well as the ways of thinking and perceiving that underlie his unique cinematic style. The final essay by this extraordinary artist sums up his view of the world - still vibrant and full of contradictions - at the end of his life.

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'The book is like the spoon: once invented, it cannot be bettered' - Umberto Eco.These days it is impossible to get away from discussions of whether the book will survive the digital revolution. Blogs, tweets and newspaper articles on the subject appear daily, many of them repetitive, most of them admitting ignorance of the future. Amidst the twittering, the thoughts of Jean-Claude Carrière and Umberto Eco come as a breath of fresh air. This thought-provoking book takes the form of a conversation in which Carrière and Eco discuss everything from how to define the first book to what is happening to knowledge now that infinite amounts of information are available at the click of a mouse. En route there are delightful digressions into personal anecdote. We find out about Eco's first computer and the book Carrière is most sad to have sold. And while, as Carrière says, the one certain thing about the future is that it is unpredictable, it is clear from this conversation that, in some form or other, the book will survive.

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