b. November 3, 1950 – Nazareth, Israel From his first film, Al Dhakira al Khasba (Fertile Memory, 1980), Michel Khleifi displays the narrative-documentary style – blending realism, fiction, myth, and ritual – that he goes on to develop with such great effect. He also announces some of the major themes that permeate his later work: [...]
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b. October, 22, 1928 — São Paulo, Brazil Nelson Pereira dos Santos, considered the initiator of modern Brazilian cinema in the 1950s, is also its most literary filmmaker. In fact, of his 25 features, 15 were based on literary work from Brazilian writers. This has assured him a privileged place as a member of the [...]
b. 18 August 1906, Paris, France d. 31 October 1996, Clamart, Hauts-de-Seine, France Cinema is the art of forming a team. –Jean Cocteau Carné’s films now impinge upon our consciousness above all as memories, memories often as potent and unshakeable as those in our own lives. (1) –Gilbert Adair Some questions about Carné When thinking, [...]
b. 25 March 1897, Warsaw, Poland d. 2 April 1953, Paris, France I. Jean Epstein was an important figure in the school of filmmaking variously called “French Impressionism”, the “narrative avant-garde”, the “first cinematic avant-garde”, and the “pre-war French school”. (1) This school flourished in France between 1919 and 1929, and the filmmakers (and filmmaker/theorists) [...]
b. 31 May, 1917, Paris, France d. 18 February, 2004, Birni N’Konni, Niger When Jean Rouch travelled to Niger in 1954 to screen Bataille sur le grand fleuve for its protagonists, the group of hippopotamus hunters who had never before seen a film did not naively marvel at the attraction, but instead criticised Rouch’s use [...]
This article is an updated and substantially revised version of his original essay from 2003. b. March 23, 1942, Munich, Germany A cinema of disturbance: the films of Michael Haneke in context My films are intended as polemical statements against the American ‘barrel down’ cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal [...]
b. Southampton, England, 1927 Filmography Bibliography Web Resources Introduction “Not one word of criticism written has ever altered in any way my scripts or my next project. I believe in what I’m doing wholeheartedly, passionately, and what’s more, I simply go about my business. I suppose such a thing can be annoying to some people.” – Ken Russell [...]
b. 4 April 1957, Orimattila, Finland Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources Two Finns are in a bar. After hours of silence, one man raises his glass to the other and says, “Cheers.” The other man snaps back, “I didn’t come here for conversation.” The world of Aki Kaurismäki undoubtedly owes much to the deadpan mien of his [...]
b. February 4, 1914, London, England d. August 3, 1995, Los Angeles, California, USA Filmography Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources One of the most important auteurs in 1950s cinema is one of the most marginal: Ida Lupino. Even today, only two of her feature films, The Hitch-Hiker (1953) and The Trouble With Angels (1966), are [...]
b. 1948 Paris, France Filmography Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources When you look at the hills, beyond the houses and beyond the trees, where the earth touches the sky, that’s the horizon. The closer you get to that line, the father it moves. If you walk towards it, it moves away. It flees from you. [...]
b. 1888 Berlin, Germany d. 1976 Locarno, Switzerland Filmography Bibliography Web Resources Although its centre was Paris, the cinematic avant-garde that emerged after World War I originated in Germany. Composed almost exclusively of modern painters and photographers, the international experimental film movement mounted a sustained effort to extend the formal strategies of the various strands of [...]
b. November, 28, 1961, Mexico City, Mexico. Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources Moviemakers these days work in a field undergoing many kinds of change, but perhaps the most notable is the collapse of the old notion of a ‘foreign film.’ – Elisabeth Eaves (1) Up to 2008, only two of the six long features Alfonso [...]
b. 23 October, 1954, Pingtung County, Taiwan Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Ang Lee’s Fine Line Between East and West Taiwan-born Ang Lee is that most unlikely of filmmakers: a man equally at home with Jane Austen or Marvel Comics, the American West or Qing Dynasty China, the family drama or myths of [...]
b. 15 December 1954, Liverpool, England Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Introduction Ever since Repo Man burst onto the scene in 1984, Alex Cox has been one of the most disruptive voices in Anglophone independent cinema. Although his public profile has diminished since he made his name in the 1980s with Repo Man [...]
b. 31 October 1961, New Zealand Filmography Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Peter Jackson, currently one of the world’s most well-known directors and the unofficial face of the entire nation of New Zealand, started his career in a somewhat irregular fashion. He grew up in the small seaside community of Pukerua Bay in New Zealand. [...]
b. 16 April 1889, Walworth, London, England, UK d. 25 December 1977, Vevey, Switzerland Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources When one views Kid Auto Races at Venice, a 1914 Keystone film that runs a scant six minutes, and sees the familiar image of Charlie Chaplin’s little tramp enter the scene, it remains as [...]
b. 14 May 1971, New York, New York, USA Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Sofia Coppola is a visually stylish film director. Undoubtedly, her self-confessed predilection for æsthetically pleasing fashion, photography and art has largely contributed to the appealing form of her work. Indeed, one cannot overlook the self-conscious beauty of her films: [...]
b. 5 June 1928, Shipley, Yorkshire, England d. 14 November 1991, Los Angeles Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources The Light Touch of Tony Richardson: Pushing the Boundaries I have always gone on to new places and undertakings, each different from those already familiar to me (‘oh where is that sense of unifying [...]
b. Leonard Charles Huia Lye b. Christchurch, New Zealand, July 5, 1901 d. Warwick, Rhode Island, May 15, 1980 Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources This profile contains the revised text of an entry first published in The Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, in 2006. Flip Sides of Len Lye: Direct Film / [...]
b. 31 January, 1942, Northwood, Middlesex, UK d. 19 February, 1994, London, UK Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources Derek Jarman: Radical Traditionalist By the time of his death from AIDS related complications in February 1994, Derek Jarman had amassed a reputation as one of Britain’s most controversial filmmakers. Indeed, only Michael Powell, Ken Russell and [...]
b. 8 October 1897, Tbilisi, Georgia d. 4 December 1987, Los Angeles, USA Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources “Nostalgia for places one has never seen” (1) In his canonical, often provocative, still influential if sometimes damaging – at least in terms of its effect on the reputation of specific filmmakers – account [...]
b. 7 February 1929, Iquique, Chile Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Venerated by cult cinema enthusiasts while dismissed by most other critics, the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky present strange and magical visions that are not easily categorised or understood. Informed by a lifetime of spiritual journey, Jodorowsky’s cinematic output is filled with [...]
b. 28 December, 1931, Paris, France d. 30 November, Bellevue-la-Montagne, France Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources Guy Debord and the Aesthetics of Cine-Sabotage Just as the projection was about to begin, Guy-Ernest Debord was supposed to step onto the stage and make a few introductory remarks. Had he done so, he would simply have said: [...]
b. 1894, Galveston, Texas d. 1982, Paso Robles, California Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources Committed to the most unyielding and almost brutally positive American determination, King Vidor was a man of considerable artistic ambition who came of age in a period when movies were a new medium and wide-open for individual points of view. He [...]
b. February 4, 1940, New York, New York, USA Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources Though typically associated with certain low-budget products of the horror genre, George A. Romero remains an important but neglected figure in American independent cinema. Working largely outside the realm of the mainstream studio system, Romero’s films feature radical allegories reflecting relevant [...]
b. April 6, 1907, New York City, USA d. August 30, 2000, Santa Monica, USA Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Joseph H. Lewis’ reputation rests on two major contributions to the film noir canon, the transgressive and boundary-breaching Gun Crazy (1950), arguably the most enduring and influential of all lovers-on-the-lam thrillers, and [...]
b. 28 June, 1922, Pistoia, Italy d. 14 May, 2001, Rome, Italy Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources The Melancholy of Sex Love destroys your will. And where there is no will, there can be no guilt. – Giancarlo Giannini, La Grande Bourgeoise* *Unless a film is better known internationally by its English [...]
b. Werner Herzog b. 5 September, 1942, Munich, Germany Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources With a singular vision continually blurring the fine line between reality and fiction, Werner Herzog has become one of cinema’s most controversial and enigmatic filmmakers. A strong authorial presence pervades each of his films, whether fictional features or [...]
b. Alexandre Oscar Dupont b. 22 November, 1960, Suresnes, France Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources This article also appears in Spanish in the October 2006 edition of Close-Up. Mais dèjá, au début des années 70, le rock était quasiment fini, c’est comme le cinéma, comme à la guerre: il y a les [...]
b. 19 February 1930, New York, USA d. 6 July 2002, Los Angeles, USA Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Along with Sidney Lumet, John Frankenheimer was the major director to emerge from and be influenced by the aesthetics of live television drama, which flourished briefly in the US before it became commercially [...]
b. 1952, Oakland, California, USA Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Craig Baldwin considers his work “underground” rather than “experimental” or “avant-garde”. Whereas the avant-garde is primarily concerned with formal exercise, and “experimental” implies some experiment (i.e. that something new is being tried for the purpose of determining whether of not it can [...]
b. 19 September, 1949, London, England Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources “A state of loving detachment”: Sally Potter’s Impassioned and Intellectual Cinema Part of the goal was to evoke a state of mind in which people are thinking and feeling simultaneously, and not just one or the other – reflecting on their [...]
b. September 25, 1949, Calzada de Calatrava, Spain Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Pedro Almodóvar is the cultural symbol par excellence of the restoration of democracy in Spain after nearly 40 years of the right-wing military dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Since Almodóvar’s emergence as a transgressive underground cineaste in the late 1970s [...]
b. 29 July 1932 Bristol, England Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Beyond Get Carter: Landscapes of Alienation Although Mike Hodges will always be associated with Get Carter (1971), this is as much a mixed blessing as limiting Orson Welles to Citizen Kane (1941). Both are “great” films. But defining any major artist [...]
b. 22 January, 1875, Oldham County, Kentucky, USA d. 24 July, 1948, Los Angeles, California, USA Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources The Birth of an Art Introduction Is there anyone today – any historian, any student of film, anyone with the least political sensitivity – who will dare to praise D.W. Griffith? [...]
b. 25 January 1955, Paris, France. Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources Olivier Assayas emerged as a filmmaker in France in the second half of the 1980s, after writing for Cahiers du cinéma between 1979 and 1985. This activity as a critic elicits an obvious parallel with the young turks in the 1950s, who all wrote [...]
b. Wilhelm Anton Frohs b. 7 April, 1903, Vienna, Austria-Hungary d. 11 August, 1980, Vienna, Austria Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources A specific blend of historical and aesthetic sensibilities melded into a unique style in Austrian cinema during the early sound period in the 1930s. It soon became known as an entirely new and geographically [...]
b. 7 April, 1939, Detroit, Michigan, USA Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Most critiques of Francis Ford Coppola’s career interweave film criticism with biography and produce an account of a wasted genius, a failed wunderkind, a director who had a few great years, produced some magnificent movies, but slid further and further [...]
b. 25 January, 1950, Chigasaki, Kanagawa, Japan Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources In his review of Keiho (39 keihou dai sanjyukyu jyo), Yoshimitsu Morita’s 1999 detective-comedy-psycho-thriller-courtroom-drama, Aaron Gerow recalled the old distinction between auteurs, defined broadly as directors whose films project a personal stamp, and craftsmen, whose films may exhibit great technical skill but lack [...]
b. Roger William Corman b. April 5, 1926, Detroit, Michigan, USA Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Along with John Cassavetes, Roger Corman was one of the first American independent filmmakers to create work entirely on his own terms and turf. Much like producer Val Lewton in the 1940s at RKO, where he [...]
b. 18 December 1946, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources You’re on to a much safer bet liking someone like Martin Scorsese, whose genius shows up in all the fully approved forms – plowing a lonely course outside the studio system, obsessively burrowing down into an identifiable subset of obsessions, tearing films from [...]
b. Phillip Roger Noyce b. 29 April 1950, Griffith, New South Wales, Australia Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources Of the so-called “Hollywood A-List” directors, Phillip Noyce is one of the least known by name. Unlike most of his colleagues, his works are never tagged “a Phillip Noyce film” but more humbly as [...]
b. October 28, 1935, Birkenhead, Cheshire, England d. July 24, 1990, London, England Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources Fifteen years ago the death of Alan Clarke was followed by belated career recognition in the form of BBC rebroadcasts and a retrospective at the National Film Theatre. Another retrospective at the 1998 Edinburgh International Film Festival [...]
b. Yílmaz Pütün b. April 1, 1937, Adana, Turkey d. September 9, 1984, Paris, France Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources The critic J. Hoberman once described the Turkish filmmaker Yílmaz Güney as “something like Clint Eastwood, James Dean, and Che Guevara combined”, (1) and for anyone familiar with the particulars of his [...]
b. George Henri Anton Ivens b. November 18, 1898, Nijmegen, The Netherlands d. June 28, 1989, Paris, France Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources Joris Ivens made his first documentary films in the late 1920s, working alone with a hand-held 35 mm camera. In 1945 he commented that the time of the one-man documentary was over, [...]
