Film Director

Cinematography is both an art and science—capturing motion requires a combination of skill, ingenuity, and artistic genius. Lighting, camera movement, and framing are just a few of the important components in the process of turning words on a page into unforgettable moving images. It’s not hyperbole to say that Roger Deakins is the greatest artist & scientist that the craft of cinematography has ever known. In Reflections: On Cinematography, Sir Roger Deakins offers his fans a one-of-a-kind look into his life and improbable road to Hollywood immortality.

Millie has one goal: to make a movie in tribute to her late father. At the Manhattan Movie Academy, run by Ricky O’Naire, her favorite director, she’s determined to make it happen. But before she can finish her project, the academy is shut down. Six months later, she sees a preview for the new O’Naire movie—and he’s stolen her idea. Outraged, she reunites her former film crew to steal the movie and hold it for ransom days before its high-profile premiere. Putting their training and film-nerd backgrounds to use, they pull off the heist in extravagant fashion.

Robert Altman and the Elaboration of Hollywood Storytelling reveals an Altman barely glimpsed in previous critical accounts of the filmmaker. This re-examination of his seminal work during the "Hollywood Renaissance" or "New Hollywood" period of the early 1970s (including M*A*S*H and Nashville) sheds new light on both the films and the filmmaker, reframing Altman as a complex, pragmatic innovator whose work exceeds, but is also grounded in, the norms of classical Hollywood storytelling rather than someone who rejected those norms in favor of modernist art cinema.

Starting out in the mid-70s, a time when few women were directing movies, Susan Seidelman was determined to become a filmmaker. She longed to tell stories about the unrepresented characters she wanted to see on screen: unconventional women in unusual circumstances, needing to express themselves and maintain their autonomy. Her genre-blending films reflect a passion for classic Hollywood storytelling, mixed with a playful New Wave spirit, informed by her years living in downtown NYC.

Film Director Harry cheated on his lover Emma and get engaged to the cinema actress Sophia. In the meantime, Emma got pregnant and Harry hurt Emma. The next day, unfortunately, Harry was transformed into a female. What will happen next? Listen to the rest of the story, guys!

Dominic Smith’s The Electric Hotel winds through the nascent days of cinema in Paris and Fort Lee, New Jersey - America’s first movie town - and on the battlefields of Belgium during World War I. A sweeping work of historical fiction, it shimmers between past and present as it tells the story of the rise and fall of a prodigious film studio and one man’s doomed obsession with all that passes in front of the viewfinder.

What do you do when actors won't do what you tell them to? Remembering his own awkwardness and terror as a beginning director working with actors who always had their own ideas, director John Badham has a bookload of knowledge to pass along in this inspired and insightful must-listen for cinema fans as well as actors and directors at all levels of their craft.

Today's most acclaimed film directors reveal intimate behind-the-scenes details of their most influential work and their unique approaches to their art. In the companion to the Silver Plaque-winning Starz/Encore documentary series, this book offers interviews with 13 top filmmakers. Contains each director's filmography, complete listings of major awards, and cast credits for all films discussed.

When Italian journalist Father Antonio Spadaro and Martin Scorsese first sat down together in Scorsese’s home, neither could have predicted the depth of the conversation, intellectual exchange, or friendship that would result. While discussing the acclaimed director’s film Silence, about the persecution of Jesuits in Japan, they began a dialogue about faith that continues to this day.

Hailed by the New Yorker as "a crucial forebear of generations," award–winning director Joyce Chopra came of age in the 1950s, prior to the dawn of feminism, and long before the #MeToo movement. As a young woman, it seemed impossible that she might one day realize her dream of becoming a film director. In this engaging, candid memoir, award–winning director Joyce Chopra describes how she learned to navigate the deeply embedded sexism of the film industry, helping to pave the way for a generation of women filmmakers who would come after her.

Independent films are becoming ever more popular, as many movie fans tire of mainstream movie formulas such as sequels, comic book characters, explosions, car chases, romantic comedies and the like. This book explores the world of indie, low-budget and other less mainstream movies. It includes reviews of specific movies, explorations of notable actors and directors as well as essays on recurring themes and genres found in independent films.

While many film fans may not be familiar with Bill Duke's name, they most certainly recognize his face. Dating back to the 1970s, Duke has appeared in a number of popular films, including Car Wash, American Gigolo, Commando, Predator, and X-Men: The Last Stand. Fewer still might be aware of Duke's extraordinary accomplishments off-screen as a talented director, producer, entrepreneur, and humanitarian. Bill Duke is the memoir of a Hollywood original.

Warner Bros. Studio is best known as a media conglomerate with a broad range of intellectual property, spanning movies, TV shows, and streaming content. Despite popular interest in the origins of this empire, the core of the Warner Bros. saga cannot be found in its commercial successes. It is the story of four brothers—Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack—whose vision for Hollywood helped shape the world of entertainment.

Los Angeles, anni trenta. Con l’avvento del nazismo il regista Georg Wilhelm Pabst lascia la Francia dove sta lavorando e si trasferisce negli Stati Uniti. È uno dei grandi maestri del cinema tedesco d’avanguardia, ha diretto le più importanti star del muto e portato al successo Greta Garbo rendendola immortale, ma in America è solo uno come tanti. Incapace di adattarsi ai meccanismi dello studio system, dopo aver girato un film che si rivela un fiasco, non vede più un futuro a Hollywood e abbandona il sole della California per tornare in Europa.

1974 was a busy year for Mel Brooks. Although still recovering after a series of failed projects threatened his career, he pulled off a one-two punch that saw the release of two of the most beloved American comedies ever made: Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Although both films are well-known, the stories beyond the making of each movie are less so. How did they come to be, and how did the era's culture and politics not only permit them to be made, but help them to become enduring comedy classics?

Ron Howard is long overdue to have his filmography viewed through the lens of the auteur theory. Since his debut in the late-1970s, he has remained one of the most prolific and recognizable working filmmakers, and yet... his "directed by" titles have garnished a low amount of commentary by film academics. Even younger mainstream directors have earned more than one volume of academic attention ? and yet Howard, who has continually developed himself, seems to only get treated with pop-culture-trivia "fun fact" regarding his acting career.

A Companion to Martin Scorsese is a comprehensive collection of original essays assessing the career of one of America's most prominent contemporary filmmakers....

Featuring a foreword from legendary director Martin Scorcese, Woodstock: Interviews and Recollections combines stories, anecdotes, and perspectives from dozens of musicians and filmmakers about the making of the Academy Award-winning documentary Woodstock. Assembled by associate producer Dale Bell, the oral history takes listeners behind the scenes - and behind the camera - at the decade-defining event.

The Camera Lies unpacks Hitchcock's legacy both as a director who continuously taught audiences to distrust appearance and as a man with an uncanny insight into the human capacity for deceit and misinterpretation.

Greg Mitchell's The Beginning or the End chronicles the first efforts of American media and culture to process the Atomic Age. A movie that began as a cautionary tale inspired by atomic scientists aiming to warn the world against a nuclear arms race would be drained of all impact due to revisions and retakes ordered by President Truman and the military.