Tagged interview

Not all actors are filmmakers, and not all filmmakers can act. And certainly not all actor-filmmakers walk in slow motion in Times Square with cans of oil poised on their heads (in performance protest of the 20...

Albert Serra It was with some trepidation that I watched Catalonian director Albert Serra’s Historia de la meva mort (The Story of My Death) at this year’s Viennale. After quickly gaining notoriety as an en...

Frederick Wiseman’s second documentary, High School (1968), was at the time of its release an unprecedented glimpse into America’s public education system. Throughout his career, Wiseman has bristled at the ter...

Jonathan Teplitzky. Photo: Debi Enker A $16 million Australia-UK co-production, Jonathan Teplitzky’s The Railway Man tells the story of Second Lieutenant Eric Lomax, a Signal Corps engineer from Edinburgh w...

When can a filmmaker be said to have ‘a touch’? Ernst Lubitsch had a touch, but what exactly was this? A penchant for comic timing, for finding just the right way to stage a visual punch line or to tickle spect...

Orson Welles, Sophia Loren, Marlon Brando, Lauren Bacall, Michael Caine, John Gielgud and Ben Kingsley: whilst this list offers a roll-call for some of the most famous film stars of the Twentieth Century, it al...

I have been acquainted with the magazine Bref: le magazine du court métrage (1) and have followed its articles on short films for many years now. Bref is the only French ­–and perhaps, the only magazine any...

Editor of Cahiers du cinéma between 1965 and 1973, Jean-Louis Comolli’s foundational place in the history of film theory will be assured by several key texts – among them “Technique and Ideology”, “Cinema/Ideol...

In depth interview with one of the seminal figures in the emergence of a Marxist/Althusserian oriented film theory. In this first of a two-part interview, to be published over two issues, Comolli discusses the “Cahiers years” between 1965 and 1973.

A true poet of the cinema, the director of, amongst others, Russian Ark and The Sun, talks philosophy, religion, aesthetics and the Russian soul.

Using interview footage of Sokurov and combining it with other elements, the filmmakers produce a contemplative video-essay on the director.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of France’s first filmmakers’ co-op, the Collectif Juene Cinéma. Marcel Mazé, founder and president, discusses its fascinating history.

When fire destroyed the negative to Sara Driver’s 1982 debut feature, the film was thought lost forever. And then, the fortuitous discovery of a print amongst the belongings of the famed author Paul Bowles lead to its re-emergence.

I have been a David Lynch fan for many years. His cryptic narratives and the sense of dread that pervades his films have always gripped me. As a former cinema studies student, I have also enjoyed his intertextu...

Fred Schepisi has been writing, directing and producing films in Australia, America and Britain since the 1970s. Along with Peter Weir, Gillian Armstrong, and Bruce Beresford, Schepisi was a key figure in the r...

In the late 1970s, Catherine Berge’s encounter with both the films and person of King Vidor was a seminal turning point in her life. Here, she talks about her personal history with the director and her 1980 film devoted to him.

Often seen as the figurehead of the so-called “mumblecore” cineastes, Joe Swanberg discusses the aesthetic and technological practices that inform this indie phenomenon.

Earlier this year, the Korean American Film Festival in New York held a retrospective of Kim-Gibson’s work. In this interview she discusses politics, art and the documentary form.

José Luis Guerin discusses his recent film Guest, based around the year-long itinerary of the director visiting many film festivals and cultures.

A wide-ranging interview in which Gilliam talks at length about his life, his work, the malaise of the film industry, and the state of the world. As expected from Gilliam, it makes for fascinating and sometimes controversial reading.

Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright may have run for more than a year in one Parisian cinema, but its blunt examination of lonely men in a harsh and alien landscape left many Australians of the time feeling perplexed. On the occasion of its sparkling re-release, Raffaele Caputo talks with Kotcheff, who eruditely and humorously throws new light on this Antipodean classic.

The film takes as its source Cortázar’s (and wife-photographer Carol Dunlop’s) book about their unusual road trip from Paris to Marseille, titled Autonauts of the Cosmoroute. Humbert discusses the intricate process of adapting such a unique book to the screen.

The origins of the Luxembourg Cinémathèque is a fascinating story of cinéphilia in its own right. Claude Bertemes discusses the Cinémathèque’s history, along with issues about curatorship, preservation, and film and technology in the digital age.

For any scholar of the so-called New American cinema of the late ’60s and early ’70s, the career of Bob Rafelson makes for an interesting case study. A wide-ranging interview with the director of Five Easy Pieces, Stay Hungry and Mountains of the Moon.

Andrew V. McLaglen never quite reached the ranks of auteur, but he left his mark in his own way. This career interview offers real insight into the working life of a noted director in the studio era.

Dresen has directed eight feature films and, as Abel reveals, “Is one of the rare successful contemporary German directors who was born and raised in the GDR [former East Germany] and has managed to adjust to the market-driven rules of filmmaking characteristic of reunified Germany.”

Warren, together with his contemporary Pete Walker, were seen as the “two young Turks of British ’70s horror” that took the genre beyond the gothic Hammer studio template. The director of such titles as Her Private Hell, Satan’s Slave and Terror discusses his career.

Denis discusses her recent feature, 35 Shots of Rum, a film inspired by Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring, and, as Hughes puts it, “a love story – or, in fact, several love stories – told in small gestures and commonplace tragedies”.

Serra places his film dealing with the Three Wise Men in the same tradition of religious films as those of Dreyer, Rossellini and Pasolini.

The Argentine director of the impressive Los Muertos (2004) discusses his impressive recent feature, Liverpool.

The director of Acéphale and Héraclite l’obscur looks back on the people, films and events that have shaped his work and thoughts.

The Chad-born director of Bye Bye Africa, Abouna and Darratt discusses the significance of his films, and the broader context of African Cinema today.

An in-depth discussion with the director of such cult-music era-defining documentaries as Hey is Dee Dee Home, Born to Lose and the ‘Sex Pistols in America’ movie D.O.A., together with outstanding films such as Hitler’s Highway and, most recently, Winners and Losers. Surprising revelations are to be found in what Kowalski has to say on all manner of subjects.

In the first decade of the Cahiers era, Bitsch conducted many interviews with Hollywood directors. He has expressed great fondness for this particular one – because of Welles and in memory of his co-interviewer, the legendary André Bazin.

Wide-ranging interview in which Bitsch discusses his youthful cinéphilia, his association with Cahiers du Cinéma, and his work with Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, et al. So evocative, one can almost relive history in the making through his words.

Further illuminating insights come from the voice of the filmmaker herself, who was recently the subject of a retrospective at the 2007 VIENNALE.