Books on Cinema

Paul Schrader is a director, screenwriter and film critic. Raised in a Calvinist family who deprived him of the cinema in his youth, Schrader was only able to see the first film at age 17 ("Other college kids had to vandalize government buildings. go to movies. ", as he would say later). This led to the construction of his late cinephilia in a more intellectual than emotional way. Hence, in the films written by him, the spectator feels uncomfortable with the imperfection and lack of attachment to his protagonists, existentially disturbed and self-destructive, but redeemed in the last scene that justifies the long process of violence to which they had been subjected. Although he is most remembered for his collaboration with Martin Scorsese in 4 films - Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Bringing Out the Dead (1999) - the ones he directed are equally astonishing [ Hardcore (1978) and Affliction (1997)], with a strong and inn...

Colin MacCabe is a British academic, writer, film producer and a professor of English and film at the University of Pittsburgh. A former editor of Screen magazine and a collaborator of British Film Institute (BFI), he has written books on James Joyce ( James Joyce and the Revolution of the Word ) and Jean-Luc Godard ( Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70 ). His book Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics analyses visual and sound aspects of the French filmmaker films since the Nouvelle Vague years until his television work, investigating Godard’s oeuvre through a technological, political and sexual perspective. In each chapter Godard gives a brief comment through interviews conducted by MacCabe. Excerpts: “[On Une Femme Mariée ] When we are made privy to her inner thoughts they offer no coherent account of her situation but rather a stream of disconnected phrases. This lack of a coherent view enables the film to break down a unified image of a woman’s body, held in a man’s lo...

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) is, arguably, not only the most important living filmmaker, but also one of the greatest directors of all-time. A philosopher thinking with a camera, raising questions about cinema, society, politics and History, in innovative and non-conforming ways, his body of work has influenced filmmakers from Europe to America, from the mainstream to the avant-garde, more than any other director. He is best known for being part of the  Nouvelle Vague  with revolutionary movies as the cinephilic and exuberant noir  À Bout de Souffle  ( Breathless , 1960), the existentialist  Vivre Sa Vie  ( My Life to Live , 1962) or the disconsolately romantic  Le Mépris  ( Contempt , 1963). From the end of the '60s until mid-'70s he entered in a militant phase with Jean-Pierre Gorin and continued a controversial oeuvre with political films as  Vladimir et Rosa  (1971). In the '80s he returned to, in a way, more commercial pictures as ...

Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist. Known for his writings and practice of montage applied on his films, his filmic work shows an artist with total dominion of the plastic aspect of the cinema, causing a singular psychological effect through the collision of shots with carefully thought-out compositions. For the aesthetic avant-gardism of his works and contribution to the cinematographic technique, he is now regarded as one of the highest exponents in the history of cinema. He was a lover of Kabuki theater and classic literature, who influenced his way of thinking about films. A student of architecture, he joined the Bolshevik revolution, collaborating as a painter, decorator and director in the Proletcult Theatre (1920-1924), the aesthetic instrument of the new regime. Then he made the highly acclaimed  Strike  (1925),  Battleship Potemkin  (1925) and  October  (1928), whose unusual camera angles and dynamic use o...