This book provides an accessible overview of each director’s contribution to cinema, incorporating a discussion of their career, major works and impact.

This important work fills the need for a reasonably priced yet comprehensive volume on major directors in the history of Japanese film. With clear insight and without academic jargon, Jacoby examines the works of over 150 filmmakers to uncover what makes their films worth watching. Included are artistic profiles of everyone from Yutaka Abe to Isao Yukisada, including masters like Kinji Fukasaku, Juzo Itami, Akira Kurosawa, Takashi Miike, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and Yoji Yamada. Each entry includes a critical summary and filmography, making this book an essential reference and guide. UK-based Alexander Jacoby is a writer and researcher on Japanese film.

"Encompassing the careers of up to 600 directors - over 60 new to this edition - working in the US and Canada today, this volume is an invaluable reference for students, researchers and enthusiasts of film and popular culture. Each entry provides biographical information as well as insightful textual and thematic analysis of the director's work. In comprehensively covering a wide range of film-makers - from more established mainstream luminaries such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott and Kathryn Bigelow, through independent mavericks like Hal Hartley, Atom Egoyan, Jim Jarmusch and the Coen brothers, to innovative emerging talents including Marc Forster (Monster's Ball), Todd Field (In the Bedroom) and David Gordon Green (George Washington) - the shifting landscape of contemporary film-making is brought into sharp focus." Sur la 4e de couv.

Commanding a cult following among horror fans, Italian film director Dario Argento is best known for his work in two closely related genres, the crime thriller and supernatural horror. In his four decades of filmmaking, Argento has displayed a commitment to innovation, from his directorial debut with 1970's suspense thriller The Bird with the Crystal Plumage to 2009's Giallo. His films, like the lurid yellow-covered murder-mystery novels they are inspired by, follow the suspense tradition of hard-boiled American detective fiction while incorporating baroque scenes of violence and excess. This book uses controversies and theories about the films' reflections on sadism, gender, sexuality, psychoanalysis, aestheticism, and genre to declare the anti-rational logic of Argento's oeuvre. Approaching the films as rhetorical statements made through extremes of sound and vision, it places Argento in a tradition of aestheticized horror that includes De Sade, De Quincey, Poe, and Hitchcock.

There is no cinema with such effect as that of the hallucinatory Italian horror film. From Riccardo Freda's I Vampiri in 1956 to Il Cartaio in 2004, this work recounts the origins of the genre, celebrates at length ten of its auteurs, and discusses the noteworthy films of many others associated with the genre. The directors discussed in detail are Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava, Mario Bava, Ruggero Deodato, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, Antonio Margheriti, Aristide Massaccesi, Bruno Mattei, and Michele Soavi. Each chapter includes a biography, a detailed career account, discussion of influences both literary and cinematic, commentary on the films, with plots and production details, and an exhaustive filmography. A second section contains short discussions and selected filmographies of other important horror directors. The work concludes with a chapter on the future of Italian horror and an appendix of important horror films by directors other than the 50 profiled. Stills, posters, and behind-the-scenes shots illustrate the book.

This concise, authoritative volume analyses critically the work of 100 British directors, from the innovators of the silent period to contemporary auteurs.

Over the last two decades or so, the New Danish Cinema has established itself as an important source of cinematic renewal and innovation, and as a model for how small, minor or peripheral cinemas can survive in an industry dominated by Global Hollywood. Following in the footsteps of critically-acclaimed The Danish Directors (also published by Intellect), The Danish Directors 2 provides a practitioner’s perspective on the social, cultural, and economic milieus in which Danish film-makers have been able to develop their practice, and to thrive. With insider information about the making, marketing and distribution of award-winning films, and interviews with seminal directors such as Anders Thomas Jensen, Annette K. Olesen, and Lone Scherfig, The Danish Directors 2 allows readers entry into what might seem to be a forbidding body of work. The editors are knowledgeable and sensitive interrogators, and their appreciation of the specific qualities of each director’s work elicits thoughtful replies. This volume will appeal to students, scholars, and cinephiles alike.

This title examines the remarkable life of Steven Spielberg. Readers will learn about his family background, childhood, and education, as well as his career as a movie producer and his famous works. Color photos, detailed maps, and informative sidebars accompany easy-to-read, compelling text. Features include a timeline, facts, additional resources, web sites, a glossary, a bibliography, and an index. Essential Lives is a series in Essential Library, an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company. Grades 6-9.

This unique book will help directors improve their work