Introduction ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1 Cinematography 1
2 Cinema and Sound 26
3 Working with Actors 48
4 Cinematic Rhythm and Structure 79
5 The Process: Pre-Production, Production,
and Post-Production 92
6 The Business: Financing, Distribution, and Exhibition 148
7 Cinema, Art, and Reality 165
8 The Viewer 187
9 Cinema and Society 209
Profi les of the Filmmakers 233
Tomas Alfredson, Özcan Alper, Olivier Assayas, Serge Bozon,
Catherine Breillat, Andrew Bujalski, Charles Burnett, Pedro Costa,
Constantin Costa-Gavras, Claire Denis, Sergei Dvortsevoy,
Jihan El-Tahri, Ari Folman, Matteo Garrone, Bette Gordon,
Eric Guirado, Lance Hammer, Mia Hansen-Love, Mary Harron,
Scott Hicks, Courtney Hunt, Agnès Jaoui, Kiyoshi Kurosawa,
Pablo Larrain, Anne Le Ny, Lucrecia Martel, Brillante Mendoza,
Teona Strugar Mitevska, Gerardo Naranjo, Lucia Puenzo,
Shamim Sarif, Paul Schrader, Céline Sciamma, Jerzy Skolimowski,
Jean-Marie Téno, Ivo Trajkov, Melvin Van Peebles, Gary Winick,
Jia Zhangke
Subtitle: A
Conversation with Thirty-nine Filmmakers from around the World Author:
Elena Oumano Subject:Film Paper ISBN:
978-0-8135-4877-7 Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-4876-0 Pages:
296 pages Publication Date: October 2010
Praise:
"Oumano's work shines--she offers the
choicest nuggets and insights by
filmmakers talking about their art."—Wheeler Winston Dixon,
coauthor of A Short History of Film Description:
Imagine attending a
fascinating film forum among a distinguished and varied panel of cinema
legends. An afternoon or evening where contemporary filmmakers from
around the world—Kazakhstan, Turkey, Macedonia, Portugal, Chile,
Argentina, Egypt, Cameroon, Australia, the Philippines, South Africa,
Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Japan, the People’s Republic of China,
Mexico, Poland, the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, and
France—gather together to discuss how they arrive at the creative
choices that bring their film projects to life.
Can’t spare the time from work or class? Travel expense too great? What? You can’t even find such a
collaborative event?
Then imagine curling up with a good book, maybe a shot of espresso in
hand, and becoming engrossed in the exciting and informative
conversation that Elena Oumano has ingeniously crafted from her
personal and individual interviews with these artists. Straying far
from the usual choppy question-and-answer format, Cinema Today saves you from plowing
through another tedious read, in which the same topics and issues are
directed to each subject, over and over—an experience that is like
being trapped in a revolving door.
Oumano stops that revolving door by following a lively
symposium-in-print format, with the filmmakers’ words and thoughts
grouped together under various key cinema topics. It is as though these
experts are speaking to each other and you are their
audience—collectively they reflect on and explore issues and concerns
of modern filmmaking, from the practical to the aesthetic, including
the process, cinematic rhythm and structure, and the many aspects of
the media: business, the viewer, and cinema’s place in society. Whether
you are a movie lover, a serious student of cinema, or simply
interested in how we communicate in today’s global village through
films that so profoundly affect the world, Cinema Today is for you.
About the Author:
ELENA OUMANO is a professor of communications at BMCC of the
City University of New York. As a music and film journalist, her work
has been published in the New York
Times, Spin, the Nation, the Village Voice, Amazon.com, Interview magazine, L.A. Weekly, the L.A. Times, Image magazine of the San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle, GRAMMY magazine, and other media
outlets. She is also the author, coauthor, or ghost writer of more than
twenty books.
