The Cineaste Interviews: On the Art and Politics of the Cinema - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0941702022 ISBN 13: 9780941702027

Publisher: Lake View Pr, 1983

Synopsis

Roger Ebert wrote the foreword to this collection of 35 in-depth interviews with the world's leading filmmakers and critics, from Fonda to Fassbinder, from Canby to Costa-Gavras, from Sarris to Sayles.

Cineaste, America's leading magazine on the art and politics of the cinema, has become known for its in-depth interviews with filmmakers and film critics of international stature. The best of these interviews are now collected in this volume.

The interviews: Constantin Costa-Gavras, Glauber Rocha, Miguel Littin, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ousmane Sembene, Elio Petri, Dusan Makavejev; Gillo Pontecorvo; Alain Tanner, Jane Fonda, Francesco Rosi, Lina Wertmuller, Roberto Rossellini, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Gordon Parks, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, John Howard Lawson, Paul Schrader, Agnes Varda, Bertrand Tavernier, Andrew Sarris, Bruce Gilbert, Jorge Semprun, Vincent Canby, John Berger, Andrzej Wajda, John Sayles, Krzysztof Zanussi, Molly Haskell, Budd Schulberg, Satyajit Ray.

The unique value of these interviews will be the comments by the filmmakers on the crucial artistic and political decisions confronted in the making of their films, many of which have become classics of their kind. The filmmakers and critics talk about their own development, films which influenced their work, and the continuing controversies and alternative approaches in filmmaking. They take on their critics-and their own previous positions-with a clarity and forcefulness to be expected from some of the leading practitioners of their art.

The interviews are introduced with a foreword by Roger Ebert, television commentator and critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Mr. Ebert discusses the relation of art and politics and some of the common perspectives which unite filmmakers of different cultures and of diverse artistic and political temperaments.

Among the subjects of these wide-ranging talks are: the choice between popular and experimental forms of narrative; the filmmaker's responsibility to society; blacks and women in the movies; the rise of third world filmmaking; Hollywood's left and progressives; the conditions of filmmaking in different societies; the challenges of independent production; different forms of censorship, from the U.S. to Poland; trends in criticism-auteur theory to feminism; the power of the reviewer.

About this title

From the Publisher:

"An invaluable compendium of conversations, many of them provocative, involving the great filmmakers of contemporary cinema."-International Film Guide

"A fascinating look at the not always easy marriage of art and politics."-Library Journal

"The outstanding value of these intensely serious, hardhitting encounters is in their total avoidance of the self-serving blandness, narcissistic superficiality and most importantly, fraudulent objectivity of what passes for interviews in main-line film magazines. Here the stress is where it must be: on the social uses and misuses of film, the creation of and control of culture, the victories and brutal constraints placed on the cry for human freedom."-Amos Vogel, Founder, New York Film Festival

"The Cineaste Interviews are among the best source documents I know of in film. Pithy information direct from the filmmakers. Invaluable."-James Monaco, author, "American Film Now"

"Cineaste has advance the art and the politics of the interview beyond any film journal. These interviews form an essential record of the art and the politics of filmmaking in our time."-Robert Sklar, Author, "Movie Made America"

About the Author:

Dan Georgakas is an editor of Cineaste magazine. Among his other books are "Detroit: I Do Mind Dying," a study of urban rebellion; "Solidarity Forever: An Oral History of the IWW"; "The Methuselah Factors-Strategies for Longer Life." Lenny Rubenstein, an editor of Cineaste for a decade, has taught at Rutgers, the New School for Social Research, the City University of New York and the State University of New York. He is the author of "The Great Spy Films-A Pictorial History."

About this edition

• Publisher: Lake View Pr
• Publication date: 1983
• ISBN 10: 0941702022
• ISBN 13: 9780941702027
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 396
• Editor: Georgakas Dan, Rubenstein Lenny