OntheBackofOurImages Format: Paperback

Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne are giants in contemporary world cinema, steadfastly radical in both principles and approach. Their films tackle social and political issues by focusing keenly on the intimate stories of individuals locked into their fates by unjust systems. Now available for the first time in English, this two volume set collects over 20 years of Luc's journals as the brothers work through their films, along with the shooting scripts of these films.
For creative people in any discipline, this is the document of a master artist’s mind at work, measuring sustained introspection against true and constant engagement in the lived world.
Filmmakers will get extended lessons on conceptualization, collaboration, and execution. Students and fans of contemporary cinema will gain insight to the thought and effort that's behind each image.

Luc Dardenne and his brother Jean-Pierre Dardenne (collectively referred to as the Dardenne brothers) are a Belgian filmmaking duo: writing, producing and directing their films together since the 1970s. They came to international attention in the mid-1990s with La Promesse (The Promise), and they won their first major international film prize when Rosetta won the Palme d'Or (the highest prize awarded) at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. In 2005, for their film L’Enfant (The Child), they won the Palme d'Or a second time, putting them in an elite club with only seven other directors. Their film Le Silence de Lorna (Lorna's Silence) won Best Screenplay at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Their film The Kid with a Bike won the Grand Prix at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, received one Golden Globe nomination and eight Magritte Award nominations. In 2015, their film Deux jours, une nuit (Two Days, One Night) received nine Magritte Award nominations (winning three) and one Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Marion Cotillard.

Jeffrey Zuckerman is digital editor of Music & Literature Magazine. His translations from French include Ananda Devi’s Eve Out of Her Ruins (Deep Vellum, 2016) and Antoine Volodine’s Radiant Terminus (Open Letter, 2017) as well as numerous texts by Marie Darrieussecq, Hervé Guibert, Régis Jauffret, and Kaija Saariaho, among others. A graduate of Yale University, his writing and translations have appeared in Best European Fiction, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review Daily, Tin House, and Vice. He is a recipient of a 2016 PEN/Heim Translation fund grant for his translation from the French of The Complete Stories of Hervé Guibert. He was named a Top 20 Translator Under 40 by Culture Trip.