Books by Andrew Horton

Offers the study of changes in Soviet cinema that have been taking place since 1985. This title examines a variety of films from "BOMZH" (initials standing for homeless drifter) through Taxi Blues and the glasnost blockbuster "Little Vera" to the Latvian documentary "Is It Easy to Be Young?" and the "new wave" productions of "Wild Kazakh boys."

As late as 1976, George Roy Hill was the first and only director to have two films on the all-time top ten box office hits: "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting". This book begins with a discussion of the way Hill's films often make their most important statements on the subtextual level.

Greek film director Theo Angelopoulos is one of the most influential and widely respected filmmakers in the world today, yet his films are still largely unknown to the American public. In the first book in English to focus on Angelopoulos's unique cinematic vision, Andrew Horton provides an illuminating contextual study that attempts to demonstrate the quintessentially Greek nature of the director's work. Horton situates the director in the context of over 3,000 years of Greek culture and history. Somewhat like Andrei Tarkovsky in Russia or Antonioni in Italy, Angelopoulos has used cinema to explore the history and individual identities of his culture. With such far-reaching influences as Greek myth, ancient tragedy and epic, Byzantine iconography and ceremony, Greek and Balkan history, modern Greek pop culture including bouzouki music, shadow puppet theater, and the Greek music hall tradition, Angelopoulos emerges as an original "e;thinker"e; with the camera, and a distinctive director who is bound to make a lasting contribution to the art form. In a series of films including The Travelling Players, Voyage to Cythera, Landscape in the Mist, The Suspended Step of the Stork, and most recently in Ulysses' Gaze starring Harvey Keitel (winner of the 1995 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix), Angelopoulos has developed a remarkable cinematic style, characterized by carefully composed scenes and an enormous number of extended long shots. In an age of ever decreasing attention spans, Angelopoulos offers a cinema of contemplation.