Books in the Conversations with Filmmakers Series series

Bertrand Tavernier was widely considered to be the leading light in a generation of French filmmakers who launched their careers in the 1970s. In this collection of interviews he discusses the arc of his career following in the lineage of the Lumiere brothers, in that his goal, like theirs, is to ""show the world to the world."

Bertrand Tavernier (b. 1941) is widely considered to be the leading light in a generation of French filmmakers who launched their careers in the 1970s, in the wake of the New Wave. In this collection, containing numerous interviews translated from French and available in English for the first time, he discusses the arc of his career.

This wide-ranging and insightful collection of interviews with D.A. Pennebaker (b. 1925) spans the prolific career of this pioneer of observational cinema. From the 1950s to the present day, D.A. Pennebaker has made documentary films that have revealed the world of politics, celebrity culture, and the music industry.

After a robust career in the Netherlands as the country's most successful director, Paul Verhoeven built an impressive career in the US with controversial blockbusters. Paul Verhoeven: Interviews covers every phase of the director's career, beginning with six newly translated Dutch newspaper interviews and ending with a set of previously unpublished interviews dedicated to his most recent work.

A refugee from post-World War II Europe who emigrated to the US in 1949, Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) became one of America's foremost champions of independent cinema and one of its most innovative filmmakers. This collection of eighteen interviews covers almost sixty years of the filmmaker's career.

These interviews trace Wes Craven's life and career, from his upbringing in a strict religious family and his life as an academic to his years toiling in exploitation cinema. The volume also chronicles Craven's ascendancy as an independent director, his work within the studio system, and his eventual triumph in mainstream cinema.

David O. Russell (b. 1958) boasts a diverse body of work as a writer and director, spanning multiple genres and featuring radically differing aesthetic styles. This career-spanning volume features conversations with scholars and journalists as well as filmmakers, revealing Russell's evolving writing and directing process, and opening his life to reveal how a remarkable body of work has come to be.

This revised and updated edition gathers interviews and profiles covering the entire forty-five year span of Woody Allen's career as a filmmaker, including detailed discussions of his most popular as well as his most critically acclaimed works. The present collection is a complete update of the volume that first appeared in 2006. In the years since, Allen has continued making movies, including Midnight in Paris and the Oscar-winning Blue Jasmine.While many interviews from the original edition have been retained in the present volume, ten new entries extend the coverage of Allen's directorial career through 2015. In addition, there are two new, in-depth interviews from the period covered in the first edition. Most of the interviews included in the original volume first appeared in such widely known publications and venues as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time Magazine the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Playboy. A number of smaller and lesser-known venues are also represented, especially in the new volume. Several interviews from non-American sources add an international perspective on Allen's work.Materials for the new volume include pieces focusing primarily on Allen's films as well as broader profiles and interviews that also concentrate on his literary talent. Perhaps Stephen Mamber best describes Allen's distinctiveness, especially early in his career: "Woody Allen is not the best new American comedy director or the best comedy writer or the best comedy actor, he's simply the finest combination of all three."Robert E. Kapsis, Great Neck, New York, is professor of sociology and film studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is author of Hitchcock: The Making of a Reputation and editor of several volumes in the Conversations with Filmmakers Series. Currently, Kapsis is collaborating with the Museum of the Moving Image and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in developing a major career retrospective on Steve Martin.

Roman Polanski arrived on the international scene in 1962 with his first feature film, "Knife in the Water", and his face was on the cover of "Time magazine" by the end of that year. His vibrant, disturbing, and often violent films have both entertained and infuriated audiences. His films have elevated him to the pinnacle of his oeuvre.

Collects eight of Stan Brakhage's most important interviews in which the filmmaker describes his conceptual frameworks; his theories of vision and sound; the importance of poetry, music, and the visual arts in relation to his work; his concept of the muse; and the key influences on his art-making.