"The two demonstrate a profound shared passion, a way of literally being one with a medium and speaking about it with a dazzling lyricism interspersed with dryly ironic remarks, fueled by a conviction that inspires them to traverse history. Their point of intersection is obvious. Duras, a writer, is also a filmmaker, and Godard, a filmmaker, has maintained a distinctive relationship with literature, writing and speech."--Cyril Béghin, back cover.

"A comparative look at the work of Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke by celebrated critic Jean Michel Frodon. Includes an extensive interview with Jia, essays on each of his films, conversations with his main collaborators, and a selection of his own writings. "--Page 4 of cover.

A filmmaker and a film theorist construct a dialogue around a close reading of eight Godard films, in chronological order, beginning with My Life to Live (1962) and ending with New Wave (1990). Their close reading follows the unfolding of the films as if the two were sitting at a flatbed, with the benefit of a filmmaker's eye for the formal issues of shooting and editing and a theorist's attention to the relations of text and interpretation. Includes bandw photos. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A career-spanning collection of Marguerite Duras’s genre-bending essays that Kirkus calls “a luminous, erudite exploration of the self and art.” In her nonfiction as well as her fiction, Marguerite Duras’s curiosity was endless, her intellect voracious. Within a single essay she might roam from Flaubert to the “scattering of desire” to the Holocaust; within the body of her essays overall, style is always evolving, subject matter shifting, as her mind pushes beyond the obvious toward ever-original ground. Me & Other Writing is a guidebook to the extraordinary breadth of Duras’s nonfiction. From the stunning one-page “Me” to the sprawling 70-page “Summer 80,” there is not a piece in this collection that can be easily categorized. These are essayistic works written for their times but too virtuosic to be relegated to history, works of commentary or recollection or reportage that are also, unmistakably, works of art.

Casting fresh light on one of the most important movements in film history, Intermedial Dialogues: The French New Wave and the Other Arts is the first comprehensive study of the New Wave's relationship with the older arts. Traversing the fields of literature, theatre, painting, architecture and photography, and drawing on Andre Bazin alongside recent theories of intermediality, it investigates the 'impure', intermedial aesthetics of New Wave cinema. Filmmakers under discussion include critics-turned-directors Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol, members of the Left Bank Group Alain Resnais, Agnes Varda and Chris Marker, but also lesser-known directors, notably the 'secret child of the New Wave', Guy Gilles. This wide-ranging book offers an original reading of the complex, often ambivalent ways in which the New Wave engages the other arts in both its discursive construction and filmic practice.Key Features:A wide-ranging study which explores the complex, often ambiguous ways in which the New Wave engages with the other arts in both its discursive construction and cinematic practiceAffords a new prism for understanding New Wave filmmaking and its legacy through comprehensive analysis of the ways in which the New Wave aesthetic was shaped through intermedial dialogue and medium rivalry Reassesses one of the most acclaimed movements in film history drawing on cutting-edge theory in the prominent field of intermediality studiesOffers an inclusive, heterogeneous view of the New Wave through inclusion of lesser-known directors such as Guy Gilles, Jean-Daniel Pollet and Jacques Demy alongside renowned Nouvelle Vague filmmakers

The award-winning screenplay for the classic film the New York Post hailed as “overwhelming . . . a motion picture landmark.” One of the most influential works in the history of cinema, Alain Renais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour gathered international acclaim upon its release in 1959 and was awarded the International Critics’ Prize at the Cannes Film festival and the New York Film Critics’ Award. Ostensibly the story of a love affair between a Japanese architect and a French actress visiting Japan to make a film on peace, Hiroshima Mon Amour is a stunning exploration of the influence of war on both Japanese and French culture and the conflict between love and inhumanity.

Jodorowsky’s memoirs of his experiences with Master Takata and the group of wisewomen--magiciennes--who influenced his spiritual growth • Reveals Jodorowsky turning the same unsparing spiritual vision seen in El Topo to his own spiritual quest • Shows how the author’s spiritual insight and progress was catalyzed repeatedly by wisewoman shamans and healers In 1970, John Lennon introduced to the world Alejandro Jodorowsky and the movie, El Topo, that he wrote, starred in, and directed. The movie and its author instantly became a counterculture icon. The New York Times said the film “demands to be seen,” and Newsweek called it “An Extraordinary Movie!” But that was only the beginning of the story and the controversy of El Topo, and the journey of its brilliant creator. His spiritual quest began with the Japanese master Ejo Takata, the man who introduced him to the practice of meditation, Zen Buddhism, and the wisdom of the koans. Yet in this autobiographical account of his spiritual journey, Jodorowsky reveals that it was a small group of wisewomen, far removed from the world of Buddhism, who initiated him and taught him how to put the wisdom he had learned from his master into practice. At the direction of Takata, Jodorowsky became a student of the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, thus beginning a journey in which vital spiritual lessons were transmitted to him by various women who were masters of their particular crafts. These women included Doña Magdalena, who taught him “initiatic” or spiritual massage; the powerful Mexican actress known as La Tigresa (the “tigress”); and Reyna D’Assia, daughter of the famed spiritual teacher G. I. Gurdjieff. Other important wisewomen on Jodorowsky’s spiritual path include María Sabina, the priestess of the sacred mushrooms; the healer Pachita; and the Chilean singer Violeta Parra. The teachings of these women enabled him to discard the emotional armor that was hindering his advancement on the path of spiritual awareness and enlightenment.

Around 1980 in Rome, a small cooperative around film critics Michele Mancini and Giuseppe Perrella produced a mysterious, elaborate and yet seemingly effortless 600-page book of b&w photographs, Pier Paolo Pasolini: Corpi e Luoghi (1981). In the multifaceted cultural and political environment of the era, the publication was acclaimed an indispensable tool for future Pasolini (1922-1975) research. Although long since forgotten and out of print, Corpi e Luoghi, to this day, it remains what one reviewer called the most Pasolinian book to date. With its relentless and yet playful classification of some 2,000 film stills arranged under the categories of bodies and places, Mancini and Perrella stage an ever-shifting archival space. Some of the pictures recurring under various subcategories. With a hidden reference to Walter Benjamin and a correspondingly revolutionary attitude, quotation here is understood as a form of appropriation, as a practical application of specific material.

Chion analyzes imaginative uses of the human voice by directors like Lang, Hitchcock, Ophuls, Duras, and de Palma.

By Amos Vogel. Foreword by Scott MacDonald.