For Deleuze, philosophy cannot be a reflection of something else; philosophical concepts are, rather, the images of thought, to be understood on their own terms. Here he puts this view of philosophy to work in understanding the concepts—or images—of film.Cinema, to Deleuze, is not a language that requires probing and interpretation, a search for hidden meanings; it can be understood directly, as a composition of images and signs, pre-verbal in nature. Thus he offers a powerful alternative to the psychoanalytic and semiological approaches that have dominated film studies.Drawing upon Henri Bergson’s thesis on perception and C. S. Peirce’s classification of images and signs, Deleuze is able to put forth a new theory and taxonomy of the image, which he then applies to concrete examples from the work of a diverse group of filmmakers—Griffith, Eisenstein, Pasolini, Rohmer, Bresson, Dreyer, Stroheim, Buñuel, and many others. Because he finds movement to be the primary characteristic of cinema in the first half of the twentieth century, he devotes this first volume to that aspect of film. In the years since World War II, time has come to dominate film; that shift, and the signs and images associated with it, are addressed in Cinema 2: The Time-Image.

    Christopher Frayling's biography of Sergio Leone lovingly explores his body of work, and casts light upon the previously little-known details of his life. Sergio Leone was born into movies, his father a popular director of the silent era. Obsessed by the illusory worlds of cinema and theatre, captivated by the myths of the American West, young Sergio embarked on a fabulous career of his own. He made an icon out of the initially reluctant Clint Eastwood, and dallied with the Hollywood studio system, but always stuck to his guns: the gangster epic Once Upon A Time In America consumed 15 years of his life. But Leone's passion made for extraordinary cinema: a widely-adored collection of films, about which Christopher Frayling provides an unprecedented wealth of extensively-researched analysis and anecdotage. In this revealing biography Christopher Frayling, the widely-acclaimed author of The Yellow Peril explores the life of Sergio Leone, the world-renowned director of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, A Fist full of Dollars, Once Upon A Time in the West and Once Upon A Time in America.

    Dredged from his subconscious mind, Lynch’s work is primed to act on our own subconscious, combining heightened, contradictory emotions into something familiar but inscrutable. No less than his art, Lynch’s life also evades simple categorization, encompassing pursuits as a musician, painter, photographer, carpenter, entrepreneur, and vocal proponent of Transcendental Meditation.David Lynch: The Man from Another Place, Dennis Lim’s remarkably smart and concise book, proposes several lenses through which to view Lynch and his work: through the age-old mysteries of the uncanny and the sublime, through the creative energies of surrealism and postmodernism, through ideas of America and theories of good and evil. Lynch himself often warns against overinterpretation. And accordingly, this is not a book that seeks to decode his art or annotate his life—to dispel the strangeness of the Lynchian—so much as one that offers complementary ways of seeing and understanding one of the most distinctive bodies of work in modern cinema. Its spirit is true to its subject, in remaining suggestive rather than definitive, in allowing what Lynch likes to call “room to dream,” and in honoring the allure of the unknown and the unknowable.

    In the book he argues that a new, expanded cinema is required for a new consciousness. He describes various types of filmmaking utilising new technology, including film special effects, computer art, video art, multi-media environments and holography." - wikipedia

    François Truffaut called him “an infallible filmmaker . . . Renoir has succeeded in creating the most alive films in the history of cinema, films which still breathe forty years after they were made.” In this book, Jean Renoir(1894-1979)presents his world, from his father’s Montemarte studio to his own travels in Paris, Hollywood, and India. Here are tantalizing secrets about his greatest films—The Rules of the Game, The Grand Illusion, The River, A Day in the Country, La Bête Humaine, Toni. But most of all, Renoir shows us himself: a man if dazzling simplicity, immense creativity, and profound humanity.

    Unlike the style of psychological realism, which dominates film, the transcendental style expresses a spiritual state with austere camerawork, acting devoid of self-consciousness, and editing that avoids editorial comment. This important book is an original contribution to film analysis and a key work by one of our most searching directors and writers.

    From The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari onwards the principal films of this period were characterized by two influences: literary Expressionism, and the innovations of the theatre directors of this period, in particular Max Reinhardt. This book demonstrates the connection between German Romanticism and the cinema through Expressionist writings. It discusses the influence of the theatre: the handling of crowds; the use of different levels, and of selective lighting on a predominately dark stage; the reliance on formalized gesture; the innovation of the intimate theatre. Against this background the principal films of the period are examined in detail. The author explains the key critical concepts of the time, and surveys not only the work of the great directors, such as Fritz Lang and F. W. Murnau, but also the contribution of their writers, cameramen, and designers. As The Times Literary Supplement wrote, 'Mme. Eisner is first and foremost a film critic, and one of the best in the world. She has all the necessary gifts.' And it described the original French edition of this book as 'one of the very few classics of writing on the film and arguably the best book on the cinema yet written.'

    In Sculpting in Time, he has left his artistic testament, a remarkable revelation of both his life and work. Since Ivan's Childhood won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1962, the visionary quality and totally original and haunting imagery of Tarkovsky's films have captivated serious movie audiences all over the world, who see in his work a continuation of the great literary traditions of nineteenth-century Russia. Many critics have tried to interpret his intensely personal vision, but he himself always remained inaccessible.In Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky sets down his thoughts and his memories, revealing for the first time the original inspirations for his extraordinary films--Ivan's Childhood, Andrey Rublyov, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice. He discusses their history and his methods of work, he explores the many problems of visual creativity, and he sets forth the deeply autobiographical content of part of his oeuvre--most fascinatingly in The Mirror and Nostalgia. The closing chapter on The Sacrifice, dictated in the last weeks of Tarkovsky's life, makes the book essential reading for those who already know or who are just discovering his magnificent work.

    Over the course of his career, he has remained true to a vision of the innocent lost in darkness and confusion, balancing hallucination and surrealism with a sense of Americana that is as pure and simple as his compelling storylines. In this volume, Lynch speaks openly about his films as well as about his lifelong commitment to painting, his work in photography, his television projects, and his musical collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti.

    This edition features a new and expanded colour section, completely updated DVD information, and several brand new reviews of Takashi Miike films that were unavailable for coverage at the time of the book's initial production.

    Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) is one of the most revered and enigmatic filmmakers of our time, and Fitzcarraldo is one of his most honored and admired films.  More than just Herzog’s journal of the making of the monumental, problematical motion picture, which involved, among other things, major cast changes and reshoots, and the hauling (without the use of special effects) of a 360-ton steamship over a mountain, Conquest of the Useless is  a work of art unto itself, an Amazonian fever dream that emerged from the delirium of the jungle.  With fascinating observations about crew and cast - including Herzog’s lead, the somewhat demented internationally renowned star Klaus Kinski - and breathtaking insights into the filmmaking process that are uniquely Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless is an eye-opening look into the mind of a cinematic master.

    . . . At the editing table, when I run the strip of film through, frame by frame, I still feel that dizzy sense of magic of my childhood.” Bergman, who has conveyed this heady sense of wonder and vision to moviegoers for decades, traces his lifelong love affair with film in his breathtakingly visual autobiography, The Magic Lantern.More grand mosaic than linear account, Bergman’s vignettes trace his life from a rural Swedish childhood through his work in theater to Hollywood’s golden age, and a tumultuous romantic history that includes five wives and more than a few mistresses. Throughout, Bergman recounts his life in a series of deeply personal flashbacks that document some of the most important moments in twentieth-century filmmaking as well as the private obsessions of the man behind them. Ambitious in scope yet sensitively wrought, The Magic Lantern is a window to the mind of one of our era’s great geniuses.“[Bergman] has found a way to show the soul’s landscape . . . . Many gripping revelations.”—New York Times Book Review“Joan Tate’s translation of this book has delicacy and true pitch . . . The Magic Lantern is as personal and penetrating as a Bergman film, wry, shadowy, austere.”—New Republic“[Bergman] keeps returning to his past, reassessing it, distilling its meaning, offering it to his audiences in dazzling new shapes.”—New York Times“What Bergman does relate, particularly his tangled relationships with his parents, is not only illuminating but quite moving. No ‘tell-all’ book this one, but revealing in ways that much longer and allegedly ‘franker’ books are not.”—Library Journal

    The collection is assembled by the editors of the Third Edition of Film Noir: An Enclyclopedic Reference to the American Style, now regarded as the standard work on the subject.

    Expanding on arguments made in his influential books The "Voice in Cinema" and "Sound in Cinema," Chion provides lapidary insight into the functions and aesthetics of sound in film and television. He considers the effects of such evolving technologies as widescreen, multitrack, and Dolby; the influences of sound on the perception of space and time; and the impact of such contemporary forms of audio-vision as music videos, video art, and commercial television. Chion concludes with an original and useful model for the audiovisual analysis of film.