Directors

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The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron
Rebecca Keegan
From The Terminator through such films as Aliens, Titanic, and the groundbreaking Avatar, James Cameron has thrilled audiences by telling riveting stories while expanding the limits of cinematic technology. With the cooperartion of the director and his circle of fellow filmmakers and favourite actors, this book tells the fascinating story of the life and work of the man who pointed the way to the future of movies as a fully immersive mass-entertainment phenomenon. Hardcover, 273 pp. $29.95.

Derek Jarman's Angelic Conversations
Tim Ellis
Best known as an iconoclastic, wildly inventive filmmaker, Derek Jarman was also an accomplished author, painter, and landscape artist. Author Jim Ellis looks at how Jarman's politics and aesthetics intertwined to comprehend his most radical aspects. Jarman is revealed as an artist who keenly understood the role of history and mythology in creating a personal and national identity: as an activist, he sought to challenge old histories while producing new ones to carve out a space for alternative communities in Britain late in the twentieth century. Softcover, 303 pp. $26.95.

Wild at Heart: The Films of Nettie Wild
Mark Harris & Claudia Medina
Nettie Wild, one of Canada's leading documentarians, came to film from a background in journalism and theatre. Since then, she has gone on to win awards and screen her films around the world. Featuring an essay and an interview, this monograph is the first book-length assessment of her body of work. Softcover, 111 pp. $15.00.

Tim Burton
Ron Magliozzi & Jenny He
Throughout his career, Tim Burton has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking, melding the fantastic, the horrific, and the comic. This is the first book to consider not only his career as a filmmaker, but his career as an artist as well. Reproducing an unprecedented collection of drawings, paintings, photographs, and maquettes, this book presents previously unseen works from Burton's personal archive and sheds new light on his singular aesthetic. Softcover, 64 pp. $24.00.

Alice Guy Blanche: Cinema Pioneer
Joan Simon
This book celebrates the achievements of Alice Guy Blanche (1873-1968), the first woman motion-picture director, producer, and studio owner. Despite her immensely productive and creative career, her indispensable contribution to film history has been overlooked. Written by cinema history experts and curators, this handsome volume brings to light a critical new mass of Guy Blanche's film oeuvre in an effort to recognize -- and celebrate -- her rightful place in film history. Hardcover, 148 pp. $53.95.

Ingmar Bergman Revisited: Performance, Cinema, and the Arts
Maaret Kostinen
Rather than resorting to simple auteurist readings of his films, this collection of essays emphasizes how Ingmar Bergman's eclectic range of artistic influences should be considered vis-a-vis his cinematic output. Several essays result from research in Bergman's own personal archive, and amongst the subjects discussed are Bergman's stage adaptations of Shakespeare, his fascination with still photography and issues of identity, and the influence of philosophy and psychology on his work. Softcover, 242 pp. $35.00.

After Kieslowski
Steven Woodward
This distinguished book brings together an international group of scholars and critics to consider Kieslowski's wide influence on contemporary world cinema. Each essay makes a distinctive contribution to this investigation, whether considering Kieslowski's legacy in the context of national cinema, his effect on other directors, and his global legacy. Softcover, 247 pp. $41.95.

Conversations with Woody Allen
Eric Lax
In discussions that begin in 1971 and continue into 2009, Woody Allen discusses every facet of moviemaking from the seeds of his ideas and the writing of his screenplays to casting and acting, shooting and directing, editing and scoring. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in the art of moviemaking and for everyone who has enjoyed the films of Woody Allen. Softcover, 393 pp. $29.95.

Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on his Creativity
Irving Singer
Through analysis of both narrative and filmic elements, Irving Singer probes Bergman's mythmaking and his reliance upon the magic inherent in his cinematic techniques. Singer demonstrates that while Bergman's output was not philosophy on celluloid, it attains an expressive and purely aesthetic truthfulness that can be considered philosophical in a broader sense. In the process, Singer traces the evolution of Bergman's ideas about life and death. Softcover, 240 pp. $15.95.

Atom Egoyan
Emma Wilson
Offering a full-scale chronological overview of Atom Egoyan's work on films up to and including Where the Truth Lies, Emma Wilson shows the persistence and development of the key tropes and themes in the filmmaker's cinema. Egoyan's own comments on his films are thread throughout the book, and a recent interview with the director is included as well. Softcover, 161 pp. $31.95.

American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood
Marc Eliot
In American Rebel, bestselling author and acclaimed film historian Marc Eliot examines the ever-exciting, often-tumultuous arc of Clint Eastwood's life and career. Unlike past biographers, Eliot writes with unflinching candor about Eastwood's highs and lows, his artistic successes and failures, and the fascinating, complex relationship between his life and his craft. Hardcover, 383 pp. $32.99.

Jane Campion: Routledge Film Guidebooks
Deb Verhoeven
In the first detailed account of Jane Campion's career as a filmmaker, Deb Verhoeven examines specifically how contemporary film directors "fashion" themselves as auteurs -- through their personal interactions with the media, in their choice of projects, in their emphasis on particular filmmaking techniques and finally in the promotion of their films. Featuring a career overview, a filmography, scene-by-scene analysis and an extended interview with Campion. Softcover, 273 pp. $38.95.

Robert Altman: The Oral Biography
Mitchell Zuckoff
Robert Altman -- visionary director, hard-partying hedonist, eccentric family man, Hollywood legend -- comes to life in this rollicking cinematic biography. In a style that can best be described as Altmanesque, this book weaves together film reviews and news reportage with Altman's final interviews and the voices of an incredible cast of contributors. A worthy testament to this extraordinary cinematic maverick. Hardcover, 560 pp. $42.00.

Aim for the Heart: The Films of Clint Eastwood
Howard Hughes
Aim for the Heart covers all of Eastwood's movies in detail. The filmmaker's story is illustrated with film stills, glimpses behind the scenes and rare poster advertising material. This book also includes the most comprehensive credits filmography ever compiled on Eastwood's work, as a star and director. Hardcover, 252 pp. $32.00.

The Lord of the Films
J.W. Braun
This is a unique guide to the stunning series of films directed by Peter Jackson, adapted from the popular series of novels by J.R.R. Tolkien. Each of the films is examined on four fronts: plot and storyline, behind-the-scenes information, mistakes that slipped through, and audiences' reactions. Softcover, 220 pp. $21.95.

What Ever Happened to Orson Welles
Joseph McBride
This fascinating book challenges the conventional wisdom that Welles's career after Citizen Kane was a long decline and that he spent his final years doing little but eating and making commercials while squandering his earlier promise. In this intimate and often surprising personal portrait, Joseph McBride shows instead how Welles never stopped directing radical, adventurous films and was always breaking new artistic ground as a filmmaker. Hardcover, 344 pp. $43.95.

All About Almodovar: A Passion For Cinema
Brad Epps & Despina Kakoudaki
One of world cinema's most exciting filmmakers, Pedro Almodovar has been delighting, provoking, arousing, shocking, and -- above all -- entertaining cinephiles around the world since the early 1980s. This collection of essays offers new perspectives on the filmmaker's artistic vision and cinematic preoccupations, influences, and techniques. Softcover, $29.95.

Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges
Glenn Lovell
Chronicling the filmmaker's relationships with such luminaries as Spencer Tracy, James Garner, Yul Brynner, and Frank Sinatra, and informed by interviews with the filmmaker's family, collaborators, and John Sturges himself, Escape Artist is the first biography of the legendary filmmaker. Inside, you'll read about the making of such classics as The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, and Bad Day at Black Rock. Softcover, $32.95.

The Queer Cinema of Derek Jarman
Niall Richardson
This is the first book to view Derek Jarman's uniquely personal - and pleasurable - cinema through the analytical prism of 'queer.' Niall Richardson takes up queer theory and its debates, as well as the tension between theory and activism, to apply these issues to Jarman's cinema in critical readings of his films, with special attention given to Caravaggio, Edward II and Blue. Softcover, 246 pp. $29.95.

Roman Polanski: The Cinema of a Cultural Traveller|
Ewa Mazierska
Covering all of Roman Polanski's films as director, Ewa Mazierska addresses the eclecticism, ambiguity and paradoxes of his cinema, while seeking out the common elements in his films. From a number of perspectives, she examines the autobiographical effect of Polanski's films in terms of violence, travel and voyeurism. Softcover, 230 pp. $31.95.

The View From the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood
The View from the Bridge is writer-director Nicholas Meyer's drolly entertaining account of his involvement with the most highly regarded and beloved of the Star Trek films -- and of his own gaining of wisdom in the fractious politics of Hollywood. Hardcover, 263 pp. $32.50.

Chaplin: The Tramp's Odyssey
Simon Louvish
An Everyman who expressed the defiant spirit of freedom, Charlie Chaplin was first lauded and later reviled in the America that made him Hollywood's richest man. He was a figure of multiple paradoxes, and many studies have sought to unveil the man behind the mask. Simon Louvish's new book -- following his five major biographies of comedy's classic stars -- sheds new light on the life and career of the cinema's favourite Tramp. Hardcover, 412 pp. $39.00.

Julie Taymor: Playing With Fire
Third Edition
Eileen Blumenthal & Julie Taymor
Julie Taymor is one of the most imaginative and provocative directors and designers working in the performing arts. Throughout her award-winning body of work she has created some of the most arresting images ever seen on the stage and screen. What better way to pay tribute to her career than with this highly visual biography, illustrated, cover-to-cover, with eye-popping images. This new edition of this classic volume has been updated to include all new sections on her Oscar-winning film Frida, the movie-musical Across the Universe, and the opera Grendel. Hardcover, 274 pp. $34.99.

Richard Attenborough: Entirely Up to You, Darling
Richard Attenborough & Diana Hawkins
This readable and entertaining memoir details not only the nail-biting moments, such as the desperate struggle to finance Gandhi, or the occasion when Attenborough was attacked by thugs while visiting South Africa to research Cry Freedom. The memoir also encompasses moving recollections about Attenborough's family. Softcover, 318 pp. $21.95.

George A. Romero: The Pocket Essential
Tom Fallows & Curtis Owen
Not simply a director of zombie films, George Romero reinvented the vampire in Martin, took on the American military in The Crazies and has collaborated with horror legend Stephen King on both Creepshow and The Dark Half. This essential guide examines Romero's work up to and including Diary of the Dead, and explains why filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese often refer to him as horror's greatest living director. Softcover, 160 pp. $9.95.

Conquest of the Useless
Werner Herzog
One of the most revered filmmakers of our time, Werner Herzog wrote this diary during the fever dream production of Fitzcarraldo. Hailed by critics around the globe, the film went on to win Herzog the 1982 Outstanding Director Prize at Cannes. Conquest of the Useless is an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of a genius during the making of one of his greatest achievements. Hardcover, 306 pp. $32.99.

Wim Wenders
Jason Wood & Ian Haydn Smith
In essays, interviews, and comments from his collaborators, the cinema of Wim Wenders is carefully chronicled in unique volume. Illustrated throughout with film stills, and rare behind-the-scenes photographs. Softcover, 95 pp. $43.95.

The Cinema of Lars von Trier: Authenticity and Artifice
Caroline Bainbridge
Lars von Trier is one of the most controversial figures of contemporary European cinema. Since founding the bach-to-basics Dogme philosophy in 1995, von Trier's name has become a by-word for taboo-breaking cinema. This study forges a new understanding of the founder of Dogme 95 as a great democratiser of cinema in the digital age, presenting von Trier as one of the most daring cinematic exponents of postmodern politics and satire. Softcover, 210 pp. $31.95.

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Life Without Death: The Cinema of Frank Cole
Mike Hoolboom & Tom McSorley
Legendary Canadian filmmaker Frank Cole made two feature length films and a pair of award-winning shorts before his mysterious and untimely murder in Mali. This book is a ravishing odyssey of inner and outer visions and a heaven-sent treasure trove of never-before-seen material from the filmmaker himself, including postcards, photographs, and excerpts from a journal made during his legendary crossings of the Sahara. Also included is the award-winning documentary The Man Who Crossed the Sahara. Softcover, 210 pp. $25.00.

Gustav Deutsch
Wilbirg Brainin-Donnenberg & Michael Loebenstein
According to Viennese filmmaker Gustav Deutsch, "film is more than film." His own career proves that point. In addition to being an internationally acclaimed creator of found footage films, he is also a visual artist, an architect, a researcher, an educator, an archaeologist, and a traveler. This volume traces the way in which the cinema of Gustav Deutsch transcends our common notion of film. Softcover, 252 pp. $34.50.

Mainly On Directing Gypsy, West Side Story, and Other Musicals
by Arthur Laurents
Playwright, screenwriter, director, Arthur Laurents has been at the birth and rebirth of the American musical theatre's greatest creations for the past five decades. At the age of ninety one, he has just directed the wildly acclaimed new production of West Side Story on Broadway.
This book revels in the author's love for and understanding of, musical theatre, the people who make it and the audiences who attend.
He writes from experience, in rich detail about his work and the work of other great directors. There isn't a page in this book that doesn't entertain or give the reader a fascinating insight into the art of directing.
This is a book inspired by love, which we can be thankful for. Hardcover $28.95.

Kazan on Directing
Elia Kazan
With his unique blend of poetic staging, dynamic action, and rigourous naturalism, Elia Kazan revoltionized American theatre and film. This remarkable book, drawn from his notebooks, letters, interviews, and autobiography, reveals Kazan's method: how he uncovered for himself the core of each character; how he analyzed each script in terms of his own experience; how he determined the specifics of his production, from casting and costuming to set design and cinematography. In all, this is an unrivaled look at the creative process of a true master. Hardcover, 341 pp. $37.00.

Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood's Dark Dreamer
Emmanuel Levy
Beginning his career as an innovative set and costume designer in New York, Vincente Minnelli would go on to become MGM's highest-paid filmmaker. However, even as the director of such classics as Meet Me in St. Louis, Gigi, and An American in Paris, his professional accomplishments could not eclipse a fascinating personal life, which included marrying Judy Garland and fathering Liza Minnelli. This is the first full-length biography of one of Hollywood's most legendary and influencial directors, encompassing his life, his career, and his art. Hardcover, 448 pp. $41.95.

Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business
Ethan Mordden
In Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business, Ethan Mordden re-creates the lost world of the Follies, a place of long-vanished beauty masterminded by one of the most inventive, ruthless, street-smart, and exacting men ever to fill a theatre on the Great White Way: Florenz Ziegfeld. Hardcover, $36.50.

Scorsese
Roger Ebert
Scorsese by Ebert offers the first record of America's most respected film critic's engagement with the works of America's greatest living director. The book chronicles every single film in Scorsese's considerable oeuvre, from his debut I Call First to his 2008 release, the Rolling Stones documentary, Shine a Light. Softcover, 297 pp. $29.95.

Talk to Her
Edited by A.W. Eaton
Talk to Her is a collection of clear, concise and highlt readable essays devoted to the exploration of Pedro Almodovar's provocative film of the same name. It is essential reading for students interested in philosophy and film as well as ethics and gender. Softcover, 108 pp. $29.95.

The Ingmar Bergman Archives
Paul Duncan
The complete works of Ingmar Bergman: an homage to one of the most esteemed film and theater artists of all time, began in cooperation with Bergman himself and made with full access to his archives. Such is the depth of Bergman’s writings that most of the story is told in his own words. This book also features a new introduction by Bergman’s close friend, actor and collaborator Erland Josephson, as well as a DVD full of rare and previously unseen material, and an original film strip from Fanny and Alexander. Hardcover, 592 pp. $239.95.

True Fiction Pictures & Possible Films: Hal Hartley
Hal Hartley & Knenneth Kaleta
Hal Hartley's comedies of unlikely love, trust, and social questioning have been provocative must-sees for the past two decades with critics and audiences alike. In this book of interviews with Kenneth Kaleta, Hartley reflects on the evolution of his filmmaking, elaborating on the forces he believes helped shape it and the ways in which his aspirations develop as time goes on, revealing a good deal of what it is like to be an independent creative artist in a commercially driven culture. Softcover, 169 pp. $22.95.

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Last modified January 5, 2010.
Please note that all prices are in Canadian dollars. All prices are subject to change without notice.