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Thursday, 20 December 2012

Artplay with Milliande- Art Journaling Art House Project and Painting Layers with Misty Mawn

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Armenia
Armenia ⁱ/ɑrˈmiːniə/ (Armenian: Հայաստան Hayastan [hɑjɑsˈtɑn]), officially the Republic of Armenia (Հայաստանի Հանրապետություն, Hayastani Hanrapetut’yun, [hɑjɑstɑˈni hɑnɾɑpɛtuˈtʰjun]), is a landlocked, mountainous country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the de facto independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the south.
A former republic of the Soviet Union, Armenia is a unitary, multiparty, democratic nation-state with an ancient and historic cultural heritage. The Kingdom of Armenia became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its religion, in the early years of the 4th century (the traditional date is 301 AD). The modern Republic of Armenia recognizes the Armenian Apostolic Church, the world's oldest national church, as the country's primary religious establishment. Armenians have their own unique alphabet invented by Mesrob Mashtots in 406 AD.

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Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival (French: Le Festival International du Film de Cannes or just Festival de Cannes), is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is the world's most prestigious and publicized film festival. The invitation-only festival is held annually (usually in May) at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès.
The 2012 Cannes Film Festival took place from May 16 to May 27, 2012. The President of the Jury was the Italian film director Nanni Moretti.
The Cannes Film Festival has its origins in the late 1930s when Jean Zay, the French Minister of National Education, on the proposal of Philippe Erlanger and with the support of the British and Americans,^{[clarification needed]} set up an international cinematographic festival. In 1947, the festival was held as the "Festival du film de Cannes", where films from sixteen countries were presented. Moreover, the principle of equality was introduced, so that the jury was to be made up only of one representative per country. Also, this year the festival was held at the made-for-the-occasion Palais des Festivals, although the roof was unfinished and blew off during a storm. The festival was not held in 1948 and 1950 on account of budgetary problems. In 1951, owing to better relations between France and Italy, the Cannes Festival was moved to Spring, while the Mostra remained in Autumn.

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Connecticut
Connecticut (ⁱ/kəˈnɛtɨkət/) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south (with which it shares a water boundary in Long Island Sound).
Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately bisects the state. Its capital city is Hartford. Much of southern and western Connecticut (along with the majority of the state's population) is part of the New York metropolitan area; three of Connecticut's eight counties are statistically included in the New York City combined statistical area, the same area is widely referred to as the Tri-State area. Connecticut's center of population is in Cheshire, New Haven County, which is also located within the Tri-State area.
Connecticut is the 3rd least extensive, the 29th most populous, and 4th most densely populated of the 50 United States. Called the Constitution State, Nutmeg State, and "The Land of Steady Habits", Connecticut was influential in the development of the federal government of the United States.

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Soviet
The Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik; IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲetskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪˈstʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪsˈpublʲɪk] ( listen); abbreviated СССР, SSSR), was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
The Soviet Union was a single-party state ruled by the Communist Party from its foundation until 1990. A union of 15 subnational Soviet republics, the Soviet state was structured under a highly centralized government and economy.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused the downfall of the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a struggle for power between the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the anti-communist White movement. In December 1922, the Bolsheviks won the civil war, and the Soviet Union was formed with the merger of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.

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Thailand
Thailand ( /ˈtaɪlænd/ TY-land or /ˈtaɪlənd/;Thai: ประเทศไทย, RTGS: Prathet Thai), officially the Kingdom of Thailand (Thai: ราชอาณาจักรไทย, RTGS: Ratcha Anachak Thai; IPA: [râːt.tɕʰā ʔāːnāːtɕàk tʰāj] ( listen)), formerly known as Siam (Thai: สยาม; RTGS: Sayam), is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea and the southern extremity of Burma. Its maritime boundaries include Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand to the southeast, and Indonesia and India in the Andaman Sea to the southwest.
The country is a constitutional monarchy, headed by King Rama IX, the ninth king of the House of Chakri, who, having reigned since 1946, is the world's longest-serving head of state and the longest-reigning monarch in Thai history. The king of Thailand is titled Head of State, Head of the Armed Forces, the Upholder of the Buddhist religion, and the Defender of all Faiths.

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Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival (Italian Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia) is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the Lido, Venice, Italy. Screenings take place in the historic Palazzo del Cinema on the Lungomare Marconi and in other venues nearby. It is one of the world's most prestigious film festivals and is part of the Venice Biennale (Italian Biennale di Venezia), for over a century one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world (founded in 1895). It is known world-wide for the International Film Festival, the International Art Exhibition and the International Architecture Exhibition, and continues the great tradition of the Festival of Contemporary Music, the Theatre Festival, now flanked by the Festival of Contemporary Dance.

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Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami (Persian: عباس کیارستمی ‎ Abbās Kiyārostamī; born 22 June 1940) is an internationally acclaimed Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer. An active filmmaker since 1970, Kiarostami has been involved in over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker Trilogy (1987–94), Taste of Cherry (1997), and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999).
Kiarostami has worked extensively as a screenwriter, film editor, art director and producer and has designed credit titles and publicity material. He is also a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator, and graphic designer. He is part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that started in the late 1960s and includes pioneering directors such as Forough Farrokhzad, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Bahram Beizai, and Parviz Kimiavi. These filmmakers share many common techniques including the use of poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling dealing with political and philosophical issues.

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Adam Sandler
Adam Richard Sandler (born September 9, 1966) is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, musician and film producer. After becoming a Saturday Night Live cast member, Sandler went on to star in several Hollywood feature films that grossed over $100 million at the box office. He is best known for his comedic roles, such as in the films Billy Madison (1995), Happy Gilmore (1996), The Waterboy (1998), Big Daddy (1999), and Mr. Deeds (2002), though he has ventured into more dramatic territory. In 1999, Sandler founded Happy Madison, a film and television production company that has produced numerous films and developed the 2007 television series Rules of Engagement.
Adam Sandler was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents, Stanley, an electrical engineer, and Judy Sandler, a nursery school teacher. When he was five, his family moved to Manchester, New Hampshire, where he attended Manchester Central High School. He found he was a natural comic, and nurtured his talent while at New York University by performing regularly in clubs and on campuses. Sandler graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1988.

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Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa (黒澤明, Kurosawa Akira^?, March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998) was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, producer, and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years.
Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director in 1943, during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (a.k.a. Judo Saga). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actor Toshirō Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another 15 films.
Rashomon, which premiered in Tokyo in August 1950, and which also starred Mifune, became, on September 10, 1951, the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was subsequently released in Europe and North America. The commercial and critical success of this film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Kurosawa directed approximately a film a year, including a number of highly regarded films such as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961). After the mid-1960s, he became much less prolific, but his later work—including his final two epics, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued to win awards, including the Palme d'Or for Kagemusha, though more often abroad than in Japan.

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Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais (French pronunciation: [alɛ̃ ʁɛnɛ]; born 3 June 1922) is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) (1955), an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.
He began making feature films in the late 1950s and consolidated his early reputation with Hiroshima mon amour (1959), L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad) (1961), and Muriel (1963), all of which adopted unconventional narrative techniques to deal with themes of troubled memory and the imagined past. These films were contemporary with, and associated with, the French New Wave or nouvelle vague, though Resnais did not regard himself as being fully part of that movement. He had closer links to the 'Left Bank group' of authors and filmmakers who shared a commitment to modernism and an interest in left-wing politics. He also established a regular practice of working on his films in collaboration with writers usually unconnected with the cinema, such as Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jorge Semprún.

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Alejandro Jodorowsky
Alejandro Jodorowsky (Spanish pronunciation: [aleˈxandɾo xoðoˈɾofski]) (born 17 February 1929) is a Chilean-French filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, comics writer and spiritual guru. Best known for his avant-garde films, he has been "venerated by cult cinema enthusiasts" for his work which "is filled with violently surreal images and a hybrid blend of mysticism and religious provocation."
Born to Jewish Ukrainian parents in Chile, Jodorowsky experienced an unhappy and alienated childhood, and so immersed himself in reading and writing poetry. Dropping out of college, he became involved in theater and in particular mime, working as a clown before founding his own theater troupe, the Teatro Mimico, in 1947. Moving to Paris in the early 1950s, Jodorowsky studied mime under Etienne Decroux before turning to cinema, directing the short film Les têtes interverties in 1957. From 1960 he divided his time between Paris and Mexico City, in the former becoming a founding member of the anarchistic avant-garde Panic Movement of performance artists. In 1966 he created his first comic strip, Anibal 5, whilst in 1967 he directed his first feature film, the surrealist Fando y Lis, which caused a huge scandal in Mexico, eventually being banned.

wn.com/Alejandro_Jodorowsky
Alexander Sokurov
Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov PAR (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Соку́ров; born June 14, 1951) is a Russian filmmaker. His most significant works include a feature film, Russian Ark (2002), filmed in a single unedited shot, and Faust (2011), which was honoured with the Golden Lion, the highest prize for the best film at the Venice Film Festival.
Sokurov was born in Podorvikha, Irkutsk Oblast, in Siberia, into a military officer's family. He graduated from the History Department of the Nizhny Novgorod University in 1974 and entered one of the VGIK studios the following year. There he became friends with Tarkovsky and was deeply influenced by his film Mirror. Most of Sokurov's early features were banned by Soviet authorities. During his early period, he produced numerous documentaries, including an interview with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and a reportage about Grigori Kozintsev's flat in St Petersburg. His film Mournful Unconcern was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival in 1987.

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Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. On 19 April 1955, he became an American citizen while remaining a British subject.
Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a distinctive and recognisable directorial style. He pioneered the use of a camera made to move in a way that mimics a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism. He framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative film editing. His stories frequently feature fugitives on the run from the law alongside "icy blonde" female characters. Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of violence, murder, and crime, although many of the mysteries function as decoys or "MacGuffins" meant only to serve thematic elements in the film and the extremely complex psychological examinations of the characters. Hitchcock's films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and feature strong sexual undertones. Through his cameo appearances in his own films, interviews, film trailers, and the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he became a cultural icon. Hitchocks reputation as a filmmaker is offset by claims that he engaged in obsessive and controlling behaviour towards many of his leading ladies, and that in some cases this extended to physical abuse and sexual harrassment.

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Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (Russian: Андре́й Арсе́ньевич Тарко́вский; April 4, 1932 – December 29, 1986) was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director, widely regarded as one of the finest filmmakers of the 20th century.
Tarkovsky's films include Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, and Stalker. He directed the first five of his seven feature films in the Soviet Union; his last two films were produced in Italy and Sweden, respectively. They are characterized by spirituality and metaphysical themes, long takes, lack of conventional dramatic structure and plot, and distinctively authored use of cinematography.
Film director Ingmar Bergman said of Tarkovsky:
Tarkovsky was born in the village of Zavrazhye in Ivanovo Oblast, the son of poet and translator Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky, native of Kirovohrad, Ukraine, and Maria Ivanova Vishnyakova, a graduate of the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute.

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Andrew Dominik
Andrew Dominik (born September 19, 1967) is a New Zealand-born Australian film director and screenwriter. He has directed two films so far: Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Dominik has lived in Australia since he was 2 years old and graduated from Melbourne's Swinburne Film School in 1988. He is dating actress Bella Heathcote.
His career in films began in 2000 when he directed Chopper based on notorious Australian criminal Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read, starring Eric Bana and Simon Lyndon.Chopper received generally positive reviews, and Bana in particular was widely praised for his intense portrayal of Chopper. The Australian Film Institute awarded the film with Best Director (Dominik), Best Actor (Bana), and Best Supporting Actor (Lyndon).
His next film was The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, based on the novel of the same name which he came across in a second-hand bookstore. The film explores the peculiar relationship between Jesse James and his eventual assassin Robert Ford. Pitt was a big fan of Dominik's first feature Chopper, and had hoped to collaborate with the filmmaker in the future, especially when Pitt had the chance to work with Chopper star Eric Bana in Troy. Pitt contacted the director, and with a big star interested to lead his new film, Dominik was therefore able to get Warner Bros. to finance the production.

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Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Wajda (Polish pronunciation: [ˈandʐɛj ˈvajda]; born 6 March 1926) is a Polish film director. Recipient of an honorary Oscar, he is possibly the most prominent member of the unofficial "Polish Film School" (active c. 1955 to 1963). He is known especially for a trilogy of war films: A Generation (1954), Kanał (1956) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958).
Four of his films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film: The Promised Land (1975),The Maids of Wilko (1979), Man of Iron (1981), and Katyń (2007).
Wajda was born in Suwałki, Poland, the son of Aniela (née Biaxowas), a school teacher, and Jakub Wajda, an army officer. Wajda' father was murdered by the Soviets in 1940 in what came to be known as the Katyn massacre. In 1942 he joined the Polish resistance and served in the Armia Krajowa. After the war, he studied to be a painter at Kraków's Academy of Fine Arts before entering the Łódź Film School.
After Wajda's apprenticeship to director Aleksander Ford, Wajda was given the opportunity to direct his own film. With A Generation (1955), the first-time director poured out his disillusionment over jingoism, using as his alter ego a young, James Dean-style antihero played by Zbigniew Cybulski, 22-year-old Roman Polanski also featured. At the same time Andrzej Wajda began his work as a director in theatre, including such as Michael V. Gazzo's Hatful of Rain (1959), Hamlet (1960), and Two for the Seesaw (1963) by William Gibson. Wajda made two more increasingly accomplished films, which developed further the anti-war theme of A Generation: Kanał (1956) [Silver Palm at Cannes Festival in 1957, ex equo with Bergman's The Seventh Seal and Ashes and Diamonds (1958), again with Cybulski.

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Bengali people
The Bengali people are an ethnic community native to the historic region of Bengal (now divided between Bangladesh and India) in South Asia. They speak Bengali (বাংলা Bangla), which is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. In their native language, they are referred to as বাঙালী (pronounced Bangali). They primarily belong to Indo-Aryan and Mongolo-Dravidian stock,and are closely related to Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Assamese, Sinhalese, Munda, and Tibeto-Burman linguistic/ethnic stocks. As such, Bengalis are a homogeneous but considerably diverse ethnic group with heterogeneous origins. They are the second largest single ethnic group in the world^{[citation needed]}.
They are mostly concentrated in Bangladesh and the states of West Bengal and Tripura in India. There are also a number of Bengali communities scattered across North-East India, New Delhi, and the Indian states of Assam, Jharkhand, Bihar, Maharastra, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa. In addition, there are significant Bengali communities beyond South Asia; some of the most well established Bengali communities are in the United Kingdom and United States. Large numbers of Bengalis (mainly from Sylhet) have settled in Britain, mainly living in the East boroughs of London, numbering from around 300,000; in the USA there are about 150,000 living across the country, mainly in New York. There are also millions living across the Gulf States, majority of whom are living as foreign workers. There are also many Bengalis in Pakistan, Malaysia, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Australia and many other countries (see Bangladeshi diaspora).

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Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci (Italian pronunciation: [berˈnardo bertoˈluttʃi]; born 16 March 1941) is an Italian film director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky and The Dreamers. In recognition of his work, he was presented with the inaugural Honorary Palme d'Or Award at the opening ceremony of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
Bertolucci was born in the Italian city of Parma, in the region of Emilia Romagna. He is the elder son of Ninetta, a teacher, and Attilio Bertolucci, who was a poet, a reputed art historian, anthologist and film critic. Having been raised in such an environment, Bertolucci began writing at the age of fifteen, and soon after received several prestigious literary prizes including the Premio Viareggio for his first book. His father's background helped his career: the elder Bertolucci had helped the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini publish his first novel, and Pasolini reciprocated by hiring Bertolucci as first assistant in Rome on Accattone (1961), where he met his first wife, Adriana Asti.

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Bimal Roy
Bimal Roy (Bengali: বিমল রায়) (12 July 1909–7 January 1966) was one of the most acclaimed Indian film directors of all time. He is particularly noted for his realistic and socialistic films like Do Bigha Zamin, Parineeta, Biraj Bahu, Madhumati, Sujata, and Bandini, making him an important director of Hindi cinema. Inspired by Italian neo-realistic cinema, he made Do Bigha Zameen after watching, Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948). His work is particularly known for his mise en scène, which he employed to portray realism. He won a number of awards throughout his career, including eleven Filmfare Awards, two National Film Awards, and the International Prize of the Cannes Film Festival.Madhumati won 9 Filmfare Awards in 1958, a record held for 37 years.
Bimal Roy was born on 12 July 1909, to a zamindar family in Suapur, then part of the Bengal province of British India and now part of Bangladesh. Bimal Roy moved to the Calcutta and entered the field of cinema as a camera assistant with New Theatres Pvt. Ltd. During this time, he assisted director P.C. Barua on the hit 1935 movie Devdas, starring K.L. Saigal. In the 1940s and 1950s Roy was part of the parallel cinema movement in post-war India. He was famous for his romantic-realist melodramas that took on important social issues while still being entertaining. He was a filmmaker of great and in-depth understanding of human strengths and weaknesses.

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Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan ( /ˈdɪlən/), born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, is an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of Dylan's early songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems for the US civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving his initial base in the culture of folk music behind, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" has been described as radically altering the parameters of popular music in 1965. However, his recordings employing electric instruments attracted denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.
Dylan's lyrics incorporated a variety of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the songs of Woody Guthrie,Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, as well as the music and performance styles of Buddy Holly and Little Richard, Dylan has both amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning fifty years, has explored numerous distinct traditions in American song—from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and swing.

wn.com/Bob_Dylan
Camille Paglia
Camille Anna Paglia (English pronunciation: /ˈpɑːliə/), (born April 2, 1947) is an American author, teacher, and social critic. Paglia, a self-described dissident feminist, has been a Professor at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 1984. She is the author of the best-selling 1990 work of literary criticism Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, and four other books, including essay collections, a study of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and Break, Blow, Burn on poetry. She writes articles on art, popular culture, feminism, and politics for mainstream newspapers and magazines. Paglia has celebrated Madonna and taken radical libertarian positions on controversial social issues such as abortion, homosexuality and drug use. She is known as a critic of American feminism, and is also strongly critical of the influence of French writers such as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault.

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Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol (French: [klod ʃaˈbʁɔl]; 1930–2010) was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave (nouvelle vague) group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues and contemporaries Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer and Rivette, Chabrol was a critic for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma before beginning his career as a film maker.
Chabrol's career began with Le Beau Serge (1958), inspired by Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Thrillers became something of a trademark for Chabrol, with an approach characterized by a distanced objectivity. This is especially apparent in Les Biches (1968), La Femme Infidèle (1969) and Le Boucher (1970) — all featuring his then-wife, Stéphane Audran.
Sometimes characterized as a "mainstream" New Wave director, Chabrol remained prolific and popular throughout his half-century career. In 1978, he cast Isabelle Huppert as the lead in Violette Nozière. On the strength of that effort, the pair went on to others including the successful Madame Bovary (1991) and La Ceremonie (1996).

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D. W. Griffith
David Llewelyn Wark "D. W." Griffith (January 22, 1875 – July 23, 1948) was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the epic 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance (1916).
Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera and narrative techniques, and its immense popularity set the stage for the dominance of the feature-length film in the United States. The film has been extremely controversial for its negative depiction of African Americans, white Unionists and Reconstruction, and its positive portrayal of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan. The film was widely criticized and subject to boycotts by anti-racist organizations such as the NAACP. Griffith responded to his critics with Intolerance, intended to show the history of prejudiced thought and behavior. The film was not a financial success but was praised by critics. Several of Griffith's later films were also successful, but his high production, promotional, and roadshow costs often made his ventures commercial failures. He is generally considered one of the most important figures of early cinema for his command of film techniques and expressive skills.

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Dariush Mehrjui
Dariush Mehrju'i (Persian: داریوش مهرجویی ‎, born 8 December 1939 in Tehran), also spelled as Mehrjui, Mehrjoui, and Mehrjuyi, is an Iranian director, screenwriter, producer, and film editor.
Mehrjui was a founding member of the Iranian New Wave movement of the early 1970s. His second film Gaav is considered to be the first film of this movement, which also included Masoud Kimiai and Nasser Taqvai. Most of his films are inspired by literature and adapted from Iranian and foreign novels and plays.
Dariush Mehrjui was born to a middle class family in Tehran. He showed interest in painting miniatures, music, and playing santoor and piano. He spent a lot of time going to the movies, particularly American films which were un-dubbed and inter-spliced with explanatory title cards that explained the plot throughout the films. At this time Mehrjui started to learn English so as to better enjoy the films. The film that had the strongest impact on him as a child was Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves. At the age of 12 Mehrjui built a 35mm projector, rented two-reel films and began selling tickets to his neighborhood friends. Although raised in a religious household, Mehrjui has said that at the age of 15 "the face of God gradually became a little hazy for me, and I lost my faith."

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Daryush Shokof
Daryush Shokof (Persian: داریوش شکوف‎) (born Ali Reza Shokoufandeh on June 25, 1954) is an Iranian artist, film director, philosopher, writer, art director, and film producer, and singer. He was born in Tehran, Iran, but lives in Germany.
Shokof left Iran in the 1970s to continue education in the United States where he studied physics and mathematics at Eastern New Mexico University and then industrial management at the University of Texas at Dallas. At the age of 22 he moved to New York City, became interested in, and began studying art and film at New York University. In 1985, Shokof moved to Germany, where he became a full-time artist and sculptor. He continued to simultaneously write film scripts and made his first feature film debut Seven Servants in Germany in 1995. Seven Servants was an impressive and daring first attempt on the big screen. Seven Servants is often mentioned as one of the most original movies ever made.^{[citation needed]} Even though the fate of the movie was a most unfortunate one in which it never got released for over 13 years, it somehow paved the way for Shokof to continue making movies with his unique views of filmmaking and establishing his name as an original Auteur filmmaker.

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David Bordwell
David Bordwell (born July 23, 1947) is an American film theorist and film historian. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1974, he has written more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including Narration in the Fiction Film (1985), Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (1988), Making Meaning (1989), and On the History of Film Style (1997).
With his wife Kristin Thompson, Bordwell wrote the introductory textbooks Film Art (1979) and Film History (1994). With aesthetic philosopher Noël Carroll, Bordwell edited the anthology Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (1996), a polemic on the state of contemporary film theory. His largest work to date remains The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (1985), written in collaboration with Thompson and Janet Staiger. Several of his more influential articles on theory, narrative, and style were collected in Poetics of Cinema (2007), named in homage after the famous anthology of Russian formalist film theory Poetika Kino, edited by Boris Eikhenbaum in 1927.

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David Lean
Sir David Lean, CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor, best remembered for big-screen epics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984); for bringing Charles Dickens' novels to the silver screen with films such as Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948); and for the renowned romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).
Acclaimed by directors including Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick,, Lean was voted 9th greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute Sight & Sound Directors' Top Directors" poll 2002. Lean has four films in the top eleven of the British Film Institute's Top 100 British Films.
David Lean was born in Croydon, Surrey (now part of Greater London), to Francis William le Blount Lean and the former Helena Tangye (niece of Sir Richard Trevithick Tangye). His parents were Quakers and he was a pupil at the Quaker-founded Leighton Park School in Reading. His younger brother, Edward Tangye Lean (1911–1974), founded the original Inklings literary club when a student at Oxford University. Lean was a half-hearted schoolboy with a dreamy nature who was labeled a "dud" of a student; he left in his mid-teens and entered his father's chartered accountancy firm as an apprentice. At age 16, his father deserted the family when he ran off with another woman, and young David would later follow a similar path after his own first marriage and child.

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David Lynch
David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, comic book artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery, and meticulous sound design. The surreal, and in many cases violent, elements to his films have earned them the reputation that they "disturb, offend or mystify" their audiences.
Born to a middle class family in Missoula, Montana, Lynch spent his childhood traveling around the United States, before going on to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he first made the transition to producing short films. Deciding to devote himself more fully to this medium, he moved to Los Angeles, where he produced his first motion picture, the surrealist horror Eraserhead (1977). After Eraserhead became a cult classic on the midnight movie circuit, Lynch was employed to direct The Elephant Man (1980), from which he gained mainstream success. Then being employed by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, he proceeded to make two films: the science-fiction epic Dune (1984), which proved to be a critical and commercial failure, and then a neo-noir crime film, Blue Velvet (1986), which was highly critically acclaimed.

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Emeric Pressburger
Emeric Pressburger (5 December 1902 – 5 February 1988) was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations with Michael Powell, in a multiple-award-winning partnership known as The Archers and produced a series of classic British films, notably 49th Parallel (1941), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Matter of Life and Death (1946, also called Stairway to Heaven), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951).
Imre József Pressburger was born in Miskolc, Hungary of Jewish heritage. Pressburger means someone from the town of Pressburg (Pozsony in Hungarian) He was the only son (he had one elder half-sister from his father's previous marriage) of Kálmán Pressburger, estate manager, and his second wife, Kätherina Wichs. He attended a boarding-school in Temesvár, where he was a good student, excelling at mathematics, literature and music. He then studied mathematics and engineering at the Universities of Prague and Stuttgart before his father's death forced him to abandon his studies.

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Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. His plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote only one well-known comedy (Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.
O'Neill was born in a Broadway hotel room in Longacre Square (now Times Square), in the Barrett Hotel. The site is now a Starbucks (1500 Broadway, Northeast corner of 43rd & Broadway). A commemorative plaque is posted on the outside wall with the inscription "Eugene O'Neill, October 16, 1888 ~ November 27, 1953 America's greatest playwright was born on this site then called Barrett Hotel, Presented by Circle in the Square."

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F. W. Murnau
Friedrich Wilhelm "F. W." Murnau (born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe, December 28, 1888 – March 11, 1931) was one of the most influential German film directors of the silent era, and a prominent figure in the expressionist movement in German cinema during the 1920s. Although some of Murnau's films have been lost, most still survive.
He was born in Bielefeld, Province of Westphalia. He attended the University of Heidelberg and studied art history. He took the name "Murnau" from the town in Germany named Murnau am Staffelsee. Openly gay, the 6'11 (210 cm) director was said to have an icy, imperious disposition and an obsession with film. He was a combat pilot during World War I and directed his first film Der Knabe in Blau ('The Boy in Blue') in 1919.
Murnau's most famous film is Nosferatu, a 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula for which Stoker's widow sued for copyright infringement. Murnau lost the lawsuit and all prints of the film were ordered to be destroyed, but bootleg prints survived. The vampire, played by German stage actor Max Schreck, resembled a rat which was known to carry the plague. The origins of the word are from Stoker's novel, where it is used by the Romanian townsfolk to refer to Count Dracula and presumably, other undead.

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Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini (Italian pronunciation: [fedeˈriːko felˈliːni]; January 20, 1920 – October 31, 1993) was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century, and is widely revered. He won five Academy Awards and was nominated for 12 in a career that spanned over forty years.
Fellini was born on January 20, 1920 to middle-class parents in Rimini, then a small town on the Adriatic Sea. His father, Urbano Fellini (1894–1956), born to a family of Romagnol peasants and small landholders from Gambettola, moved to Rome in 1915 as a baker apprenticed to the Pantanella pasta factory. His mother, Ida Barbiani (1896–1984), came from a bourgeois Catholic family of Roman merchants. Despite her family’s vehement disapproval, she eloped with Urbano in 1917 to live at his parents' home in Gambettola. A civil marriage followed in 1918 with the religious ceremony held at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome a year later. The couple settled in Rimini where Urbano became a traveling salesman and wholesale vendor. Fellini had two siblings: Riccardo (1921–1991), a documentary director for RAI Television, and Maria Maddalena (m. Fabbri; 1929–2002).

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Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola ( /ˈkoʊpələ/ KOH-pə-lə; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors. He epitomized the group of filmmakers known as the New Hollywood, that includes Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, William Friedkin, Philip Kaufman, and George Lucas who emerged in the early 1970s with unconventional ideas that challenged contemporary film-making.
He co-wrote the script for Patton (1970), which won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay). His directorial fame escalated with the release of The Godfather (1972), a film which revolutionized movie-making in the gangster genre, earning praise from critics and public alike. It won three Academy Awards, including his second, for Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), and was instrumental in cementing his position as a prominent American film director.
Coppola followed it with a critically successful sequel, The Godfather Part II (1974), which became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film was highly praised and won him three Academy Awards—for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture. The Conversation, which Coppola directed, produced and wrote, was released that same year, winning the Palme d'Or at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. He next directed Apocalypse Now (1979); notorious for its overlong and strenuous production, but critically acclaimed for its vivid and stark depiction of the Vietnam War, winning the Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. To this day, Coppola is one of only seven filmmakers to win two Palme d'Or awards, and is the only filmmaker to win both in the same decade.

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François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut (6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was an influential film critic and filmmaker, one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five films.
Truffaut was born in Paris on 6 February 1932. His mother was Janine de Montferrand. His mother's future husband, Roland Truffaut, accepted him as an adopted son and gave him his surname. He was passed around to live with various nannies and his grandmother for a number of years. It was his grandmother who instilled in him her love of books and music. He lived with his grandmother until her death when Truffaut was ten years old. It was only after his grandmother's death that he lived with his parents for the first time. The identity of Truffaut's biological father was unknown, though a private detective agency in 1968 revealed that their enquiry into the matter led to a Roland Levy, a Jewish dentist from Bayonne. Truffaut's mother's family disputed the findings but Truffaut himself believed and embraced them.

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George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American film producer, screenwriter, director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones. Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successful directors/producers, with an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion as of 2011.
George Lucas was born in Modesto, California, the son of Dorothy Ellinore (née Bomberger) and George Walton Lucas, Sr. (1913–1991), who owned a stationery store.
Lucas grew up in the Central Valley town of Modesto and his early passion for cars and motor racing would eventually serve as inspiration for his USC student film 1:42.08, as well as his Oscar-nominated low-budget phenomenon, American Graffiti. Long before Lucas became obsessed with film making, he wanted to be a race-car driver, and he spent most of his high school years racing on the underground circuit at fairgrounds and hanging out at garages. However, a near-fatal accident in his souped-up Autobianchi Bianchina on June 12, 1962, just days before his high school graduation, quickly changed his mind. Instead of racing, he attended Modesto Junior College and later got accepted into a junior college to study anthropology. While taking liberal arts courses, he developed a passion for cinematography and camera tricks. George Lucas graduated from USC in California.

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Gianni di Venanzo
Gianni di Venanzo (18 December 1920, Teramo, Abruzzo – 3 February 1966), was a distinguished Italian cinematographer.
He collaborated with several notable directors, working on films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni such as L'amore in città (Love in the City), Le amiche (The Girlfriends), Il grido (The Outcry), La notte (Night) and L'eclisse (The Eclipse); Francesco Rosi: La sfida (The Challenge), I Magliari (The Magliari), Salvatore Giuliano, Le mani sulla città (Hands Over the City), and Il momento della verità (The Moment of Truth); Federico Fellini: 8½ and Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits) and a film directed by Joseph Losey: Eva. His last film was The Honey Pot (1967) directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
His career was cut short when he died in Rome of viral hepatitis at the age of 45.

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Godfrey Reggio
Godfrey Reggio (born March 29, 1940) is an American director of experimental documentary films.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, a facility that provided medical care to 12,000 community members in Santa Fe, and La Gente, a community-organizing project in Northern New Mexico's barrios. In 1963 he co-founded Young Citizens for Action, a community organization project that aided juveniles among the street gangs in Santa Fe. In 1972, he co-founded the Institute for Regional Education in Santa Fe, a non-profit foundation focused on media development, the arts, community organization, and research.
Reggio has been involved in many progressive political causes in the United States, including work for the American Civil Liberties Union, co-organizing a multi-media public interest campaign on the invasion of privacy and the use of technology to control behavior. Reggio resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico and is currently focusing on a narrative-based film exploring the negative impacts of consumerism and fundamentalism on the world. Godfrey Reggio participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2006.

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Gus Van Sant
Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. (born July 24, 1952) is an American film director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director — for Good Will Hunting (1997) and Milk (2008), both of which were also nominated for Best Picture — and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his film Elephant (2003). He lives in Portland, Oregon.
His early career was devoted to directing television commercials in the Pacific Northwest. In his films, he has dealt with themes concerning homosexuality and other marginalized subcultures.
His filmography as writer and director includes a 1994 adaptation of Tom Robbins' 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which features a diverse cast (Keanu Reeves, Roseanne Barr, Uma Thurman, and k.d. lang, with cameos by William S. Burroughs and Heather Graham, among others); and My Own Private Idaho (1991), also starring Reeves as well as River Phoenix.
He wrote the screenplays for most of his early movies, and wrote one novel, Pink. A book of his photography has also been published, called 108 Portraits.

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Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɪŋmar ˈbærjman] ( listen); 14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera," he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and influential film directors of all time.
He directed over sixty films and documentaries for cinematic release and for television, most of which he also wrote. He also directed over one hundred and seventy plays. Among his company of actors were Harriet Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow. Most of his films were set in the landscape of Sweden. His major subjects were death, illness, faith, betrayal, and insanity.
Bergman was active for more than six decades. In 1976 his career was seriously threatened as the result of a botched criminal investigation for alleged income tax evasion. Outraged, Bergman suspended a number of pending productions, closed his studios, and went into self-imposed exile in Germany for eight years.

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Ivor Montagu
The Honorable Ivor Goldsmid Samuel Montagu (23 April 1904, London, England – 5 November 1984, London) was a British filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, film critic, writer, table tennis player and apparent Soviet spy. He has received some credit for the development of a vibrant intellectual film culture in Britain during the interwar years.
Montagu was the third son of the 2nd Baron Swaythling. He attended Westminster School and King's College, Cambridge, where he contributed to Granta. He became involved in zoological research. His directorial career began in the late 1920s with a short film about table tennis.
With Sidney Bernstein he established the London Film Society in 1925, the first film club devoted to showing art films and independent films. Montagu became the first film critic of The Observer and the New Statesman. He did the post-production work on Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger in 1926 and was hired to Gaumont-British in the 1930s, working as a producer on a number of the Hitchcock thrillers.

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Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette (French pronunciation: [ʒak ʁivɛt]; born 1 March 1928) is a French film director, screenwriter and film critic. His best-known films include Celine and Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse and the cult film Out 1.
He was a member of the French New Wave, a group that included François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, who all began their careers as film critics at Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s and gained international recognition as film directors in the 1960s (though Rivette perhaps had greater success and recognition as a filmmaker in the 1970s). As a film critic, he expressed his admiration for popular American cinema, especially genre directors such as Robert Aldrich, Otto Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock and Frank Tashlin. As a film director, he is known for using extending running times and loose narratives to explore the symbiosis and clash between one's reality and one's imagination (a space that frequently occurs when characters voluntarily extend the logic/rules of game boards or theatrical stages into their everyday existence). His films often combine the paranoid and conspiratorial crime stories from films by Louis Feuillade and Fritz Lang with the more carefree characters from the films of Jean Renoir and Howard Hawks.

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Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ kɔkto]; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants terribles (1929), and the films Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946), and Orpheus (1949). His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María Félix, Édith Piaf and Raymond Radiguet.
Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, a village near Paris, to Georges Cocteau and his wife, Eugénie Lecomte; a socially prominent Parisian family. His father was a lawyer and amateur painter who committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. He left home at fifteen. He published his first volume of poems, Aladdin's Lamp, at nineteen. Cocteau soon became known in Bohemian artistic circles as The Frivolous Prince, the title of a volume he published at twenty-two. Edith Wharton described him as a man "to whom every great line of poetry was a sunrise, every sunset the foundation of the Heavenly City..."

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Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir (French pronunciation: [ʁənwaʁ]; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. His pictures Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. As an author, he wrote the definitive biography of his father, the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Renoir, My Father (1962). Jean Renoir was ranked by the BFI's Sight & Sound poll of critics as the fourth greatest director of all time.
Renoir was born in the Montmartre district of Paris, France. He was the second son of Aline Charigot and the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He was also the brother of Pierre Renoir, a noted French stage and film actor; the uncle of Claude Renoir, a cinematographer; and the father of Alain Renoir^(fr), professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley.

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Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃lyk ɡɔdaʁ]; born 3 December 1930) is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement La Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave".
Like his New Wave contemporaries, Godard criticized mainstream French cinema's "Tradition of Quality", which "emphasized craft over innovation, privileged established directors over new directors, and preferred the great works of the past to experimentation." To challenge this tradition, he and like-minded critics started to make their own films. Many of Godard's films challenge the conventions of traditional Hollywood in addition to French cinema.^{[citation needed]} He is often considered the most radical French filmmaker of the 1960s and 1970s. Several of his films express his political views.His films express his knowledge of film history through their references to earlier films. In addition, Godard's films often cite existentialism, as he was an avid reader of existential and Marxist philosophy.^{[citation needed]} His radical approach in film conventions, politics and philosophies made him an influential filmmaker of the French New Wave.

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Jesse James
Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847 – April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw, gang leader, bank robber, train robber and murderer from the state of Missouri and the most famous member of the James-Younger Gang. Already a celebrity when he was alive, he became a legendary figure of the Wild West after his death. Some recent scholars place him in the context of regional insurgencies of ex-Confederates following the American Civil War rather than a manifestation of frontier lawlessness or alleged economic justice.
Jesse and his brother Frank James were Confederate guerrillas during the Civil War. They were accused of participating in atrocities committed against Union soldiers. After the war, as members of one gang or another, they robbed banks, stagecoaches and trains. Despite popular portrayals of James as a kind of Robin Hood, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, there is no evidence that he and his gang used their robbery gains for anyone but themselves.
The James brothers were most active with their gang from about 1866 until 1876, when their attempted robbery of a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, resulted in the capture or deaths of several members. They continued in crime for several years, recruiting new members, but were under increasing pressure from law enforcement. On April 3, 1882, Jesse James was killed by Robert Ford, who was a member of the gang living in the James house and who was hoping to collect a state reward on James' head.

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Jesus Christ
Jesus ( /ˈdʒiːzəs/; Greek: Ἰησοῦς; 7–2 BC/BCE to 30–36 AD/CE), also referred to as Jesus Christ or simply Christ, is the central figure of Christianity and most Christian denominations venerate him as God the Son incarnated. In Islam, Jesus (in Arabic: عيسى‎ in Islamic usage, commonly transliterated as Isa) is considered one of God's important prophets.
Most modern historians agree that Jesus existed and was a Jewish teacher from Galilee in Roman Judaea, who was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate. Scholars have offered competing descriptions and portraits of Jesus, which at times share a number of overlapping attributes, such as a rabbi, a charismatic healer, the leader of an apocalyptic movement, a self-described Messiah, a sage and philosopher, or a social reformer who preached of the "Kingdom of God" as a means for personal and egalitarian social transformation. Scholars have correlated the New Testament accounts with non-Christian historical records to arrive at an estimated chronology of Jesus' life.

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Joel Coen
Joel David Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957) known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers. Their films include Blood Simple, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, and True Grit.
The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, although until recently Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing. They often alternate top billing for their screenplays while sharing film credits for editor under the alias Roderick Jaynes.
Joel and Ethan Coen, of Jewish heritage, grew up in a Jewish community in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Their father, Edward, was an economist at the University of Minnesota, and their mother, Rena, an art historian at St. Cloud State University.
When they were children, Joel saved money from mowing lawns to buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera. Together, the brothers remade movies they saw on television with a neighborhood kid, Mark Zimering ("Zeimers"),^{[citation needed]} as the star. Their first attempt was a romp titled, Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go. Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey (1966) became their Zeimers in Zambia, which also featured Ethan as a native with a spear.

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John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassavetes (in Greek: Γιάννης Νικόλαος Κασσαβέτης; December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was an Greek-American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Dirty Dozen (1967). Cassevetes was also a pioneer of American independent film by writing and directing over a dozen movies, which he financed in part with his Hollywood paychecks, and which pioneered the use of improvisation and a realistic cinéma vérité style.
Cassavetes was born in New York as the son of Greek American Katherine Cassavetes (who was to feature in some of his films) and Greek immigrant Nicholas John Cassavetes. His early years were spent with his family in Greece; when he returned at age seven, he spoke no English. He grew up on Long Island, New York. He attended Port Washington High School from 1945 to 1947, participating in Port Weekly (the school paper), Red Domino (interclass play), football, and the Port Light (yearbook). Next to his photo on page 55 of his 1947 year book is written: "'Cassy' is always ready with a wisecrack, but he does have a serious side. A 'sensational' personality. Drives his 'heap' all over." Cassavetes also attended high school at Blair Academy in New Jersey before spending a year at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, before transferring to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After graduating in 1950, he continued acting in the theater, took small parts in films and began working on television in anthology series, such as Alcoa Theatre.

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John Ford
John Ford (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973) was an American film director. He was famous for both his Westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath. His four Academy Awards for Best Director (1935, 1940, 1941, 1952) is a record, and one of those films, How Green Was My Valley, also won Best Picture.
In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Ford directed more than 140 films (although nearly all of his silent films are now lost) and he is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. Ford's films and personality were held in high regard by his colleagues, with Ingmar Bergman and Orson Welles among those who have named him as one of the greatest directors of all time.
In particular, Ford was a pioneer of location shooting and the long shot which frames his characters against a vast, harsh and rugged natural terrain.
Ford was born John Martin "Jack" Feeney (though he later often gave his given names as Sean Aloysius, sometimes with surname O'Feeny or O'Fearna; an Irish language equivalent of Feeney) in Cape Elizabeth, Maine to John Augustine Feeney and Barbara "Abbey" Curran, on February 1, 1894 (though he occasionally said 1895 and that date is erroneously inscribed on his tombstone). His father, John Augustine, was born in Spiddal,County Galway, Ireland in 1854. Barbara Curran had been born in the Aran Islands, in the town of Kilronan on the island of Inishmore (Inis Mór). John A. Feeney's grandmother, Barbara Morris, was said to be a member of a local (impoverished) gentry family, the Morrises of Spiddal, headed at present by Lord Killanin.

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Justin Theroux
Justin Paul Theroux (born August 10, 1971) is an American actor, director, and screenwriter. Theroux is best known for his work with director David Lynch appearing in two of his films: Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire.
Theroux was born in Washington, D.C. His mother, Phyllis (née Grissim), is a journalist and author who worked for the Washington Post, and his father, Eugene Theroux, is a corporate lawyer. Theroux is the nephew of the travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux, novelist and poet Alexander Theroux, author Peter Theroux, and novelist and educator Joseph Theroux; he is the cousin of British journalists and documentary film makers Louis Theroux and Marcel Theroux. His father is of half French Canadian and half Italian descent. Through his mother, Theroux is a great-great-grandson of financier, banker, and railroad magnate H. B. Hollins, and of music critic and author Gustav Kobbé. He graduated from The Field School and Bennington College.
Theroux made his film debut in 1996, in Mary Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol. Since then, he has performed both on Broadway, starring in Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme; in numerous off-Broadway productions; and in comedy films such as Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, The Baxter, Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, Broken Hearts Club, and Zoolander. He has also performed in more serious films such as American Psycho. He appeared in the film versions of the cult television shows Strangers With Candy and Michael Mann's Miami Vice. He starred in David Lynch's films Inland Empire and Mulholland Drive.

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Kon Ichikawa
Kon Ichikawa (市川崑, Ichikawa Kon^?, November 20, 1915 – February 13, 2008) was a Japanese film director.
Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture as Giichi Ichikawa (市川儀一). His father died when he was four years old, and the family kimono shop went bankrupt, so he went to live with his sister. He was given the name "Kon" by an uncle who thought the characters in the kanji 崑 signified good luck because the two halves of the Chinese character look the same when it is split in half vertically. As a child he loved drawing and his ambition was to become an artist. He also loved films and was a fan of "chambara" or samurai films. In his teens he was fascinated by Walt Disney's "Silly Symphonies" and decided to become an animator. He attended a technical school in Osaka. Upon graduation, in 1933, he found a job with a local rental film studio, J.O Studio, in their animation department. Decades later, he told the American writer on Japanese film Donald Richie, "I'm still a cartoonist and I think that the greatest influence on my films (besides Chaplin, particularly The Gold Rush) is probably Disney."

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Krzysztof Kieślowski
Krzysztof Kieślowski (Polish pronunciation: [ˈkʂɨʂtɔf kʲɛˈɕlɔfskʲi] ( listen); 27 June 1941 – 13 March 1996) was an influential Polish film director and screenwriter known internationally for The Decalogue (1989), The Double Life of Véronique (1991), and The Three Colors Trilogy (1993–1994). Kieślowski received numerous awards throughout his career, including the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize (1988), FIPRESCI Prize (1988, 1991), and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury (1991); the Venice Film Festival FIPRESCI Prize (1989), Golden Lion (1993), and OCIC Award (1993); and the Berlin International Film Festival Silver Bear (1994). In 1995 he received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Writing.
Kieślowski was born in Warsaw and grew up in several small towns, moving wherever his engineer father, a tuberculosis patient, could find treatment. At sixteen, he briefly attended a firefighters' training school, but dropped out after three months. Without any career goals, he then entered the College for Theatre Technicians in Warsaw in 1957 because it was run by a relative. He decided to become a theatre director, but at the time you had to already have at least a bachelor to apply for the theatre school, so he chose to study film as an intermediate step. He was raised Roman Catholic and retained what he called a "personal and private" relationship with God.

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Laura Harring
Laura Harring (born Laura Elena Herring Martínez; March 3, 1964) is a Mexican-American actress and former Miss USA (1985). She is known for her role as Rita in Mulholland Drive.
She was born in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico. Her mother, María Elena Cairo, is a spiritual teacher, real estate investor, and secretary. Her father, Raymond Herring, was a developer and organic farmer of Austrian-German descent. The two divorced in 1971. Harring lived the first ten years of her life in Mexico, before her family relocated to San Antonio, Texas. Caught by stray fire from a driveby shooting at age 12, Harring suffered a head wound from a .45 bullet. At age 16, she convinced her family to let her study in Switzerland at Aiglon College. She eventually returned to America, settling down in El Paso, Texas and entered the world of beauty pageants. She won the title of Miss El Paso USA, and soon after, Miss Texas USA.
Harring spent the next year traveling through Asia, exploring Europe and working as a social worker in India.^{[citation needed]} In 1987, she married Count Carl-Eduard von Bismarck-Schönhausen, great-great-grandson of Otto von Bismarck. While she retains the title of Countess von Bismarck-Schönhausen, the couple divorced in 1989.^{[citation needed]} Harring studied theatre at the London Academy of Performing Arts and is skilled in the Italian style of Commedia dell'arte, as well as Latin dances, including the Argentine Tango.^{[citation needed]}

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Lee Chang-dong
Lee Chang-dong (born July 4, 1954) is a South Korean film director, screenwriter and novelist. He won the 2008 Special Director's Prize at the Asian Film Awards and has been nominated for the Golden Lion and Palme d'Or. Lee served as South Korea's Minister of Culture and Tourism from 2003 to 2004.
Lee was born in Daegu, the hub of Korea's main conservative party. He graduated in 1981 with a degree in Korean Literature from Kyungpook National University in Daegu, where he spent much of his time in the theater, writing and directing plays. After a spell teaching Korean Language in high school, he established himself as a renowned novelist with his first novel Chonri in 1983. Later in his career, to the surprise of many, he turned to movie making.
Lee did not study filmmaking before starting out. He penned two screenplays, Park Kwang-su's To the Starry Island in 1993 and A Single Spark in 1995. After being encouraged by his contemporaries to finally step behind the directors chair, Lee made Green Fish, a "critique of Korean society told through the eyes of a young man who becomes enmeshed in the criminal underworld", in 1997.

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Lena Nyman
Anna Lena Elisabet Nyman (23 May 1944 – 4 February 2011) was a Swedish film and stage actress.
Having had her first film roles in 1955, Nyman had a role in Vilgot Sjöman's 491 (1964) and got her breakthrough in his I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967), where she, in pseudo-documentary fashion, played a character of the same name as herself, and its sequel I Am Curious (Blue) (1968). She later participated in many of the films and stage productions of Hans Alfredson and Tage Danielsson, such as Release the Prisoners to Spring (1975) and The Adventures of Picasso (1978). Nyman co-starred with Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann in Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata (1978).
In 2004, Nyman received the royal medal Litteris et Artibus, and in 2006 she was the recipient of the Eugene O'Neill Award.
Nyman died on 4 February 2011, aged 66, after a long battle with several illnesses including COPD and Guillain–Barré syndrome.

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Louis Malle
Louis Malle (30 October 1932 – 23 November 1995) was an award-winning French film director, screenwriter, and producer. His film, Le Monde du silence, won the Palme d'Or and Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1956. He was also nominated multiple times for Academy Awards later in his career.
Malle worked in both French cinema and Hollywood, and he produced both French and English language films. His most famous films include Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958), Atlantic City (1981), and Au revoir, les enfants (1987).
Malle was born into a wealthy industrialist family in Thumeries, Nord, France. He initially studied political science at the Sciences-Po before turning to film studies at IDHEC instead.
He worked as the co-director and cameraman to Jacques Cousteau on the Oscar and Palme d'Or-winning (at the 1956 Academy Awards and Cannes Film Festival respectively) documentary The Silent World (1956) and assisted Robert Bresson on A Man Escaped (French title: Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut, 1956) before making his first feature, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (released in the U.K. as Lift to the Scaffold and in the U.S. originally as Frantic, later as Elevator to the Gallows) in 1957. A taut thriller featuring an original score by Miles Davis, the film made an international film star of Jeanne Moreau, at the time a leading stage actress of the state Comédie-Française. Malle was 24 years old.

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Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky) (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Described as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements; although his ties to each were informal. Best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, Ray produced major works in a variety of media and was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer, even though he considered himself a painter above all. Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, with the artist coining the term "Rayographs" in reference to himself.
Whilst appreciation for Ray's work beyond his fashion and portrait photography was not forthcoming during his lifetime, especially in his native United States, his reputation has grown steadily in the decades since.^{[citation needed]}
From the time he began attracting attention as an artist until his death more than sixty years later, Man Ray allowed little of his early life or family background to be known to the public, even refusing to acknowledge that he ever had a name other than Man Ray.

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Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968; French pronunciation: [maʁsɛl dyˈʃɑ̃]) was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period.
Duchamp challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much by writing, but through subversive actions. He famously dubbed a urinal art and named it Fountain, though in a 1917 letter to his sister Duchamp indicates that a female friend, possibly the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, conceived of the urinal as sculpture and sent it to him under the pseudonym Richard Mutt. Duchamp produced relatively few artworks, while moving quickly through the avant-garde circles of his time.

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Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS, née Roberts (born 13 October 1925) is a British politician and the longest-serving (1979–1990) British prime minister of the 20th century, and the only woman ever to have held the post. A Soviet journalist nicknamed her the "Iron Lady", which later became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As prime minister, she implemented conservative policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.
Originally a research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975 Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition, as well as the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became prime minister after winning the 1979 general election.
After entering 10 Downing Street, Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives to reverse what she perceived as Britain's precipitous national decline. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity during her first years in office waned amid recession and high unemployment, until economic recovery and the 1982 Falklands War brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her re-election in 1983. Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her Community Charge (popularly referred to as "poll tax") was widely unpopular and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership.

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Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( /skɔrˈsɛsɛ/; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won Academy Award, Palme d'Or, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.
Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption,machismo, modern crime, and violence. Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers of all time, directing landmark films such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and Goodfellas (1990) – all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), having been nominated a previous five times.

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Matthew Barney
Matthew Barney (born March 25, 1967) is an American artist who works in sculpture, photography, drawing and film. His early works were sculptural installations combined with performance and video. Between 1994 and 2002 he created the Cremaster Cycle, a series of five films described by Jonathan Jones in The Guardian as "one of the most imaginative and brilliant achievements in the history of avant-garde cinema."
Matthew Barney was born March 25, 1967, in San Francisco, California. He lived in Boise, Idaho from 1973 to 1985, where he attended elementary, middle, and high school. His parents divorced and his mother moved to New York City, where he would frequently visit, and where he was introduced to the art scene. In 1989, he graduated from Yale University. His earliest works, created at Yale, were staged at the university’s athletic complex. In the 90s, Barney moved to New York, where he worked as a male model—more notably for J.Crew catalogues—a career that helped him finance his early work as an artist. Barney lives with his partner, singer Björk, with whom he had a daughter in 2002.

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Michel Gondry
Michel Gondry (born May 8, 1963 in Versailles, France) is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker, whose works include being a commercial director, music video director, and a screenwriter. He is noted for his inventive visual style and manipulation of mise en scène.^{[citation needed]}
Gondry was born in Versailles, France. He is the grandson of inventor Constant Martin. He has a teenage son named Paul, who is also an artist.
Gondry's vision and career began with his emphasis on emotion, according to Gondry himself in an interview for The Film That Changed My Life by journalist Robert K. Elder. Much of his inspiration, he says, came from the film Le voyage en ballon.
When I watch this movie, I dream I’m flying and then I do stories where people are flying. I think it’s directly influencing.
His career as a filmmaker began with creating music videos for the French rock band Oui Oui, in which he also served as a drummer. The style of his videos for Oui Oui caught the attention of music artist Björk, who asked him to direct the video for her song "Human Behaviour". The collaboration proved long-lasting, with Gondry directing a total of seven music videos for Björk. Other artists who have collaborated with Gondry on more than one occasion include Daft Punk, The White Stripes, The Chemical Brothers, The Vines, Steriogram, Radiohead, and Beck. Gondry has also created numerous television commercials. He pioneered the "bullet time" technique later adapted in The Matrix,^{[citation needed]} in a 1998 commercial for Smirnoff vodka, as well as directing a trio of inventive holiday-themed advertisements for clothing retailer Gap, Incorporated.

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Mike Figgis
Michael "Mike" Figgis (born 28 February 1948) is an English film director, writer, and composer.
Figgis was born in Carlisle, England and grew up in Africa. Figgis for several years had a relationship with the actress Saffron Burrows and cast her in several films. He is cousin to Irish filmmakers Jonathan Figgis and Jason Figgis who run the award-winning film production company October Eleven Pictures in Ireland. His sons Arlen Figgis and Louis Figgis have also followed their father in to the film industry, as editor and producer respectively.
Figgis's early interest was in music and he played keyboards for Bryan Ferry's first band. In 1983 he directed a theatre play, produced in Theatre Gerard-Philipe (Saint-Denis, Paris, France). This play performed with great success at Festival de Grenada and in Theater der Welt (Munich, Germany).
After working in theatre (he was a musician and performer in the experimental group People Show) he made his feature film debut with the low budget Stormy Monday in 1988. The film earned him attention as a director who could get interesting performances from established Hollywood actors. He initially made a splash in America in the 1990s with the gritty thriller Internal Affairs that helped to revive the career of Richard Gere. His next Hollywood feature Mr. Jones was misunderstood by the studio who attempted to market the downbeat story as a feelgood movie resulting in a box office flop. Figgis poured his disenchantment with the film industry into Leaving Las Vegas, creating star turns for Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue which earned Figgis Academy Award nominations for Best Directing and Best Screenplay. His most ambitious film to date is the low budget film The Loss of Sexual Innocence, a loosely based autobiographical movie of the director himself.

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Mrinal Sen
Mrinal Sen (also spelled Mrinal Shen) is a Bengali Indian filmmaker. He was born on 14 May 1923, in the town of Faridpur, now in Bangladesh in a Hindu family. After finishing his high school there, he left home to come to Calcutta as a student and studied physics at the well-known Scottish Church College and at the University of Calcutta. As a student, he got involved with the cultural wing of the Communist Party. Although he never became a member of the party, his association with the socialist Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) brought him close to a number of like-minded culturally associated people.
His interest in films started after he stumbled upon a book on film aesthetics. However his interest remained mostly intellectual, and he was forced to take up the job of a medical representative, which took him away from Calcutta. This did not last very long, and he came back to the city and eventually took a job of an audio technician in a Calcutta film studio, which eventually launched his film career.

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Naomi Watts
Naomi Ellen Watts (born 28 September 1968) is a British actress who began her career in Australian television, where she appeared in series such as Hey Dad..! (1990), Brides of Christ (1991), E Street (1991) and Home and Away (1991). Her film debut was the 1986 drama For Love Alone. Her following portrayals included roles in B-class movies, such as the 1996 horror film Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering, as well as roles in television and independent films.
Watts gained critical acclaim following her work in David Lynch's 2001 psychological thriller Mulholland Drive, starring alongside Justin Theroux and Laura Harring. The next year, she received public recognition for her participation in the box office hit horror film The Ring. In 2004, she received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress as well as for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for her portrayal of Cristina Peck in Alejandro González Iñárritu's 2003 drama 21 Grams, alongside Sean Penn. Other film roles include the 2005 remake of King Kong, the 2006 remake of The Painted Veil, the 2007 thriller Eastern Promises, and the 2009 thriller The International. In 2010, Watts portrayed Valerie Plame Wilson, opposite Sean Penn as Joe Wilson, in Fair Game.

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Nicolas Winding Refn
Nicolas Winding Refn (born 29 September 1970) is a Danish film director, screenwriter and producer. Winding Refn moved to the United States in 1981 and graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1993. He is famous for directing the Pusher trilogy. His film Drive premiered in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival where it won him the Best Director Award.
Winding Refn was born in Copenhagen and raised partly in New York. He is married to actress Liv Corfixen, with whom he has two children. His parents are Danish film director and editor Anders Refn and cinematographer Vibeke Winding. His half-brother is Danish singer Kasper Winding.

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Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".
Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Present Laughter and Blithe Spirit, have remained in the regular theatre repertoire. He composed hundreds of songs, in addition to well over a dozen musical theatre works (including the operetta Bitter Sweet and comic revues), poetry, several volumes of short stories, the novel Pomp and Circumstance, and a three-volume autobiography. Coward's stage and film acting and directing career spanned six decades, during which he starred in many of his own works.

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Park Chan-wook
Park Chan-wook (Hangul: 박찬욱; born August 23, 1963) is a South Korean film director, screenwriter, producer, and former film critic. One of the most acclaimed and popular filmmakers in his native country, Park is most known for his films Joint Security Area, Thirst and what has become known as The Vengeance Trilogy, consisting of 2002's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy in 2003 and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance in 2005. His films are noted for their immaculate framing and often brutal subject matter.
In a May 2004 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Park listed Sophocles, Shakespeare, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Kurt Vonnegut and others as being influences on his career. In a later interview for Lady Vengeance, Park listed Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Aldrich, Ingmar Bergman, Sam Fuller, Roman Polanski and Kim Ki-young as cinematic influences.
Park was born and raised in Seoul, and studied philosophy at Sogang University, where he started a cinema-club called the "Sogang Film Community" and published a number of articles on contemporary cinema. Originally intending to be an art critic, upon seeing Vertigo he resolved to try to become a filmmaker. After graduation, he wrote articles on film for journals, and soon became an assistant director of films like Kkamdong, directed by Yu Yeong-jin, and Watercolor painting in a Rainy Day, directed by Kwak Jae-yong (My Sassy Girl).

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Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson (born June 26, 1970), is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He has written and directed feature films: Hard Eight (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), There Will Be Blood (2007), and The Master (2012). He has been nominated for five Academy Awards — There Will Be Blood for Best Achievement in Directing, Best Motion Picture of the Year, and Best Adapted Screenplay; Magnolia for Best Original Screenplay; and Boogie Nights for Best Original Screenplay.
Anderson has been hailed as being "one of the most exciting talents to come along in years" and "among the supreme talents of today." After the release of Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Anderson was praised as a wunderkind. In 2004, Anderson was ranked twenty-first on The Guardian's list of the forty best directors. In 2007, Total Film named him the twentieth greatest director of all time, while the American Film Institute regards him as "one of American film's modern masters." In 2011, Entertainment Weekly named him the tenth-greatest working director calling him "one of the most dynamic directors to emerge in the last twenty years."

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Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, CBE (born 5 April 1942) is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular. The scenic composition and illumination and the contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death are common traits in his films.
Greenaway was born in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, to a teacher mother and a builder's merchant father. Greenaway's family left South Wales when he was three years old (they had moved there originally to avoid the Blitz) and settled in Essex, England. He attended Forest School in North-East London. At an early age Greenaway decided on becoming a painter. He became interested in European cinema, focusing first on the films of Ingmar Bergman, and then on the French nouvelle vague filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and, most especially, Alain Resnais.
In 1962, Greenaway began studies at Walthamstow College of Art, where a fellow student was musician Ian Dury (later cast in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover). Greenaway trained as a muralist for three years; he made his first film, Death of Sentiment, a churchyard furniture essay filmed in four large London cemeteries. In 1965, he joined the Central Office of Information (COI), working there fifteen years as a film editor and director. In that time he created a filmography of experimental films, starting with Train (1966), footage of the last steam trains at Waterloo station, (situated behind the COI), edited to a musique concrète composition. Tree (1966), is a homage to the embattled tree growing in concrete outside the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank in London. By the 1970s he was confident and ambitious and made Vertical Features Remake and A Walk Through H. The former is an examination of various arithmetical editing structures, and the latter is a journey through the maps of a fictitious country.

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René Clair
René Clair (11 November 1898 – 15 March 1981) born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He went on to make some of the most innovative early sound films in France, before going abroad to work in the UK and USA for more than a decade. Returning to France after World War II, he continued to make films that were characterised by their elegance and wit, often presenting a nostalgic view of French life in earlier years. He was elected to the Académie française in 1960.
René Clair was born and grew up in Paris in the district of Les Halles, whose lively and picturesque character made a lasting impression on him. His father was a soap merchant; he had an elder brother, Henri Chomette (born 1896). He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. In 1914 he was studying philosophy; his friends at that time included Raymond Payelle who became the actor and writer Philippe Hériat. In 1917, at the age of 18, he served as an ambulance driver in World War I, before being invalided out with a spinal injury. He was deeply affected by the horrors of war that he witnessed and gave expression to this in writing a volume of poetry called La Tête de l'homme (which remained unpublished). Back in Paris after the war, he started a career as a journalist at the left-wing newspaper L'Intransigeant.

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Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November, 1937) is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists (1977), Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Legend (1985), Black Rain (1989), Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), Kingdom of Heaven (2005) American Gangster (2007), Body of Lies (2008), and Prometheus (2012).
Scott has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Directing, as well as Golden Globe and Emmy Awards. He was knighted in the 2003 New Year Honours. In 2011, Scott received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is the older brother of film director Tony Scott.
Scott was born in South Shields, England, the son of Elizabeth and Colonel Francis Percy Scott. He was raised in an Army family, meaning that for most of his early life, his father — an officer in the Royal Engineers — was absent. Ridley's older brother, Frank, joined the Merchant Navy when he was still young and the pair had little contact. During this time the family moved around, living in (among other areas) Cumbria, Wales and Germany. He has a younger brother, Tony, also a film director. After the Second World War, the Scott family moved back to their native north-east England, eventually settling in Teesside (whose industrial landscape would later inspire similar scenes in Blade Runner). He enjoyed watching films, and his favourites include Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane and Seven Samurai. Scott studied in Teesside from 1954 to 1958, at Grangefield Grammar School and later in West Hartlepool College of Art, graduating with a Diploma in Design.

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Ritwik Ghatak
Ritwik Ghatak or Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (pronounced: IPA: [Riːttiːk (Kuːmaːr) Ghôţok] listen (help·info); 4 November 1925 – 6 February 1976) was a Bengali Indian filmmaker and script writer. Along with prominent contemporary Bengali filmmakers Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen, his cinema is primarily remembered for its meticulous depiction of social reality. Although their roles were often adversarial, they were ardent admirers of each other's work, and in doing so, the three directors charted the independent trajectory of parallel cinema, as a counterpoint to the mainstream fare of Hindi cinema in India. Ghatak received quite a few awards in his career, including National Film Award's Rajat Kamal Award for Best Story in 1974 for his fim Jukti Takko Aar Gappo, Best Director's Award from Bangladesh Cine Journalist's Association for Titash Ekti Nadir Naam. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri for Arts in 1970.
Ritwik Ghatak was born in Dhaka in East Bengal (now Bangladesh). Ghatak's father Suresh Chandra Ghatak was a district magistrate and also a poet and playwright; his mother's name was Indubala Devi. He and his twin sister Prateeti, were the youngest of nine children. The other children were – Manish, Sudhish, Tapati, Sampreeti, Brototi, Ashish Chandra and Lokesh Chandra. He and his family moved to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in West Bengal just before millions of other refugees from East Bengal began to flood into the city, fleeing the catastrophic Bengal famine of 1943 and the partition of Bengal in 1947. Identification with this tide of refugees was to define his practice, providing an overriding metaphor for cultural dismemberment and exile that unified his subsequent creative work. The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, which led to more refugees fleeing to India, was to also have a similar impact on his work.

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Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.
His films MASH (1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), and Nashville (1975) have been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Altman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Helen (née Matthews), a Mayflower descendant from Nebraska, and Bernard Clement Altman, a wealthy insurance salesman and amateur gambler, who came from an upper-class family. Altman's ancestry was German, English and Irish; his paternal grandfather, Frank Altman, Sr., anglicized the spelling of the family name from "Altmann" to "Altman". Altman had a Catholic upbringing, but he did not continue to practice as a Catholic as an adult, although he has been referred to as "a sort of Catholic" and a Catholic director. He was educated at Jesuit schools, including Rockhurst High School, in Kansas City. He graduated from Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri in 1943.

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Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson (pronounced [ʁɔbɛʁ bʁɛˈsɔ̃] in French; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director known for his spiritual, ascetic style. He contributed notably to the art of film and influenced the French New Wave. He is often referred to as the most highly regarded French filmmaker after Jean Renoir. As Jean-Luc Godard said, "Robert Bresson is French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is the German music."
Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth (née Clausels) and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life, and the year of his birth – 1901 or 1907 – varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and turned to painting after graduating. Three formative influences in his early life seem to have a mark on his films - Catholicism, art and his experiences as a prisoner of war.
Initially also a photographer, Bresson made his first short film, Les affaires publiques (Public Affairs) in 1934. During World War II, he spent over a year in a prisoner-of-war camp - an experience which informs Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped). In a career that spanned fifty years, Bresson made only 13 feature-length films. This reflects his meticulous approach to the filmmaking process and his non-commercial preoccupations.^{[citation needed]} Difficulty finding funding for his projects was also a factor.

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Robert Ford (outlaw)
Robert Newton "Bob" Ford (January 31, 1862 – June 8, 1892) was an American outlaw best known for killing his gang leader Jesse James in 1882. Ford was shot to death by Edward O'Kelley in his tent saloon with a shotgun blast to the front upper body. He was buried in Creede, Colorado, and later reburied at Richmond Cemetery in Ray County, Missouri, with "The man who shot Jesse James" inscribed on his grave marker.
Robert Ford was born in Ray County, Missouri, to James Thomas Ford and his wife Mary Bruin. As a young man, he became an admirer of Jesse James for his war record and his celebrated criminal exploits. In 1880, he finally met James. Ford's brother Charles is believed to have taken part in the James gang's Blue Cut train robbery in Jackson County near Glendale, Missouri (now part of Independence), on September 7, 1881.
In November 1881, James moved his family to St. Joseph, Missouri. He intended to give up crime but first wanted to stage one last robbery at Blue Cut, Missouri. The James gang had been greatly reduced in numbers by that time. Some had fled the gang in fear of prosecution, and many of the original members were either dead or in prison after a botched robbery in Northfield, Minnesota. After the train robbery, Frank James decided to retire from crime, settling in Lynchburg, Virginia.

wn.com/Robert_Ford_(outlaw)
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), known as Salvador Dalí (Catalan pronunciation: [səɫβəˈðo ðəˈɫi]), was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres, Spain.
Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.
Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to a self-styled "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors.
Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. His eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork, to the dismay of those who held his work in high esteem, and to the irritation of his critics.

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Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray ( Shottojit Rae (help·info); 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian Bengali motion-picture director, writer, and illustrator who brought the Indian cinema to world recognition with Pather Panchali (1955; The Song of the Road) and its two sequels, known as the Apu Trilogy. As a director Ray was noted for his humanism, his versatility, and his detailed control over his films and their music. He was one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century. Ray was born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn into independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing the Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves of Vittorio De Sica during a visit to London.
Ray directed thirty-seven films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. He was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, graphic designer and film critic. Ray's first film, Pather Panchali (1955), won eleven international prizes, including Best Human Documentary at the Cannes film festival. This film, Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (1959) form The Apu Trilogy. Ray did the scripting, casting, scoring, and editing, and designed his own credit titles and publicity material. Ray received many major awards in his career, including 32 Indian National Film Awards, a number of awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies, and an Academy Honorary Award in 1992. The Government of India honoured him with the Bharat Ratna in 1992.

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Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (23 January 1898 – 11 February 1948), né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage". He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958).
Eisenstein was born to a middle-class family in Riga, Latvia but his family moved frequently in his early years, as Eisenstein continued to do throughout his life. His father Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein was of German-Jewish and Swedish descent, and his mother, Julia Ivanovna Konetskaya, was from a Russian Orthodox family. His father was an architect and his mother was the daughter of a prosperous merchant. Julia left Riga the same year as the Russian Revolution (1905), bringing Sergei with her to St. Petersburg. Her son would return at times to see his father, who later moved to join them around 1910.Divorce followed and Julia deserted the family to live in France.

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Sergei Parajanov
Sergei Parajanov (Armenian: Սարգիս Հովսեփի Փարաջանյան, Sargis or Sarkis Hofsepi Paradzhanian; Georgian: სერგეი (სერგო) ფარაჯანოვი, Sergei (Sergo) Paradzhanov; Russian: Серге́й Ио́сифович Параджа́нов, Sergei Yosifovich Paradzhanov; Ukrainian: Сергій Йосипович Параджанов, Serhii Yosypovych Paradzhanov; also spelled Paradzhanov or Paradjanov January 9, 1924 — July 20, 1990) was a Soviet Armenian film director and artist, who significantly contributed to Ukrainian, Armenian and Georgian cinema.
He invented his own cinematic style, which was totally out of step with the guiding principles of socialist realism (the only sanctioned art style in the USSR). This, combined with his controversial lifestyle and behaviour, led Soviet cinema authorities to repeatedly persecute and imprison him and suppress his films.
Although he started professional film-making in 1954, Parajanov later disowned all of his pre-1964 works as "garbage". After directing Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (renamed Wild Horses of Fire for most foreign distributions) Parajanov had become something of an international celebrity and simultaneously a target of attacks from the system. Nearly all of his film projects and plans from 1965–1973 were banned, scrapped or closed by the Soviet film administration, both local (in Kiev and Yerevan) and federal (infamous Goskino), almost without discussion until he was finally arrested in late 1973 on trumped-up charges of rape, homosexuality and bribery. Parajanov was imprisoned until 1977, despite a plethora of pleas for pardon from various esteemed artists.

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Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone (Italian pronunciation: [ˈsɛːrdʒo leˈoːne]; January 3, 1929 – April 30, 1989) was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.
Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots. His movies include The Last Days of Pompeii, The Colossus of Rhodes, the Dollars Trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), Once Upon a Time in the West, Duck, You Sucker! and Once Upon a Time in America.
Born in Rome, Leone was the son of the cinema pioneer Vincenzo Leone (known as director Roberto Roberti or Leone Roberto Roberti) and the silent film actress Edvige Valcarenghi (Bice Waleran). During his schooldays, Leone was a classmate of his later musical collaborator Ennio Morricone for a time. After watching his father work on film sets, Leone began his own career in the film industry at the age of 18 after dropping out of law studies at the university.

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Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. The war began after a pronunciamiento (declaration of opposition) by a group of generals under the leadership of José Sanjurjo against the elected government of the Second Spanish Republic, at the time under the leadership of President Manuel Azaña. The rebel coup was supported by a number of conservative groups including the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right, monarchists such as the religious conservative Carlists, and the Fascist Falange. The uprising was authoritarian and anti-separatist in inspiration; anti-Basque and anti-Catalan feeling marked the Nationalist zone.
Following the only partially successful coup, Spain was left militarily and politically divided. From that moment onwards, general Francisco Franco began a protracted war of attrition against the established government for the control of the country. The rebel forces received the support of Nazi Germany and the Kingdom of Italy, as well as neighbouring Portugal, while the Soviet Union and Mexico intervened in support of the Republican government or loyalist side.

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Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (/ˈkuːbrɪk/; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor. He is regarded as having been one of America's greatest filmmakers. His films, typically adaptations of novels or short stories, were noted for their "dazzling" and unique cinematography, attention to details to achieve realism and an inspired use of music scores. Kubrick's films covered a variety of genres, including war, black comedy, horror and science fiction. Kubrick was also noted for being a perfectionist, using painstaking care with scene staging and working closely with his actors.
Starting out as a photographer in New York City, he taught himself all aspects of film production and directing after graduating high school. His earliest films were made on a shoestring budget, followed by one Hollywood blockbuster, after which he spent most of the rest of his career living and filming in England. His home became his workplace where he did his writing, research, editing and management of production details. This allowed him to have almost complete artistic control, but with the rare advantage of having financial support from major Hollywood studios.

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Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as archetypes of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In later years, his films began addressing such issues as the Holocaust, slavery, war and terrorism. He is considered one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks movie studio.
Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Three of Spielberg's films—Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993)—achieved box office records, each becoming the highest-grossing film made at the time. To date, the unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $8.5 billion worldwide. Forbes puts Spielberg's wealth at $3.0 billion.

wn.com/Steven_Spielberg
Tadeusz Konwicki
Tadeusz Konwicki (born June 22, 1926) is a Polish writer and film director, a member of the Polish Language Council.
Konwicki was born in 1926 in Nowa Wilejka near Wilno, where he spent his early childhood. He spent his adolescence in Wilno, attending a local gymnasium. Immediately following the outbreak of World War II, Wilno was occupied by the Soviet Union and subsequently by Nazi Germany, and all education for Poles was discontinued. Konwicki continued his studies underground. In 1944, he joined the ranks of a local Home Army partisan unit, taking part in Operation Tempest and Operation Ostra Brama. After the war Wilno (retrieving its name as Vilnius in the process) was annexed by the Soviet Union and Konwicki was expatriated.
In the spring of 1945 Konwicki moved to Kraków, where he enrolled at Jagiellonian University. He also started to work as a journalist at Odrodzenie weekly, moving to Warsaw in 1947 to continue his work for the magazine. In the capital, he was one of the leading advocates for Socialist Realism in literature. In 1948 he finished his memoirs of his partisan years (Rojsty), but the book was not published until 1956. His literary debut was the production novel Construction Site (1950, Przy Budowie), which was followed by the novel Power (1954, Władza). His 1956 novel From a Besieged City (1956, Z oblężonego miasta) also became quite popular.

wn.com/Tadeusz_Konwicki
Terrence Malick
Terrence Frederick Malick (born November 30, 1943) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. In a career spanning over four decades, Malick has directed five feature films.
Malick has received consistent regard for his work. Malick was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Director for The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life and Best Adapted Screenplay for The Thin Red Line, as well as winning the Golden Bear at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival for The Thin Red Line and the Palme d'Or at the 64th Cannes Film Festival for The Tree of Life.
Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois or Waco, Texas, the son of Irene (née Thompson) and Emil A. Malick, a geologist. His paternal grandparents were Assyrian Christian Lebanese immigrants. Waco is one of the settings of his film The Tree of Life. Malick attended St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin, Texas while his family lived in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Malick had two younger brothers: Chris and Larry. Larry Malick was a guitarist who went to study in Spain with Segovia in the late 1960s. In 1968, Larry intentionally broke his own hands due to pressure over his musical studies. Emil went to Spain to help Larry, but Larry died shortly after, apparently committing suicide.

wn.com/Terrence_Malick
Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes (born January 2, 1961) is an American independent film director and screenwriter. He is best known for his feature films Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Poison, Velvet Goldmine, Safe, and the Academy Award-nominated Far from Heaven and I'm Not There.
The All Movie Guide writes that "Haynes is known for making provocative films that subvert narrative structure and resound with transgressive, complex eroticism…. Although he doesn't characterize himself as a gay filmmaker who makes gay films… Haynes' name has become synonymous with the New Queer Cinema movement and its work to both explore and redefine the contours of queer culture in America and beyond."
Haynes’ work is preoccupied with postmodernist ideas of identity and sexuality as socially constructed concepts, and personal identity as a fluid and changeable state. His protagonists are invariably social outsiders whose "subversive" identity and sexuality pits them at odds with the received norms of their society. In the Haynes universe, sexuality (especially “deviant” or unconventional sexuality) is a subversive and dangerous force that disrupts social norms and is often repressed brutally by dominant power structures. Haynes presents artists as the ultimate subversive force, since they must necessarily stand outside of societal norms, with an artist's creative output representing the greatest opportunity for personal and social freedom. Unsurprisingly, many of his films are unconventional portraits of pop artists and musicians (Karen Carpenter in Superstar, David Bowie in Velvet Goldmine and Bob Dylan in I’m Not There).

wn.com/Todd_Haynes
Toshirō Mifune
Toshiro Mifune (三船敏郎 Mifune Toshirō [miɸɯne toɕiɽoː]; April 1, 1920 – December 24, 1997) was a Japanese actor who appeared in almost 170 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration with filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, from 1948 to 1965, in works such as Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and Yojimbo. He also portrayed Musashi Miyamoto in Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy.
Toshiro Mifune was born in Qingdao, China, to Japanese Methodist parents,^{[citation needed]} and grew up in the Chinese city of Dalian with his parents and two siblings. In his youth, Mifune worked in the photography shop of his father Tokuzo, a commercial photographer and importer who had emigrated from northern Japan. After spending the first 19 years of his life in China, during which there is evidence that he worked as a Methodist missionary,^{[citation needed]} as a Japanese citizen he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army Aviation, where he served in the Aerial Photography (Ko-type) unit during World War II. He repatriated to Japan in 1946.

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Viking Eggeling
Viking Eggeling (21 October 1880, Lund – 19 May 1925, Berlin) was a Swedish artist and filmmaker. His work is of significance in the area of experimental film, and has been described as absolute film and Visual Music.
At the age of sixteen, the orphaned Eggeling moved to Germany to pursue an artistic career. He studied art history in Milan from 1901 to 1907, supporting himself with work as a bookkeeper. He lived in Paris from 1911 to 1915; he was acquainted with Amedeo Modigliani, Hans Arp, and other artists of the time.
In Zurich in 1918, he was introduced to Hans Richter by Tristan Tzara. Richter wrote that "The contrast between us, which was that between method and spontaneity, only served to strengthen our mutual attraction...for three years we marched side by side, although we fought on separate fronts." In 1920 they began experimenting with film. In collaboration with Erna Niemeyer, Eggeling made a film called Symphonie Diagonale, which was completed in 1924 and first exhibited in May 1925, just before his death.

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Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.
Canby was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Katharine Anne (née Vincent) and Lloyd Canby. He attended a boarding school with the novelist William Styron, and the two became friends. He introduced Styron to the works of E.B. White and Ernest Hemingway, and the pair hitchhiked from their Christ Church, Virginia boarding school to Richmond, Virginia to buy Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. After war service in the Pacific he attended the Dartmouth College and then was employed as a film critic by Variety for six years.
Canby was an enthusiastic supporter of many filmmakers, notably Woody Allen, who credited Canby's rave review of Take The Money and Run as a crucial point in his career. He was also heavily critical of some otherwise acclaimed films, such as Rocky, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Jaws, Patton, Night of the Living Dead, Once Upon a Time in America, Chinatown, After Hours, Blazing Saddles, A Christmas Story, Witness, Mask, The Natural, Rain Man, The Exorcist, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,Deliverance, The Godfather Part II and Alien. In the early 1990s, Canby switched his attention from film to theatre; he was named the chief theatre critic in 1994.

wn.com/Vincent_Canby
Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin (Russian: Все́волод Илларио́нович Пудо́вкин) (16 February 1893 – 20 June 1953) was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage. Pudovkin's masterpieces are often contrasted with those of his contemporary Sergei Eisenstein, but whereas Eisenstein utilized montage to glorify the power of the masses, Pudovkin preferred to concentrate on the courage and resilience of individuals.
A student of engineering at Moscow University, Pudovkin saw active duty during World War I, being captured by the Germans. After the war, he abandoned his professional activity and joined the world of cinema, first as a screenwriter, actor and art director, and then as an assistant director to Lev Kuleshov.
After a few tries with advertising cinema, he directed in 1926 that which will be considered one of the masterpieces of silent movies: Mother, where he developed several montage theories that would make him famous.
His first feature was followed by The End of St. Petersburg (1927), and Storm Over Asia (also known as The Heir of Genghis Khan), titles which compose a trilogy at the service of the bolshevik revolutionary policy.

wn.com/Vsevolod_Pudovkin
Walter Ruttmann
Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941) was a German film director and along with Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling was an early German practitioner of experimental film.
Ruttmann was born in Frankfurt am Main; he studied architecture and painting and worked as a graphic designer. His film career began in the early 1920s. His first abstract short films, "Opus I" (1921) and "Opus II" (1923), were experiments with new forms of film expression, and the influence of these early abstract films can be seen in the early work of Oskar Fischinger. Ruttmann and his colleagues of the avant garde movement enriched the language of film as a medium with new form techniques.
Ruttmann was a prominent exponent of both avant-garde art and music. His early abstractions played at the 1929 Baden-Baden Festival to international acclaim despite their being almost eight years old. Together with Erwin Piscator, he worked on the experimental film Melodie der Welt (1929), though he is best remembered for Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, 1927).

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Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić (German pronunciation: [ˈʋɛɐ̯nɐ ˈhɛɐ̯tsoːk ˈstɪpɛtɪtʃ]; born 5 September 1942), known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.
He is often considered one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Schröter, and Wim Wenders. His films often feature heroes with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who find themselves in conflict with nature. French filmmaker François Truffaut once called Herzog "the most important film director alive."
Herzog was born Werner Herzog Stipetić to a German father Dietrich Herzog and a Croatian mother Elizabeth Stipetić in Munich. His family moved to the remote Bavarian village of Sachrang (nestled in the Chiemgau Alps), after the house next to theirs was destroyed during a bombing raid at the close of World War II. When he was 12, he and his family moved back to Munich. His father had abandoned the family early in his youth. Werner would later adopt his father's surname Herzog (German for "duke"), which he thought sounded more impressive for a filmmaker.

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Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders (born 14 August 1945) is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer. Since 1996, Wenders has been the president of the European Film Academy in Berlin.
Wenders was born in Düsseldorf into a traditional Catholic family. His father, Heinrich Wenders, was a surgeon. Use of the Dutch name, "Wim", a shortened version of the baptismal name "Wilhelm/Willem", reflected his mother's Dutch provenance, but the Dutch version was rejected by the civil registration authorities in 1945 as "unGerman". He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine (1963–64) and philosophy (1964–65) in Freiburg and Düsseldorf. However, he dropped out of university studies and moved to Paris in October 1966 to become a painter. Wenders failed his entry test at France's national film school IDHEC (now La Fémis), and instead became an engraver in the studio of Johnny Friedlander, an American artist, in Montparnasse. During this time, Wenders became fascinated with cinema, and saw up to five movies a day at the local movie theater.

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Wings of Desire
Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin, translated literally as The Heavens Over Berlin) is a 1987 Franco-German romantic fantasy film directed by Wim Wenders. The film is about invisible, immortal angels who populate Berlin and listen to the thoughts of the human inhabitants and comfort those who are in distress. Even though the city is densely populated, many of the people are isolated and estranged from their loved ones. One of the angels, played by Bruno Ganz, falls in love with a beautiful, lonely trapeze artist. The angel chooses to become human so that he can experience the human sensory pleasures, ranging from enjoying food to touching a loved one, and so that he can experience human love with the trapeze artist. The film is shot in both a rich, sepia-toned black-and-white and color, with the former being used to represent the world as experienced by the angels.
The film was followed by a sequel, Faraway, So Close!, in 1993. City of Angels, an American remake, was released in 1998.

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Wong Kar-wai
Wong Kar-wai BBS (born 17 July 1958) is a Hong Kong Second Wave filmmaker, internationally renowned as an auteur for his visually unique, highly stylised, emotionally resonant work, including Days of Being Wild (1990), Ashes of Time (1994), Chungking Express (1994), Fallen Angels (1995), Happy Together (1997) and 2046 (2004). His film In the Mood for Love (2000), starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, garnered widespread critical acclaim. Wong's films frequently feature protagonists who yearn for romance in the midst of a knowingly brief life and scenes that can often be described as sketchy, digressive, exhilarating, and containing vivid imagery.
Wong was listed at number three on the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound Top Ten Directors list of modern times.

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Woody Allen
Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg, December 1, 1935) is an award-winning American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, and playwright, whose career spans over half a century.
He began as a comedy writer in the 1950s, penning jokes and scripts for television and also publishing several books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, Allen started performing as a stand-up comic, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comic, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he insists is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.
By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into more dramatic material influenced by European art films during the 1970s. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late '70s. Allen often stars in his own films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. The best-known of his over 40 films include the Academy Award-winners Annie Hall (1977), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Midnight in Paris (2011); and the Golden Globe-winning The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Critic Roger Ebert has described Allen as "a treasure of the cinema."

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Yasujirō Ozu
Yasujirō Ozu (小津安二郎, Ozu Yasujirō^?, 12 December 1903 – 12 December 1963) was a Japanese film director and script writer. He began his career during the era of silent films, which extended well into the 1930s in Japan. Marriage and family, especially the relationships between the generations, are among the themes in his work. His outstanding works include Late Spring (1949), Early Summer (1951), Tokyo Story (1953), and Floating Weeds (1959).
Ozu's reputation outside Japan has grown since his death. Influential monographs by Donald Richie,Paul Schrader, and David Bordwell have ensured a wide appreciation of Ozu's style, aesthetics and themes. Ozu was dubbed the tenth greatest director of all time by the BFI's Sight & Sound poll of Critics' top ten directors.
Ozu was born in the Fukagawa district of Tokyo. At the age of ten, he and his siblings were sent by his father to live in his father's home town of Matsuzaka, Mie Prefecture, where he spent most of his youth. He was educated at a boarding school but spent much of his time in the local cinema rather than a classroom.

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Zhang Yimou
Zhang Yimou (born November 14, 1951) is a Chinese film director, producer, writer and actor, and former cinematographer. He is counted amongst the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, having made his directorial debut in 1987 with Red Sorghum.
Zhang has won numerous awards and recognitions, with Best Foreign Film nominations for Ju Dou in 1990 and Raise the Red Lantern in 1991, Silver Lion and Golden Lion prizes at the Venice Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. In 1993, he was a member of the jury at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival.
One of Zhang's recurrent themes is the resilience of Chinese people in the face of hardship and adversity, a theme which has been explored in such films as, for example, To Live (1994) and Not One Less (1999). His films are particularly noted for their rich use of colour, as can be seen in some of his early films, like Raise the Red Lantern, and in his wuxia films like Hero and House of Flying Daggers. His most recent film is a historical drama war film called The Flowers of War.

wn.com/Zhang_Yimou
Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer (French: [eʁik ʁomɛʁ]; 1920–2010) was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher. A figure in the post-war New Wave cinema, he was a former editor of Cahiers du cinéma.
Rohmer was the last of the French New Wave directors to become established. He worked as the editor of the Cahiers du cinéma periodical from 1957 to 1963, while most of his Cahiers colleagues – among them Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut – were beginning their careers and gaining international attention. René Schérer, a philosopher, is his brother and René Monzat, a journalist, is his son.
Rohmer came to international attention around 1969 when his film Ma nuit chez Maud (My Night at Maud's) was nominated at the Academy Awards. He won the San Sebastián International Film Festival with Claire's Knee in 1971. In 2001, Rohmer received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. His works were viewed by audiences around the world. He died of unspecified causes on 11 January 2010. In his obituary in The Daily Telegraph he was described as "the most durable film-maker of the French New Wave", outlasting his peers and "still making movies the public wanted to see" late in his career.

wn.com/Éric_Rohmer

Tortures for Flies: ARTHOUSE Girl Power

The "silent but deadly" version, with the girls inner monologue kept to herself! STAY TUNE...

published: 02 Jun 2008

author: offplanetfilms

Fast Show - French Art House Film

Does anyone fancy a pint?......

published: 05 Oct 2007

author: thingsihaveseen4

In The Art House - Santa Holiday Card

Join Teacher Emily as she teaches you how to draw Santa so you can make your very own holi...

published: 16 Nov 2008

author: inthearthouse

Artplay with Milliande- Art Journaling Art House Project and Painting Layers with Misty Mawn

Milliande Art Community for Women free to join at ♥ www.milliande.ning.com ..also playing ...

published: 20 Nov 2009

author: Milliande

Bliss n Eso - Art House Audio (Running On Air)

Order Running On Air from iTunes: itunes.apple.com Order Running On Air from JB Hi-Fi: www...

published: 29 Jul 2010

author: blissnesoTV

ModCloth's Show and Tell with Art House Co-op

Find more here: blog.modcloth.com Our peeps popped into the Brooklyn Art Library for a beh...

published: 13 Oct 2011

author: ModCloth

Art House Trailer

Trailer for the Film Short ARTHOUSE...

published: 13 Aug 2009

author: MichiganFilmOffice

Definition Arthouse und Kunstfilm | TEAG-S

Eine kleine Einführung in den Bereich des Kunstfilms und das Eröffnungsvideo meiner neuen ...

published: 28 Apr 2011

author: antishape

Broken Social Scene - Art House Director

www.soundscapesmusic.com...

published: 01 Jun 2010

author: soundscapesmusic

Art House 1/3

1/3...

published: 01 Mar 2008

author: polyunsaturate

euronews cinema - Art-house goes 3D

Art-house cinema is pushing new boundaries at the Berlin film festival with 3D premieres f...

published: 15 Feb 2011

author: Euronews

Maggie Cheung arthouse feature (1996)

A film within a film. Maggie Cheung stars. This part of the film is a tribute to the silen...

published: 17 Jan 2007

author: daveholm

An Arthouse Halloween : Foamy The Squirrel

A twisted & bizarre take on Halloween! If it's weird, it's suppose to be! Additional foota...

published: 16 Oct 2012

author: jimathers

Art House 2/3

2/3...

published: 01 Mar 2008

author: polyunsaturate

Naked Love EP10 - "Flourishing Lust"

As the summerrain falls, lust is flourishing. "Naked Love - Ea's garden" is a handdrawn e...

published: 08 Jul 2011

author: Naked Love by Sara Koppel

Splinter Trailer (2008)

"Splinter" is an independent horror film, for more info visit: www.splinterfilm.com Being...

published: 02 Oct 2008

author: Toby Wilkins

Sarahs Schlüssel - Trailer Deutsch

Paris im Juli 1942. Sarah, ein zehnjähriges jüdisches Mädchen, wird mit ihren Eltern mitte...

published: 29 Oct 2011

author: Camino Filmverleih

Азбука страхов

Не бойтесь бояться. Это не страшно! Автор и режиссер: Мария Мурашова Оператор: Александра...

published: 26 Sep 2010

author: Artyom Loenko

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photo: AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais

President Barack Obama gestures while speaking during the his visit to the Disaster Operation Center of the Red Cross National Headquarter to discuss superstorm Sandy

Obama backs bill to ban assault weapons

The Star

19 Dec 2012

WASHINGTON. US President Barack Obama backs a new bill to revive an assault weapons ban and other new gun laws, the White House said Tuesday, fleshing out his nascent response to a shocking school massacre. Obama also called an ardently pro-gun senator who has shifted his position on firearms laws since Friday's carnage in Connecticut and has begun meeting top cabinet officials to consider his options, his spokesman Jay Carney said ... ....(size: 4.9Kb)

photo: AP / Charles Krupa

Police officers cross the road after searching a strip mall near an elementary school, which was in a lockdown, in Ridgefield, Conn., Monday, Dec. 17, 2012, after a suspicious person was seen near a train station close by.

Gunspicuous Consumption and Bio-Cultures of Violence

WorldNews.com

18 Dec 2012

Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. "Most people reason dramatically, not quantitatively." -Oliver Wendell Holmes. On the same day that a 20-year-old, described as brilliant but remote, walked into an elementary school in Connecticut and massacred 26 children and adults, the school where I teach went on "lock-down." Four students with a handgun were arrested ... That morning before school, he had posted on Twitter and Facebook....(size: 14.0Kb)

photo: Creative Commons / Joachim Huber

Etosha's elephants belong to the group of elephants in northwestern Nambia and southern Angola.

Stupider and Still Developing an Extermination Gene

WorldNews.com

18 Dec 2012

Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. When a Stanford geneticist, Gerald Crabtree, published a provocative and controversial new view on evolutionary change, namely that humans are actually getting dumber, he should have also added that humans are still developing an extermination gene ... Paleontologist Tim Flannery would more than likely agree with Crabtree ... Strange strings of gravel also overlaid some bones ... (1) Kane, Alex ... 195....(size: 9.4Kb)

photo: AP / Narciso Contreras

In this Monday, Dec. 17, 2012 photo, a man runs between debris after a mortar shell hit a street killing several people in the Bustan Al-Qasr district of Aleppo, Syria.

U.N. seeks $1.5 billion to address Syria crisis

The Star

19 Dec 2012

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $1.5 billion (920.1 million pounds) to provide life-saving aid to Syrians suffering from a "dramatically deteriorating" humanitarian situation ... "The magnitude of this humanitarian crisis is indisputable," said Radhouane Nouicer, U.N ... Inside Syria, U.N ... ....(size: 1.5Kb)

photo: AP / Jason DeCrow

A victim's name is spelled out in wooden letters at a memorial to shooting victims, Monday, Dec. 17, 2012, in Newtown, Conn. A gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Friday and opened fire, killing 26 people, including 20 children.

US school killings spark gun control debate

Al Jazeera

18 Dec 2012

An increasing number of US congressmen have called for a national dialogue about measures to curb gun violence following the shooting last week at a primary school in Connecticut that killed 26 people, including 20 children and six adults. White House officials have said that President Barack Obama would make preventing gun-related violence a priority in his second term in office and stricter laws would be part of the effort.  ... ....(size: 19.2Kb)

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Case study: Bullhead

Screen Daily

19 Dec 2012

The challenges of producing and distributing Belgian drama Bullhead [pictured] were discussed by Savage Film producer Bart Van Langendonck and Celluloid Dreams boss Hengameh Panahi ... Langendonck ... We were selling the film as a commercial arthouse film. People believed the arthouse part but not commercial side ... Panahi ... But I didn’t have a clue who would buy it because it’s long, dark and sits between arthouse and genre, which hard to sell ... ....(size: 12.4Kb)

The Playlist's Woman Of The Year 2012: Jennifer Lawrence

IMDb

19 Dec 2012

... Debt," "Coriolanus," and "Texas Killing Fields." And this year, we went with another young actress who also showed tremendous range, with acumen both at the multiplex and arthouse....(size: 1.0Kb)

Palace Electric cinema powerless to open

Sydney Morning Herald

19 Dec 2012

... certification for the permanent power supply to its eight-screen arthouse cinema in the Nishi building....(size: 0.5Kb)

Cine-files: the Warehouse, Kendal

IMDb

18 Dec 2012

Each week we ask readers to tell us about venues close to their hearts. Today, a former brewery-turned-arthouse enclave. This week's Cine-files is from film-lover Ciara Ruane ... Location ... The building ... ....(size: 1.0Kb)

Josh Hutcherson Finds Paradise LostHunger Gamer in Pablo Escobar drama18 December 2012 | Written by Phil de Semlyen | Source: Deadline Hollywood

Empire

18 Dec 2012

Josh Hutcherson clearly doesn't watch Entourage ... Admittedly, the Entourage version, 'Medellin', was a misguided (and, yes, entirely fictional) attempt to mythologise the cocainiac Columbian with a bloated arthouse treatment. By contrast, Paradise Lost will offer a more oblique intro to the man ... ....(size: 1.3Kb)

Josh Hutcherson Finds Paradise Lost

IMDb

18 Dec 2012

... drug baron.Admittedly, the Entourage version, 'Medellin', was a misguided (and, yes, entirely fictional) attempt to mythologise the cocainiac Columbian with a bloated arthouse treatment....(size: 1.0Kb)

The Worst Films Of 2012

IMDb

18 Dec 2012

Indeed, for every great film this year, it sometimes seems as if there were two terrible ones, stinking up multiplexes and arthouses alike to varying degrees ... We can't say ». - The Playlist Staff. ....(size: 1.0Kb)

The Hobbit journeys to top of UK box office

The Guardian

18 Dec 2012

Festive battle for No 1 heats up as first instalment of Peter Jackson's Middle-earth epic precipitates a fall of the Guardians. Look who's Tolkien … Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. An Unexpected Journey. Photograph. Reuters. The winner ... However a haul of £11.60m in four days is far from record-breaking, and isn't even the biggest opening of 2012 ... Breaking Dawn – Part 2 followed a month later with £15.85m ... The arthouse battle ... ....(size: 8.6Kb)

Indiewire's 2012 Holiday Gift Guide: 10 Options For the Discerning Movie Lover

IMDb

17 Dec 2012

Whether you're shopping for a blockbuster junkie or arthouse enthusiast (or the rare breed equally enamored of both), just remember to do your homework first. The serious moviegoer gets feisty when misunderstood ... ....(size: 1.0Kb)

Van Ryzin: Unusual art exhibit is staged in Austin’s alleys

Austin American Statesman

16 Dec 2012

The backyard belonged to Aaron Dubrow, a writer, and Erin Curtis, a painter ... The first — created by a group of teens participating in Club-A, an education program of AMOA-Arthouse — features brightly painted banners ... Andrea Mellard, curator of AMOA-Arthouse; artist and art community advocate Jennifer Chenoweth; and John Yancey, artist and professor at the University of Texas. Yancey has been living in East Austin since 1996....(size: 5.7Kb)

And... cut! Filmmakers ready themselves for Apocalypse Friday

The Independent

16 Dec 2012

The end of the world is nigh and filmmakers don't want to miss it. The Mayan Apocalypse falls on 21 December. At least two films have been greenlit with the Mayan calendar's doomsday in mind ... The Mayan Apocalypse intercedes. He discovers he is indeed making not only his last film but the final one of all time ... 1. Melancholia. Lars Von Trier's downbeat, arthouse drama about two moody sisters waiting for a rogue planet to collide with earth ... ....(size: 3.5Kb)

I Am Breathing: IDFA Review

The Hollywood Reporter

16 Dec 2012

share. The Bottom Line ... Directors / Screenwriters. Emma Davie, Morag McKinnon. Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon co-direct a Danish/Scottish documentary on a young father's terminal illness ... A notably popular favorite with audiences when world-premiering at the Dutch documentary showcase IDFA in November, it has obvious small-screen and festival appeal but with proper handling would warrant arthouse play in receptive countries ... Venue ... Producer....(size: 6.4Kb)

Rumpus over Rothko scribble

The Guardian

15 Dec 2012

Vladimir Umanets has been jailed for two years for scribbling on a Rothko (Report, 14 December). This is crazy. People should only be imprisoned for violent crime. I am an artist and appreciate Rothko, but to take two years of a man's life is utterly ridiculous ... I tried it on an arthouse cinema audience in Los Angeles on Hallowe'en and dozens of Americans went out muttering in Hitchcockese ... London ... ....(size: 3.4Kb)

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Japanese director Akira Kurosawa made a number of films in the 1950s and 1960s that broke the conventions of mainstream filmmaking.

An art film (also known as art movie, specialty film, art house film, or in the collective sense as art cinema) is the result of filmmaking which is typically a serious, independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience.^[1] Film critics and film studies scholars typically define an "art film" using a "...canon of films and those formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films",^[2] which includes, among other elements: a social realism style; an emphasis on the authorial expressivity of the director; and a focus on the thoughts and dreams of characters, rather than presenting a clear, goal-driven story. Film scholar David Bordwell claims that "art cinema itself is a film genre, with its own distinct conventions."^[3]

Art film producers usually present their films at specialty theatres (repertory cinemas, or in the U.S. "arthouse cinemas") and film festivals. The term art film is much more widely used in the United States and the UK than in Europe, where the term is more associated with "auteur" films and "national cinema" (e.g., German national cinema). Art films are aimed at small niche market audiences, which means they can rarely get the financial backing which will permit large production budgets, expensive special effects, costly celebrity actors, or huge advertising campaigns, as are used in widely-released mainstream blockbuster films. Art film directors make up for these constraints by creating a different type of film, which typically uses lesser-known film actors (or even amateur actors) and modest sets to make films which focus much more on developing ideas or exploring new narrative techniques or filmmaking conventions.

Furthermore, a certain degree of experience and intellect are required to understand or appreciate such films; one mid-1990s art film was called "largely a cerebral experience" which you enjoy "because of what you know about film".^[4] This contrasts sharply with mainstream "blockbuster" films, which are geared more towards escapism and pure entertainment. For promotion, art films rely on the publicity generated from film critics' reviews, discussion of their film by arts columnists, commentators and bloggers, and "word-of-mouth" promotion by audience members. Since art films have small initial investment costs, they only need to appeal to a small portion of the mainstream viewing audiences to become financially viable.

History [link]

Antecedents: 1910–1920s [link]

The antecedents of art films included D. W. Griffith's film Intolerance (1916) and the works of Sergei Eisenstein.^[5] Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin (1925) was a revolutionary propaganda film which he used to test his theories of using "montage" (editing) in a manner which would produce the greatest emotional response in the audience. The international critical renown that Eisenstein garnered from this film enabled the Russian filmmaker to direct October (aka Ten Days That Shook The World) as part of a grand tenth anniversary celebration of the October Revolution of 1917, and then The General Line (aka Old and New). The critics of the outside world praised these films. However, in Russia, Eisenstein's focus on structural issues such as camera angles, crowd movements, and montage brought him and like-minded others, such as Vsevolod Pudovkin and Alexander Dovzhenko, under fire from the Soviet film community.

Art films were also influenced by films by Spanish avant-garde creators such as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (e.g., L'Age d'Or from 1930) and by the French playwright and filmmaker Jean Cocteau (e.g., The Blood of a Poet, also from 1930). In the 1920s, film societies began advocating the notion that films could be divided into an "...entertainment cinema directed towards a mass audience and a serious art cinema aimed at an intellectual audience". In England, Alfred Hitchcock and Ivor Montagu formed a Film Society and imported films that they thought were "artistic achievements", such as "Soviet films of dialectical montage, and the expressionist films of the Universum Film A. G. (UFA) studios in Germany."^[5]

Cinéma Pur, a 1920s and 1930s French avant-garde film movement also influenced the development of the idea of "art film." The cinema pur film movement included Dada artists, such as Man Ray (Emak-Bakia, Return to Reason), René Clair (Entr'acte), and Marcel Duchamp (Anemic Cinema). The Dadaists used film to transcend narrative (storytelling) conventions, bourgeois traditions, and conventional Aristotelian notions of time and space by creating a flexible montage of time and space.

Pure Cinema was influenced by such German "absolute" filmmakers as Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann, and Viking Eggeling. Richter claimed that his 1921 film, Rhythmus 21, was the first abstract film ever created. This claim is not true: he was preceded by the Italian Futurists Bruno Corra and Arnaldo Ginna between 1911 and 1912 ^[6] (as they report in the Futurist Manifesto of Cinema ^[7]), as well as by fellow German artist Walter Ruttmann who produced Lichtspiel Opus 1 in 1920. Nevertheless, Richter's film Rhythmus 21 is considered an important early abstract film.

U.S. photographer and filmmaker Man Ray (pictured here in 1934) was part of the Dadaist "cinema pur" film movement, which influenced the development of art film.

1930s–1950s [link]

In the 1930s and 1940s, Hollywood films could be divided into the artistic aspirations of literary adaptations like John Ford's The Informer (1935) and Eugene O'Neill's The Long Voyage Home (1940), and the money-making "popular genre films" such as gangster thrillers. William Siska argues that Italian neorealist films from the mid- to late-1940s, such as Open City (1945), Paisa (1946), and The Bicycle Thief can be deemed as another "conscious art film movement".^[5]

In the late 1940s, the U.S. public's perception that Italian neorealist films and other serious European fare were different from mainstream Hollywood films was reinforced by the development of "arthouse cinemas" in major U.S. cities and college towns. After the Second World War, "...a growing segment of the American filmgoing public was wearying of mainstream Hollywood films", and they went to the newly-created art film theaters to see "...alternatives to the films playing in main-street movie palaces".^[2] Films shown in these art cinemas included "... British, foreign-language, and independent American films, as well as documentaries and revivals of Hollywood classics." Films such as Rossellini's Open City and Mackendrick's Tight Little Island (Whisky Galore!), The Bicycle Thief and The Red Shoes were shown to substantial U.S. audiences.^[2]

In the late 1950s, French filmmakers of the late 1950s began to produce films that were influenced by Italian Neorealism^[8] and classical Hollywood cinema,^[8] a style that critics called the French New Wave. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm and is an example of European art cinema.^[9] Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm. Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette, began as critics for the famous film magazine Cahiers du cinéma. Auteur theory holds that the director is the "author" of his films, with a personal signature visible from film to film.

1960s–1970s [link]

Actress Lena Nyman from the Swedish film 'I Am Curious (Yellow).

The French New Wave movement continued into the 1960s. During the 1960s, the term "art film" began to be much more widely used in the United States than in Europe. In the U.S., the term is often defined very broadly, to include foreign-language (non-English) "auteur" films, independent films, experimental films, documentaries and short films. In the 1960s "art film" became a euphemism in the U.S. for racy Italian and French B-movies. By the 1970s, the term was used to describe sexually explicit European films with artistic structure such as the Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow). In the U.S., the term "art film" is sometimes used very loosely to refer to the broad range of films shown in repertory theaters or "arthouse cinemas." With this approach, a broad range of films, such as a 1960s Hitchcock film, a 1970s experimental underground film, a European auteur film, a U.S. "Independent" film, and even a mainstream foreign-language film (with subtitles) might all fall under the rubric of "art house films."

1980s–2000s [link]

By the 1980s and 1990s, the term became conflated with "independent film" in the U.S., which shares many of the same stylistic traits with "art film." Companies such as Miramax Films distributed independent films which were deemed commercially unviable at the major studios. When major motion picture studios noted the niche appeal of independent films, they created special divisions dedicated to non-mainstream fare, such as the Fox Searchlight division of Twentieth Century Fox, the Focus Features division of Universal, and the Sony Pictures Classics division of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Film critics have debated whether the films from these special divisions can truly be considered to be "independent films", given that they have financial backing from major studios.

In 2007, Professor Camille Paglia argued in her article "Art movies: R.I.P." that "[a]side from Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather series, with its deft flashbacks and gritty social realism, ...[there is not]...a single film produced over the past 35 years that is arguably of equal philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution to Bergman's The Seventh Seal or Persona ". Paglia states that young people from the 2000s do not "...have patience for the long, slow take that deep-think European directors once specialized in", an approach which gave "...luxurious scrutiny of the tiniest facial expressions or the chilly sweep of a sterile room or bleak landscape".^[10]

Deviations from mainstream film norms [link]

Film scholar David Bordwell outlined the academic definition of "art film" in a 1979 article entitled The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice, which contrasts art films against the mainstream films of classical Hollywood cinema. Mainstream Hollywood-style films use a clear narrative form to organize the film into a series of "...causally related events taking place in space and time", with every scene driving towards a goal. The plot for mainstream films is driven by a well-defined protagonist, fleshed out with clear characters, and strengthened with "...question-and-answer logic, problem-solving routines, (and) deadline plot structures." The film is then tied together with fast pacing, musical soundtracks to cue the appropriate audience emotions, and tight, seamless editing.^[11] Mainstream films tend to use a small palette of familiar, generic images, plots, verbal expressions, and archetypal "stock" characters.

In contrast, Bordwell states that "...the art cinema motivates its narrative by two principles: realism and authorial expressivity." Art films deviate from the mainstream, "classical" norms of filmmaking in that they typically deal with more episodic narrative structures with a "...loosening of the chain of cause and effect".^[11] As well, art films often deal with an inner drama that takes place in a character's psyche, such as psychological issues dealing with individual identity, transgressive sexual or social issues, moral dilemmas, or personal crises.

Mainstream films also deal with moral dilemmas or identity crises, but these issues are usually resolved by the end of the film. In art films, the dilemmas are probed and investigated in a pensive fashion, but usually without a clear resolution at the end of the film.^[12] The protagonists in art films are often facing doubt, anomie or alienation, and the art film often depicts their internal dialogue of thoughts, dream sequences, and fantasies. In some art films, the director uses a depiction of absurd or seemingly meaningless actions to express a philosophical viewpoint such as existentialism.

The story in an art film often has a secondary role to character development and an exploration of ideas through lengthy sequences of dialogue. If an art film has a story, it is usually a drifting sequence of vaguely defined or ambiguous episodes. There may be unexplained gaps in the film, deliberately unclear sequences, or extraneous sequences that are not related to previous scenes, which force the viewer to subjectively make their own interpretation of the film's message. Art films often "...bear the marks of a distinctive visual style" and authorial approach of the director.^[13] An art cinema film often refuses to provide a "...readily answered conclusion", instead putting to the cinema viewer the task of thinking about "...how is the story being told? Why tell the story in this way?"^[14]

Bordwell claims that "art cinema itself is a [film] genre, with its own distinct conventions."^[3] Film theorist Robert Stam also argues that "art film" is a film genre. He claims that a film is considered to be an art film based on artistic status, in the same way that film genres can be based on aspects of films such as their budgets (blockbuster films or B-movies) or their star performers (Adam Sandler films).^[15]

Timeline of notable films [link]

The following list is a small, partial sample of films with "art film" qualities, compiled to give a general sense of what directors and films are considered to have "art film" characteristics. The films in this list demonstrate one or more of the characteristics of art films: a serious, noncommercial, or independently made film that is not aimed at a mass audience. Some of the films on this list are also considered to be "auteur" films, independent films, or experimental films. In some cases, critics disagree over whether a film is mainstream or not. For example, while some critics called Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991) an "exercise in film experimentation" of "high artistic quality",^[16] the Washington Post called it an ambitious mainstream film.^[17]

Some films in this list have most of these characteristics; other films are commercially-made films produced by mainstream studios that nevertheless bear the hallmarks of a director's "auteur" style, or which have an experimental character. The films in this list are notable either because they won major awards or critical praise from influential film critics or because they introduced an innovative narrative or filmmaking technique.

An image of a moth from Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's surrealist 1929 film Un Chien Andalou

1920s–1940s [link]

In the 1920s and 1930s, filmmakers did not set out to make "art films", and film critics did not use the term "art film". However, there were films that had more sophisticated aesthetic objectives, such as Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr (1932), surrealist films such as Luis Buñuel's Un chien andalou (1929) and L'Âge d'Or (1930), or even films dealing with political and current-event relevance such as Sergei Eisenstein's famed and influential masterpiece Battleship Potemkin. The U.S. film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) by German Expressionist director F. W. Murnau uses distorted art design and groundbreaking cinematography to create an exaggerated, fairy-tale-like world that was rich with symbolism and imagery. Jean Renoir's film The Rules of the Game (1939) was a comedy of manners that transcended the conventions of the "comedy of manners" genre by creating a biting and tragic satire of French upper class society in the years before WW II; a poll of critics from the British Film Institute ranked it as the third greatest film ever, placing behind Citizen Kane and Vertigo.^[18]

Some of these early artistically-oriented films were financed by wealthy individuals rather than film companies, particularly in cases where the content of the film was controversial or unlikely to attract an audience. In the late 1940s, UK director Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made The Red Shoes (1948), a film about ballet that stood out from mainstream genre films of the era. In 1945, David Lean would direct Brief Encounter, an adaptation of Noël Coward's play Still Life, which observes a passionate love affair between an upper class man and a middle class woman amidst the social and economical issues that Britain faced at the time.

1950s [link]

In the 1950s, some of the well-known films with artistic sensibilities include La Strada (1954), a film about a young woman who is forced to go to work for a cruel and inhumane circus performer in order to support her family and eventually coming to terms with her situation, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Ordet (1956), centering around family with a lack of faith amongst it but with a son who believes that he is Jesus Christ and convinced that he is capable of performing miracles, Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria (1957), which deals with a prostitute's failed attempts to find love, and her suffering and rejections, and Wild Strawberries (1957), by Ingmar Bergman, whose narrative concerns an elderly medical doctor and professor whose nightmares lead him to re-evaluate his life, and The 400 Blows (1959) by François Truffaut, whose main character is a young man trying to come of age despite the abuse from his parents, schoolteachers, and society in general. In Poland, the Khrushchev Thaw permitted some relaxation of the regime's cultural policies, and productions such as A Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds, Lotna (1954–1959), all directed by Andrzej Wajda, showed the Polish Film School style.

Asia [link]

Toshirō Mifune in Rashomon, a 1950 film by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, that depicts four contradictory accounts of a rape and murder.

In India, there was an art film movement in Bengali cinema known as "Parallel Cinema" or the "Indian New Wave". It was an alternative to the mainstream commercial cinema known for its serious content, realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the social-political climate of the times. This movement is distinct from mainstream Bollywood cinema and began around the same time as the French New Wave and Japanese New Wave. The most influential filmmaker involved in this movement was Satyajit Ray. His most famous films were The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), which tells the story of a poor country boy's growth to adulthood. Bimal Roy's Two Acres of Land (1953) tells the story of a farmer during a famine in Bengal. Other acclaimed Bengali filmmakers involved in this movement include Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak.

Japanese filmmakers produced a number of films that broke with convention. Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), the first Japanese film to be widely screened in the West, depicts four witnesses' contradictory accounts of a rape and murder. In 1952, Kurosawa directed Ikiru, a film about a Tokyo bureaucrat struggling to find a meaning for his life. Tokyo Story (1953) by Yasujirō Ozu explores social changes of the era by telling the story of an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children, but find the children are too self-absorbed to spend much time with them. Seven Samurai (1954) by Kurosawa, tells the story of a farming village that hire seven masterless samurai to combat bandits. Fires on the Plain (1959) by Kon Ichikawa explores the Japanese experience in World War II by depicting a sick Japanese soldier struggling to stay alive. Ugetsu (1953) by Kenji Mizoguchi is a ghost story set in the late 16th century which tells the story of peasants whose village is in the path of an advancing army. A year later, Mizoguchi directed Sansho the Bailiff (1954), which tells the story of two aristocratic children sold into slavery; in addition to dealing with serious themes such as the loss of freedom, the film features features beautiful images and long and complicated shots.

1960s [link]

The 1960s was an important period in art film; the release of a number of groundbreaking films giving rise to the European art cinema. Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) used innovative visual and editing techniques such as jump cuts and hand-held camera work. Godard, a leading figure of the French New Wave, would continue to make innovative films throughout the decade, proposing a whole new style of filmmaking. Jules et Jim by François Truffaut deconstructed a complex relationship of three individuals through innovative screenwriting, editing, and camera techniques. Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni helped revolutionize filmmaking, with such films as La Notte (1961), a complex examination of a failed marriage that dealt with issues such as anomie and sterility; Eclipse (1962), about a young woman who is unable to form a solid relationship with her boyfriend because of his materialistic nature; Red Desert (1964), his first color film, which deals with the need to adapt to the modern world; and Blowup (1966), his first English-language film, which examines issues of perception and reality as it follows a young photographer's attempt to discover whether he had photographed a murder.

Swedish director Ingmar Bergman started off the 1960s with chamber pieces like Winter Light (1963) and The Silence (1963), which deal with such themes as emotional isolation and a lack of communication. His films from the later half of the decade, such as Persona (1966), Shame (1968), and A Passion (1969), deal with the idea of film as an artifice. The intellectual and visually expressive films of Tadeusz Konwicki, such as All Souls' Day (Zaduszki, 1961), and especially Salto (1962) inspired discussions about war and raised existential questions on behalf of their everyman protagonists.

Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) depicts a succession of nights and dawns in Rome as witnessed by a cynical journalist. In 1963, Fellini made 8½, an exploration of creative, marital and spiritual difficulties shot in sumptuous black-and-white by cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo. The 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad by director Alain Resnais examines perception and reality, using grand tracking shots that became widely influential. Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) and Mouchette (1967) are notable for their naturalistic, elliptical style. Spanish director Luis Buñuel also contributed heavily to the art of film, with shocking, surrealist satires like Viridiana (1961) and The Exterminating Angel (1962).

Italian director Federico Fellini

Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's film Andrei Rublev (1966) is a portrait of the medieval Russian icon painter of the same name. The film is also about artistic freedom and the possibility and necessity of making art for, and in the face of, a repressive authority. A cut version of the film was shown at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI prize.^[19] At the end of the decade, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) wowed audiences with its scientific realism, pioneering use of special effects, and unusual visual imagery. In Soviet Armenia, Sergei Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates, which was banned by Soviet authorities, and also long unavailable in the west, was praised by critic Mikhail Vartanov as "revolutionary" ^[20] and in the early 1980s, Les Cahiers du Cinéma placed the film in its top 10 list.^[21] In Iran, Dariush Mehrjui's The Cow (1969), about a man who becomes insane after the death of his beloved cow, sparked the new wave of Iranian cinema.

1970s [link]

In the early 1970s, directors shocked audiences with violent films such as A Clockwork Orange (1971), Stanley Kubrick's brutal exploration of futuristic youth gangs and Last Tango in Paris (1972), Bernardo Bertolucci's taboo-breaking, sexually-explicit and controversial film. Nevertheless, other directors did more introspective films, such as Andrei Tarkovsky's meditative science fiction film Solaris (1972), supposedly intended as a Soviet riposte to 2001. In 1975, Tarkovsky directed another two films which garnered critical acclaim overseas, The Mirror and Stalker. Terrence Malick, who directed Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) shared many traits with Tarkovsky, such as his long, lingering shots of natural beauty, evocative imagery, and poetic narrative style.

Another feature of 1970s art films was the return to prominence of bizarre characters and imagery, which abound in the tormented, obsessed title character in German New Wave director Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1973), and in cult films such as Alejandro Jodorowsky's psychedelic The Holy Mountain (1973) about a footless, handless dwarf and an alchemist seeking the mythical Lotus Island^[22]The film Taxi Driver (1976) by Martin Scorsese continues the themes that A Clockwork Orange explored: an alienated population living in a violent, decaying society. The gritty violence and seething rage of Scorsese's film contrasts other films released in the same period, such as David Lynch's dreamlike, surreal Eraserhead (1977). In 1974 John Cassavetes would offer a sharp commentary on American blue-collar life in A Woman Under the Influence, which features an eccentric housewife slowly descending into madness.

1980s [link]

In 1980, director Martin Scorsese shocked audiences who had become used to the escapist blockbuster adventures of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas with the gritty, harsh realism of his film Raging Bull. In this film, actor Robert De Niro took method acting to an extreme to portray a boxer's decline from a prizewinning young fighter to an overweight, "has-been" nightclub owner. Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), while labeled as a fast-paced action film, could rather be seen as a science fiction art film, along with 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Blade Runner explores themes of existentialism: what it means to be human. A box office failure, the film became popular in the arthouse circuit as a cult oddity after the release of a "Director's cut" became successful on VHS. In the middle of the decade, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa used realism to portray the brutal, bloody violence of Japanese samurai warfare of the 16th century in Ran (1985). Ran followed the plot of King Lear, in which an elderly king is betrayed by his children. Sergio Leone also contrasted brutal violence with emotional substance in his epic tale of a mobster's life in Once Upon a Time in America.

While extensive sets are more associated with mainstream film than with art film, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa had many sets built for his 1985 film Ran, including this recreation of a medieval gate

Other directors in the 1980s chose a more intellectual path, exploring philosophical and ethical issues. Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron (1981) is a critique of the Polish communist government which won the 1981 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Another Polish director, Krzysztof Kieślowski made The Decalogue for television in 1988, a largely melancholic film series that explores ethical issues and moral puzzles. Two of these films were released theatrically as A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing. In 1989 Woody Allen would make, in the words of The New York Times critic Vincent Canby his most "securely serious and funny film to date" in Crimes and Misdemeanors, which deals with multiple stories of people trying to find a moral and spiritual simplicity in life facing dire issues and thoughts surrounding the choices they make. French director Louis Malle chose another moral path to explore with the dramatization of his real-life childhood experiences in Au revoir, les enfants, which depicts the Nazi occupation government's deportation of French Jews to concentration camps during World War II.

Kieślowski was not the only director to transcend the distinction between the cinema and television: Ingmar Bergman made Fanny and Alexander (1982) which was shown on television in an extended five-hour version. In the UK, Channel 4, a new television channel, financed in whole or part many films released theatrically via its Film 4 subsidiary. Wim Wenders offered another approach on life from a spiritual standpoint in his 1987 film Wings of Desire, a depiction of a "fallen angel" who lives among men, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1982, experimental director Godfrey Reggio released Koyaanisqatsi, a film without dialogue which emphasizes cinematography and philosophical ideology. It consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and natural landscapes which creates a visual tone poem.^[23]

Another approach used by directors in the 1980s was to create bizarre, surreal alternate worlds. Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985) is a comedy-thriller that depicts a man's baffling adventures in a surreal nighttime world of chance encounters with mysterious characters. David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986), is a film noir-style thriller mystery filled with symbolism and metaphors about polarized worlds and inhabited by distorted characters that are hidden in the seamy underworld of a small town became surprisingly successful considering its highy distubing subject matter. Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) is an outlandish fantasy/black comedy about cannibalism and extreme violence with an intellectual theme: a critique of 'elite culture' in Thatcherian Britain.

1990s [link]

In the 1990s, directors took inspiration from the success of 1986's Blue Velvet and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover by creating films with bizarre alternate worlds and elements of surrealism. In 1990, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Dreams depicted his imaginative reveries in a series of vignettes that range from idyllic pastoral country landscapes to horrific visions of tormented demons and a blighted post-nuclear war landscape. In 1991, director Joel Coen's Barton Fink, which won the Palme d'or at the Cannes Film Festival, told an enigmatic story about a writer who encounters a range of bizarre characters including an alcoholic, abusive novelist and a serial killer. David Lynch's 1997 film Lost Highway is a psychological thriller that explores fantasy worlds, bizarre time-space transformations, and mental breakdowns using surreal imagery.

Other directors in the 1990s explored philosophical issues and themes such as identity, chance, death, and existentialism. The 1990s films My Own Private Idaho and Chungking Express explored the theme of identity. Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991) is an independent road movie/buddy film about two young street hustlers which explores the theme of the search for home and identity. It was called a "high-water mark in '90s independent film",^[24] a "stark, poetic rumination",^[25] and an "exercise in film experimentation"^[26] of "high artistic quality".^[16] Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express (1994)^[27] explores the themes of identity, disconnection, loneliness, and isolation in the "metaphoric concrete jungle" of modern Hong Kong. The film uses a visual style that could be seen as music video-influenced, and also bears similarities to the French New Wave. While the British Film Institute called it one of the best Asian films of contemporary cinema, it is considered to be a film for cineophiles, because it is "largely a cerebral experience" which you enjoy "because of what you know about film".

Daryush Shokof's film Seven Servants (1996), makes a most original high art cinema piece about a man who wants to "unite" the world races until his last breath. The film remains a surprising visionary experience both in form and concept for anyone who sees it for the first time ever. One year after Seven Servants, Abbas Kiarostami's film Taste of Cherry (1997),^[28] which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, tells a similar tale as in the Seven Servants with a different twist in which it is about a man trying to hire a person to bury him after he commits suicide. The film was shot in a minimalist style, with long takes, a leisurely pace, and long periods of silence. The film was also notable for its use of long shots and overhead shots which creates a sense of distance between the audience and the characters. Zhang Yimou's early 1990s works such as Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991), The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) and To Live (1994) explore human emotions through a poignant narrative. To Live won the Grand Jury Prize.

Several 1990s films explored existentialist-oriented themes related to life, chance, and death. Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993) explored themes of chance, death, and infidelity by tracing ten parallel and interwoven stories. The film, which won the Golden Lion and the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival, was called a "many-sided, many mooded, dazzlingly structured eclectic jazz mural" by Chicago Tribune critic Michael Wilmington. Krzysztof Kieślowski's The Double Life of Véronique (1991) is a drama about the theme of identity and a political allegory about the East/West split in Europe which features stylized cinematography, an ethereal atmosphere, and unexplained supernatural elements. Abbas Kiarostami's film Taste of Cherry (1997)^[28] about a man trying to hire a person to bury him after he commits suicide. The film, which was shot in a minimalist style, with long takes, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Darren Aronofsky's film Pi (1998) is a dream-like "...incredibly complex and ambiguous film filled with both incredible style and substance" about a paranoid math genius' "search for peace."^[29] The film creates a David Lynch-inspired,"... eerie Eraserhead-like world"^[30] shot in "black-and-white, which lends a dream-like atmosphere to all of the proceedings", which explore issues such as "metaphysics and spirituality"^[31] Matthew Barney's The Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002) is a cycle of five symbolic, allegorical films that create a self-enclosed aesthetic system that aims to explore the process of creation. The films are filled with allusions to reproductive organs and sexual development, and they use narrative models drawn from biography, mythology, and geology.

Some 1990s films mixed an ethereal or surreal visual atmosphere with the exploration of philosophical issues. Satantango (1994), by the Hungarian director Bela Tarr is a 7½ hour long film, shot in black and white, that deals with Tarr's favorite theme, that of inadequacy, as con man Irimias comes back to a village at an unspecified location in Hungary, setting himself up as leader and as a Messiah figure to the gullible villagers. Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy (1993–4), particularly Blue (1993) and Red (1994) deal with human relationships, and how people cope with them alongside their day-to-day lives. The trilogy was called "explorations of spirituality and existentialism"^[32] that created a "truly transcendent experience".^[33]

2000s [link]

A number of films from the 2000s with art film qualities were notable due to their use of innovative filmmaking or editing techniques. Memento (2001), a psychological thriller directed by Christopher Nolan is about a man suffering from short-term memory loss. The film is edited so that the plot is revealed backwards in ten-minute chunks, simulating the condition of memory loss. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is a romance film directed by Michel Gondry about a man who hires a company to erase the memory of a bad relationship. The film used a range of special effect techniques and camera work to depict the destruction of the man's memories and his transitions from one memory to another.

Timecode (2000), a film directed by Mike Figgis, uses a split screen to show four continuous 90 minute takes that follow four storylines. Russian Ark (2002), a film directed by Alexander Sokurov took Figgis' use of extended takes even further; it is notable for being the first feature film shot in a single, unedited take. Waking Life (2001), an animated film directed by Richard Linklater uses an innovative digital rotoscope technique to depict a young man stuck in a dream.^[34]

The stars and director of the film Mulholland Drive at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Left to right: Actor Naomi Watts, Director David Lynch, and actors Laura Harring and Justin Theroux.

Several 2000s-era films explored the theme of amnesia or memory, but unlike Memento, they did so using narrative techniques rather than filmmaking and editing methods. Mulholland Drive (2001), directed by David Lynch is initially about a young woman who moves to Hollywood and discovers that an amnesiac is living in her house, although as the plot progresses it becomes apparent the film is holding something deeper in terms of its plot and characters. Oldboy (2003), directed by Park Chan-wook, is about a man imprisoned by a mysterious and brutal captor for 15 years who must then chase his old memories when he is abruptly released. Peppermint Candy (2000), directed by Lee Chang-dong, starts with the suicide of the male protagonist, and then uses reverse chronology (like Memento) to depict the events of the last 20 years which led the man to want to kill himself.

Some of the notable films from the 2000s that have been considered to have art film-qualities differed from mainstream films in controversial subject matter or in narrative form. Elephant (2003), a film directed by Gus Van Sant, for example, depicting mass murder at a high school that echoed the Columbine High School massacre, won top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Other of his films include Gerry, Last Days, and Paranoid Park. Todd Haynes' complex deconstruction of Bob Dylan's persona, I'm Not There (2007), tells its story using non-traditional narrative techniques, intercutting the storylines of the six different Dylan-inspired characters. Mexican director Guillermo del Toro's film Pan's Labyrinth uses computer-generated imagery (CGI) technology to create a fantastical world that a ten year-old girl imagines to block out the horror of the Spanish Civil War. Encyclopædia Britannica calls del Toro's film "...a wonderful marriage of Hollywood genre [film] and European art film".^[35]

Lewis Beale of Film Journal International stated that Australian director Andrew Dominik's western film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) is "a fascinating, literary-based work that succeeds as both art and genre film."^[36] Unlike the more action-oriented Jesse James films of the past, Dominik's unconventional epic, perhaps more accurately, details the outlaw's relinquishing psyche during the final months of his life as he finds himself succumbing to the paranoia of being captured and developing a rather precarious friendship with his eventual assassin, Robert Ford. In 2009, director Paul Thomas Anderson claimed that his film Punch Drunk Love, about a shy, repressed rageaholic was "an art house Adam Sandler film", a reference to the unlikely inclusion of "frat boy" comic Sandler in the film; critic Roger Ebert claims that Punch Drunk Love "...may be the key to all of the Adam Sandler films, and may liberate Sandler for a new direction in his work. He can't go on making those moronic comedies forever, can he? Who would have guessed he had such uncharted depths?"^[37]

2010s [link]

The CNN review of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) called it "an art film for everyone", unlike his earlier films, which were "considered inaccessible art house fare". This film, which won the 2010 Cannes Palme d'Or "...ties together what might just be a series of beautifully shot scenes with moving and funny musings on the nature of death and reincarnation, love, loss and karma." ^[38] Weerasethakul is an independent film director, screenwriter, and film producer who works outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system. His films deal with dreams, nature, sexuality (including his own homosexuality)^[39] and Western perceptions of Thailand and Asia. His films display a preference for unconventional narrative structures (like placing titles/credits at the middle of a film) and for working with non-actors.

Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011) was finally released after decades of being in development. It also won the Palme d'Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and was highly praised by critics. In Stamford, Connecticut, a message was posted in the Avon Theater about the film and the theater's no-refund policy due to "some customer feedback and a polarized audience response" about the film. The theater stated that it "stands behind this ambitious work of art and other challenging films".^[40] Drive (2011), directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, is commonly called an art-house action film.^[41]

Related concepts [link]

Art television [link]

References [link]

^ "Art film definition – Dictionary – MSN Encarta". Art film definition – Dictionary – MSN Encarta. Archived from the original on 2009-10-31. http://www.webcitation.org/5kwKfOywe.
^ ^a ^b ^c Barbara Wilinsky. Sure Seaters: The Emergence of Art House Cinema at Google Books. University of Minnesota, 2001 (Commerce and Mass Culture Series). See also review in Volume 32, Journal of Popular Film & Television, 2004. Retrieved 2012-01-09.
^ ^a ^b Keith, Barry. Film Genres: From Iconography to Ideology. Wallflower Press: 2007. (page 1)
^ Review of Chungking Express: Ebert, Roger (March 15, 1996). "Chungking Express". Chicago Sun Times. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19960315/REVIEWS/603150301/1023. Retrieved 2010-07-19.
^ ^a ^b ^c William C. Siska. Modernism in the narrative cinema: the art film as a genre at Google Books, Arno Press, 1980. See abstract by Frank Manchel in Film study: an analytical bibliography, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990. Retrieved 2012-01-09.
^ Article on Futurist Cinema^{[dead link]}
^ "'The Futurist Cinema' Manifesto, 1916". Unknown.nu. http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/cinema.html. Retrieved 2010-10-06.
^ ^a ^b Marie, Michel. The French New Wave : An Artistic School. Trans. Richard Neupert. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2002.
^ [1]^{[dead link]}
^ Paglia, Camille. "Art movies: R.I.P." In Salon. Available at Salon.com
^ ^a ^b [2]^{[dead link]}
^ Sight and Sound. Available at [3]^{[dead link]}
^ [4]^{[dead link]}
^ Memories of a Revolutionary Cinema by Allison Arnold Helminski. Available at [5]^{[dead link]}
^ [6]^{[dead link]}
^ ^a ^b Allmovie.com
^ "My Own Private Idaho (R)". The Washington Post. 1991-10-18. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/myownprivateidahorhowe_a0b352.htm.
^ "Sight & Sound | Top Ten Poll 2002 - Critics Top Ten 2002". BFI. 2006-09-05. http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/critics.html. Retrieved 2010-10-06.
^ "Festival de Cannes: Andrei Rublev". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2659/year/1969.html. Retrieved 2009-04-10.
^ "The Color of Pomegranates at Paradjanov.com". Parajanov.com. 2001-01-09. http://www.parajanov.com/main.html. Retrieved 2010-10-06.
^ "The Color of Pomegranates in Cahiers du Cinema Top 10". Parajanov.com. http://www.parajanov.com/top100films.html. Retrieved 2010-10-06.
^ This was Jodorowsky's second film from the 1970s. He also made El Topo (1970), a surrealistic western film.
^ "Koyaanisqatsi". Spirit of Baraka. 2007-05-21. http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/koyaanis.aspx. Retrieved 2008-05-28.
^ Filmcritic.com critic Jake Euler
^ Reviewer Nick Schager
^ Critic Matt Brunson
^ Prior to Chungking Express, he directed Days of Being Wild. Later in the 1990s, Kar-wai directed Happy Together (film) (1997).
^ ^a ^b In 1990, Kiarostami directed Close-up.
^ "Pi Movie Review, DVD Release –". Filmcritic.com. http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/ddb5490109a79f598625623d0015f1e4/a29bee8a645baf0b882567c0005e8d55?OpenDocument. Retrieved 2010-10-06.
^ "Current Movie Reviews, Independent Movies – Film Threat". Filmthreat.com. 1998-06-15. http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=997. Retrieved 2010-10-06.
^ Critic James Berardinelli
^ Emanuel Levy, review of Three Colors: Blue. Retrieved 2012-01-09.
^ Matt Brunson
^ Five years later, Linklater released the science fiction film A Scanner Darkly (2006), which was also animated with Rotoscope.
^ Britannica.com^{[dead link]}
^ Lewis Beale. "The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford". Film Journal International. http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/reviews/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003639817. Retrieved 2007-09-27. ^{[dead link]}
^ "Punch-Drunk Love". Chicago Sun-Times. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20021018/REVIEWS/210180308/1023.
^ Satraroj, Nick. Movie review: 'Uncle Boonmee,' an art film for everyone. CNN. Accessed on October 2, 2010. Available at CNNGO.com
^ "Creating His Own Language: An Interview With Apichatpong Weerasethakul", Romers, H. Cineaste, page 34, vol. 30, no. 4, Fall 2005, New York
^ Austin Dale (June 24, 2011). "INTERVIEW: Here’s the Story Behind That Theater’s No Refund Policy for “Tree of Life”". indieWIRE. http://www.indiewire.com/article/avon_theatre_director_talks_about_his_tree_of_life_disclaimer/. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
^ "Drive (2011)". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/drive_2011. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
^ Thompson. Available Kamera.co.uk
^ "Television authorship " The Wire Being Taught at Harvard". Machines.pomona.edu. http://machines.pomona.edu/152-2009/2009/11/02/the-wire-being-taught-at-harvard/. Retrieved 2010-10-06.

v t e Film genres

By style	Action heroic bloodshed Adventure Biographical Comedy parody screwball comedy slapstick Documentary docudrama Drama dramedy melodrama Erotic pink blue Educational social guidance Epic Experimental Exploitation Fantasy comic fairy tale Film noir bad girl Historical Horror body comedy natural psychological slasher splatter Musical Mystery Pornographic Propaganda Reality snuff Romance romantic comedy romantic thriller Science fiction comic Supernatural Thriller conspiracy erotic giallo legal political psychological

By topic or setting	Animals Beach party Blaxploitation Buddy buddy cop Cannibal Coming-of-age Concert Crime heist hood mob prison yakuza Dance hip hop Disaster apocalyptic Drug stoner Dystopian Extraterrestrial Found footage Martial arts chopsocky girls with guns kung fu wuxia Monster giant monster vampire werewolf zombie Nature environmental issues Nudist sexploitation Outlaw biker Pirate Rape and revenge Road Samurai Slice of life Sports Spy Superhero Swashbuckler Sword-and-sandal Sword and sorcery Travel Trial Vigilante War Western acid epic ostern revisionist space spaghetti zapata

By audience	Chick flick Children's Family Guy-cry Teen Woman's

By format or production	3D Animation computer stop motion traditional Art B movie Black-and-white Blockbuster Color Cult Feature Featurette Independent Live action animation Low-budget Major studio Mockbuster No budget Serial Short Silent Sound Underground

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This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_film

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

Not to be confused with Maggie Cheung Ho-yee.

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Cheung (張).

Maggie Cheung

Maggie Cheung at 2007 Shanghai International Film Festival

Chinese name

張曼玉 (Traditional)

Chinese name

张曼玉 (Simplified)

Pinyin

Zhāng Mànyù (Mandarin)

Jyutping

Jèung Maahn Yuhk (Cantonese)

Birth name

Maggie Cheung Man-yuk

Born

20 September 1964 (age 47)
Hong Kong

Occupation

Actress

Years active

1983–2004, 2009-present

Spouse(s)

Olivier Assayas (1998–2001; divorced)

Awards

Hong Kong Film Awards
Best Actress 1989 A Fishy Story 1992 Centre Stage 1996 Comrades: Almost a Love Story 1998 The Soong Sisters 2001 In the Mood for Love
Golden Bauhinia Awards
Best Actress 1996 Comrades: Almost a Love Story
Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards
Best Actress 1996 Comrades: Almost a Love Story
Golden Horse Awards
Best Actress 1989 Full Moon in New York 1990 Red Dust 1991 Centre Stage 1996 Comrades: Almost a Love Story 2000 In the Mood for Love
Other awards
Silver Bear for Best Actress 1992 Centre Stage Best Actress Award (Cannes Film Festival) 2004 Clean Hawaii International Film Festival 2004 Award for Achievement in Acting

Maggie Cheung Man yuk (born 20 September 1964) is a Hong Kong actress. Raised in England and Hong Kong, she has over 70 films to her credit since starting her career in 1983. Some of her most commercially successful work was in the action genre, but Cheung once said in an interview that of all the work she has done, the films that really meant something to her are Song of Exile, Centre Stage, Comrades: Almost a Love Story and In the Mood for Love. As Emily Wang in Clean, her last starring role to date, she became the first Asian actress to win a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Cheung is multilingual, having learned to speak English, Mandarin and French. Her native language is Cantonese.

1 Biography
- 1.1 Personal
2 Awards
3 Filmography
4 TV Drama
5 Music Video/Music TV Drama
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

Biography [link]

Born in Hong Kong, Maggie Cheung traces her family roots to Shanghai. In 1971, she entered Primary one of St. Paul's Convent School. Her family emigrated from Hong Kong to the United Kingdom when she was eight. She spent part of her childhood and adolescence in England. She returned to Hong Kong at the age of 18 in 1982 for vacation, but ended up staying for modeling assignments and other commitments; she also shortly obtained a sales job at Lane Crawford department store. In 1983, she entered the Miss Hong Kong pageant and won the first runner-up and the Miss Photogenic award as well.^[1] She was a semi-finalist in the Miss World pageant the same year.^[2]

Prior to 1988, her screen appearance was often limited to eye candy roles. One of Cheung's notable movie roles then is that of "May", the girlfriend of police detective "Kevin" Chan Ka Kui in Jackie Chan's Police Story series (however, she did not reprise the role in Police Story 4: First Strike or New Police Story). Maggie frequently cited her performance in the movie As Tears Go By (1988), her first of many collaborations with film director Wong Kar-wai 王家衛, as the piece that truly began her serious acting career. In Centre Stage, she performed in Cantonese, Mandarin and Shanghainese fluently, switching languages with ease. In Clean, she performed in fluent English, French, and Cantonese. She is a polyglot as a result of her upbringing in Hong Kong and England and ten years' stay in Paris.

Audiences outside Asia have become increasingly familiar with her work, including Irma Vep, Centre Stage, Chinese Box, In the Mood for Love, Hero, 2046, and, (still) most recently, Clean.

Cheung was a jury member at the 1997 Berlin Film Festival^[3], the 1999 Venice Film Festival^[4], the 2004 Hawaii Int'l Film Festival, the 2007 Cannes Film Festival^[5], and the 2010 Marrakech Film Festival.^[6] And for the first time in its history, the 59th Cannes Film Festival (2006) used a photographic image of a real actress on its poster — that of Cheung.

On 7 February 2007, The New York Times rated Maggie Cheung as one of the 22 Great Performers in 2006 for her Cannes winning role as Emily in Clean.^[7] After 25 years of making movies, she decided to retire from acting to pursue a career as a film composer. She would like to compose music and paint, after fulfilling her acting potential.^[8] Her most recent film appearance was as Mazu, Chinese goddess of the sea, in the film/video installation Ten Thousand Waves by British filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien.

As UK's Independent puts it, since her Cannes moment in 2004 Cheung "turned her back on film"^[9] and has shifted her focus to philanthropy, making music, and editing. In April 2010 she was appointed as UNICEF's Ambassador to China. In July 2011 Cheung was awarded the degree Doctor honoris causa at the University of Edinburgh, UK^[10].

Personal [link]

She married French director Olivier Assayas in 1998. The pair divorced in 2001 but their relationship remained amicable. In 2004, Cheung made her award-winning film Clean with him. As part of her portrayal of recovering drug addict and aspiring singer Emily in Clean, Cheung performed songs written by David Roback of Mazzy Star and Dean Wareham of Dean & Britta .

She had a relationship with Hong Kong film director Derek Yee in the late 1980s.

She had a relationship with Beijing based architect Ole Scheeren since Autumn 2007 to Spring 2012.

Awards [link]

42nd Berlin International Film Festival
- Best Actress Award for Centre Stage (aka Actress) 阮玲玉 (1992)^[11]
57th Cannes Film Festival
- Best Actress Award for Clean (2004)^[12]
Chicago International Film Festival
- Silver Hugo Award for Best Actress for Centre Stage (aka Actress) 阮玲玉 (1992)
8th Torino Film Festival, 1990
- Jury Sepcial Award to Maggie Cheung for Farewell China 愛在別鄉的季節 (1990)
Taiwan Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards
- Best Actress of Golden Horse Award for Full Moon in New York 人在紐約 (1989)
- Best Supporting Actress of Golden Horse Award for Red Dust 滾滾紅塵 (1990)
- Best Actress of Golden Horse Award for Centre Stage (aka Actress) 阮玲玉 (1991)
- Best Actress of Golden Horse Award for Comrades: Almost a Love Story 甜蜜蜜 (1996)
- Best Actress of Golden Horse Award for In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (2000)
Hong Kong Film Awards
- Best Actress of Hong Kong Film Award for A Fishy Story 不脫襪的人 (1990)
- Best Actress of Hong Kong Film Award for Centre Stage (aka Actress) 阮玲玉 (1992)
- Best Actress of Hong Kong Film Award for Comrades, Almost a Love Story 甜蜜蜜 (1996)
- Best Actress of Hong Kong Film Award for The Soong Sisters 宋家皇朝 (1998)
- Best Actress of Hong Kong Film Award for In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (2001)
Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards
- Best Actress of HKFCS Award for Comrades, Almost a Love Story 甜蜜蜜 (1996)
Asia-Pacific Film Festival
- Best Actress Award for Comrades, Almost a Love Story 甜蜜蜜 (1997)
Hawaii International Film Festival
- Award for Achievement in Acting (2004)
29th Montreal World Film Festival/Festival des Films du Mond
- Special Award for Exceptional Contribution to Cinematographic Art (2005)
10th Shanghai International Film Festival
- Award for Outstanding Contribution to Chinese Cinema (2007)

Filmography [link]

Filmography
Year	Title	English
1984	青蛙王子	Prince Charming
1984	緣份	Behind the Yellow Line
1985	摩登仙履奇緣	Modern Cinderella
1985	警察故事	Police Story
1985	聖誕奇遇結良緣	It's a Drink, It's a Bomb
1986	玫瑰的故事	Lost Romance
1986	開心鬼撞鬼	Happy Ghost 3
1986	原振俠與衛斯理	The Seventh Curse
1987	天賜良緣	Sister Cupid
1987	心跳一百	Heartbeat 100
1987	精裝追女仔	The Romancing Star
1987	A計劃續集	Project A Part II
1988	應召女郎1988	Call Girl '88
1988	愛的逃兵	Love Soldier of Fortune
1988	過埠新娘	Paper Marriage
1988	雙肥臨門	Double Fattiness
1988	旺角卡門	As Tears Go By
1988	南北媽打	Mother vs. Mother
1988	月亮星星太陽	Moon, Star, Sun
1988	求愛敢死隊	How to Pick Up Girls
1988	警察故事續集	Police Story 2
1988	肥貓流浪記	The Nowhereman/Beloved Son Of God
1988	黃色故事	The Game They Call Sex
1988	流金歲月	Last Romance
1989	小小小警察	Little Cop
1989	不脫襪的人	A Fishy Story
1989	少女心	Hearts No Flowers
1989	再見王老五	The Bachelor's Swan-Song
1989	我要富貴	My Dear Son
1989	求愛夜驚魂	In Between Loves
1989	急凍奇俠	The Iceman Cometh
1989	神勇雙妹嘜	Doubles Cause Troubles
1990	人在紐約	Full Moon in New York
1990	三人新世界	Heart into Hearts
1990	客途秋恨	Song of the Exile
1990	紅場飛龍	Dragon From Russia
1990	愛在別鄉的季節	Farewell China
1990	滾滾紅塵	Red Dust
1990	阿飛正傳	Days of Being Wild
1991	志在出位	Today's Hero
1991	豪門夜宴	The Banquet
1991	富貴吉祥	The Perfect Match
1991	黑雪	Will of Iron
1991	雙城故事	Alan & Eric - Between Hello & Goodbye
1992	阮玲玉	Centre Stage (aka Actress)
1992	兩個女人，一個靚，一個唔靚	Too Happy for Words(short film)
1992	白玫瑰	Rose
1992	家有喜事	All's Well, Ends Well
1992	真的愛妳	True Love
1992	新龍門客棧	New Dragon Gate Inn
1992	譁! 英雄	What a Hero!
1992	雙龍會	Twin Dragons
1992	警察故事3: 超級警察	Police Story 3: Supercop
1992	三人做世界	Heart Against Hearts
1992	千面天王	Millionaire Cop
1992		The Enigma of Love
1993	戰神傳說	Moon Warriors
1993	赤腳小子	The Bare-Footed Kid
1993	東方三俠	The Heroic Trio
1993	武俠七公主	Holy Weapon
1993	青蛇	Green Snake
1993	飛越謎情	Enigma of Love
1993	東成西就	The Eagle Shooting Heroes
1993	神經刀與飛天貓	Flying Dagger
1993	追男仔	Boys are Easy
1993	現代豪俠傳	Executioners
1993	廉政第一擊	First Shot
1993	濟公	Mad Monk
1994	新同居時代	In Between
1994	東邪西毒	Ashes of Time
1996	甜蜜蜜	Comrades: Almost a Love Story
1996	迷离劫	Irma Vep
1997	宋家皇朝/宋家三姐妹	The Soong Sisters
1997	中国匣	Chinese Box
1999	爱在异乡的故事	Augustin, King of Kung-Fu
2000	一見鍾情	Sausalito
2000	花樣年華	In the Mood for Love
2002	英雄	Hero
2004	2046	2046
2004	错过又如何/錯得多美麗	Clean
2008	東邪西毒(終極版)	Ashes of Time Redux
2009		Inglourious Basterds (deleted scene)^[13]
2010	全城熱戀	Hot Summer Days
2010		Better Life (short film, part of a video installation)^[14]
2010	萬層浪	Ten Thousand Waves

^[15]^[16]

TV Drama [link]

TV Drama
Year	Title	English
1984	畫出彩虹	Rainbow Round My Shoulder
1984	新紮師兄	Police Cadet '84
1985	武林世家	The Fallen Family
1985	拆擋拍擋
1985	楊家將	The Yang's Saga

Music Video/Music TV Drama [link]

日落巴黎 Sunset in Paris (1989) Starring: Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Cherie Chung
穿梭梦里人 (1991) Starring: Jacky Cheung(张学友), Maggie Cheung
一場遊戲一場夢 Starring: Dave Wang (王傑), Maggie Cheung
半夢半醒之間 Starring: Alan Tam(谭咏麟), Maggie Cheung

References [link]

^ "Miss Hong Kong 1983". misshkbeauties.com. http://www.misshkbeauties.com/mhk/1983/index.htm. Retrieved 18 September 2010.
^ - Miss World Previous Title Holders - 1983
^ "Annual Archives - Juries". berlinale.de. http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1997/04_jury_1997/04_Jury_1997.html. Retrieved 18 September 2010.
^ "Venice Film Festival (1999)". IMDb. http://hungarian.imdb.com/event/ev0000681/1999. Retrieved 18 September 2010.
^ "Juries 2007". festival-cannes.fr. http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en/archives/2007/juryLongFilm.html. Retrieved 18 September 2010.
^ "Jury 2010". festivalmarrakech.info. http://en.festivalmarrakech.info/Membres-of-jury_a330.html. Retrieved 4 July 2011.
^ Hirschberg, Lynn (11 February 2007). "Great Performers". The New York Times. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20D10FF385B0C728DDDAB0894DF404482&fta=y&archive:article_related. Retrieved 18 September 2010.
^ Flynn, Bob (10 April 2007). "Maggie Cheung : Why the Asian Star is turning her back on film". The Independent (London). http://arts.independent.co.uk/film/features/article2437462.ece.
^ "Maggie Cheung: Why the Asian star is turning her back on film". independent.co.uk. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/maggie-cheung-why-the-asian-star-is-turning-her-back-on-film-444101.html. Retrieved 4 July 2011.
^ "Honorary degree for Maggie Cheung". http://www.ed.ac.uk/about/edinburgh-global/news-events/news/cheungdegree-040711. Retrieved 13 March 2011.
^ "Berlinale: 1992 Prize Winners". berlinale.de. http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1992/03_preistr_ger_1992/03_Preistraeger_1992.html. Retrieved 29 May 2011.
^ "Festival de Cannes: Clean". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/4202812/year/2004.html. Retrieved 11 November 2009.
^ "Maggie Cheung Okays with 'Basterds' Cut". China Daily. China Daily. 22 May 2009. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/showbiz/2009-05/22/content_7933941.htm. Retrieved 22 May 2009.
^ Gritten, David (6 Oct 2010). "Maggie Cheung returns in Ten Thousand Waves". Telegraph (London: Telegraph). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/8045584/Maggie-Cheung-returns-in-Ten-Thousand-Waves.html. Retrieved 13 Oct 2010.
^ "Maggie Cheung". imdb.com. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001041/. Retrieved 8 April 2010.
^ "Maggie Cheung". chinesemov.com. http://chinesemov.com/actors/Maggie%20Cheung.html. Retrieved 8 April 2010.

External links [link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Maggie Cheung

v t e Festival de Cannes (Cannes Film Festival) Prix d'interprétation féminine (Best Actress) 2000–2019

Björk (2000) Isabelle Huppert (2001) Kati Outinen (2002) Marie-Josée Croze (2003) Maggie Cheung (2004) Hana Laszlo (2005) Penélope Cruz/Carmen Maura/Lola Dueñas/Chus Lampreave/Blanca Portillo/Yohana Cobo (2006) Jeon Do-yeon (2007) Sandra Corveloni (2008) Charlotte Gainsbourg (2009) Juliette Binoche (2010) Kirsten Dunst (2011)

Complete list (1946–1959) (1960–1979) (1980–1999) (2000–2019)

Golden Horse Award for Best Actress (1981-2000)

Sylvia Chang (1981) · Ping Wong (1982) · Xiao Fun Lu (1983) · Huei San Yang (1984) · Huei San Yang (1985) · Sylvia Chang (1986) · Anita Mui (1987) · Carol Cheng (1988) · Maggie Cheung (1989) · Brigitte Lin (1990) · Maggie Cheung (1991) · Lindzay Chan (1992) · Carrie Ng (1993) · Joan Chen (1994) · Josephine Siao (1995) · Josephine Siao (1996) · Maggie Cheung (1997) · Li Xiaolu (1998) · Loletta Lee (1999) · Maggie Cheung (2000)

(1962–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001-present)

v t e Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actress

Actresses	Kara Hui (1982) Becky Lam (1983) Cecilia Yip (1984) Siqin Gaowa (1985) Pauline Wong (1986) Sylvia Chang (1987) Josephine Siao (1988) Anita Mui (1989) Maggie Cheung (1990) Carol Cheng (1991) Cecilia Yip (1992) Maggie Cheung (1993) Anita Yuen (1994) Anita Yuen (1995) Josephine Siao (1996) Maggie Cheung (1997) Maggie Cheung (1998) Sandra Ng (1999) Law Lan (2000) Maggie Cheung (2001) Sylvia Chang (2002) Angelica Lee (2003) Cecilia Cheung (2004) Zhang Ziyi (2005) Zhou Xun (2006) Gong Li (2007) Siqin Gaowa (2008) Paw Hee-Ching (2009) Kara Hui (2010) Carina Lau (2011) Deanie Ip (2012)

Other HKFA Awards	Film Director Screenplay Leading Actor Leading Actress Supporting Actor Supporting Actress New Performer Cinematography Editing Best Art Direction Costume Make Up Design Action Choreography Original Film Score

Persondata
Name	Cheung, Maggie
Alternative names
Short description	Actress
Date of birth	20 September 1964
Place of birth	Hong Kong
Date of death
Place of death

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