Interviews with Directors and Artists
An interview with James Longley, the director of Iraq in Fragments
By Joanne Laurier, 29 June 2006
American filmmaker James Longley’s remarkable documentary, Iraq in Fragments, screened recently at the San Francisco Film Festival (see WSWS review).
The conflict between the desire for freedom and backward religious traditions
Deepa Mehta speaks with WSWS
By Richard Phillips, 15 May 2006
India-born director Deepa Mehta spoke with World Socialist Web Site journalist Richard Phillips during a recent visit to Australia to promote Water, her latest film. As the accompanying links explain, production of the movie began in India six years ago but was shelved following a vicious political campaign by right-wing Hindu extremists. The film was completed last year and premiered at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival. It is currently screening in several countries, including the US, Canada and Australia, with others to follow.
“My film is not a national propaganda tool”
An interview with Tolga Ornëk, director of Gallipoli: The Front Line Experience
By Richard Phillips, 20 December 2005
Turkish director Tolga Ornëk has made six major documentaries since he began filmmaking in 1998. These include, Atatürk (1998), Mount Nemrud: The Throne of the Gods (1999), Eregli: The Heart of Steel (2002) and The Hittites (2003).
An interview with Sigfrido Ranucci, director of The Hidden Massacre
By Marc Wells, 14 December 2005
On November 8, the Italian public television network RAI aired the documentary film The Hidden Massacre, which exposes the use by US forces of white phosphorous bombs on the civilian population of Fallujah in the November 2004 assault on the Iraqi city. This chemical weapon is prohibited by international law, except when used for illumination purposes.
An interview with Marcellino de Baggis, writer and director of Quintosole
By Marc Wells, 11 November 2005
In September the WSWS posted a review of Quintosole (“An honest look at the lives of Italian inmates”), a documentary by Italian filmmaker Marcellino de Baggis, on the social and psychological implications of the founding of a soccer team established behind bars at the Milano-Opera maximum security prison.
An interview with Alain Tasma, director of October 17, 1961
By David Walsh, 28 September 2005
David Walsh and Joanne Laurier spoke with French director Alain Tasma in Toronto.
“You can speak your truth more easily in the theatre”
An interview with Australian playwright Hannie Rayson
By Richard Phillips, 23 June 2005
Australian playwright Hannie Rayson recently spoke with the World Socialist Web Site about Two Brothers, her latest play, which premiered in Melbourne last May and is currently playing at the Sydney Opera House until July 2.
“To show the courage of those who resisted the Nazis”
An interview with Margarethe von Trotta, director of Rosenstrasse
By Richard Phillips, 31 May 2005
More than two years after its European premiere, Margarethe von Trotta’s Rosenstrasse is finally being shown in Australian cinemas. The movie is about the courageous action of German women who protested against the arrest and impending deportation of their Jewish husbands by the Nazis in 1943. It will screen at Palace cinemas in Sydney and Melbourne in early June, with other cities to follow.
“There’s something magical about music”
Singer-songwriter Marshall Crenshaw speaks with the World Socialist Web Site
By Richard Phillips, 6 August 2004
Marshall Crenshaw is one of the few singer-songwriters to have maintained his artistic integrity and sanity after more than two and a half decades in the fickle world of the American rock recording industry. Crenshaw’s music is characterised by beguiling tunes and simple but evocative lyrics. Whether love songs or poignant homages to an innocent past, Crenshaw’s work is drawn from the classics of American popular music—rockabilly, rock and roll, country, gospel and rhythm and blues.
Gillo Pontecorvo, director of The Battle of Algiers, speaks to WSWS
“Stay close to reality”
By Maria Esposito, 9 June 2004
Gillo Pontecorvo, director of the 1965 film The Battle of Algiers (see: “A timeless portrait of the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria”) spoke recently by phone to Maria Esposito from the World Socialist Web Site. They discussed the production of Pontecorvo’s ground-breaking and powerful film, his cinematic influences, the US-led occupation of Iraq and other issues.
To explore one of the dark episodes in Indonesian history
Interview with Garin Nugroho, director of The Poet
By Richard Phillips, 19 September 2001
Indonesian filmmaker Garin Nugroho spoke with the World Socialist Web Site last month when his latest film, The Poet (Unconcealed Poetry), was screened at the Asian-Pacific Film Festival in Sydney. Nugroho, who was born in Yogjakarta in 1961, studied filmmaking at the Jakarta University of the Arts and later law at Indonesia University.
An interview with Ana Poliak, director of La fe del volcán (The Faith of the Volcano)
By David Walsh, 5 June 2001
I spoke to Ana Poliak, director of The Faith of the Volcano , in Buenos Aires.
An interview with Mojgan Khadem
"Not just to entertain but to take the audience's breath away intellectually"
By Richard Phillips, 4 June 2001
Mojgan Khadem, the 31-year-old director of Serenades was born in Iran and lived there until she was 10 when her family was forced to leave the country to escape religious persecution by the Islamic fundamentalist regime. Khadem spent three years in Spain before moving to Australia in 1981. She studied filmmaking at the Australian Film Television and Radio school in Sydney, majoring in directing. After her graduate film Requiem , which won the Certificate of Merit at the Chicago International Film Festival, she made several documentaries. Serenades is her first feature film. She spoke to the World Socialist Web Site during a recent visit to Sydney.
A response to the interview with filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff
A clarification of essential historical issues
By David Walsh, 6 February 2001
On February 3 the World Socialist Web Site posted an interview with veteran German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff, conducted by Prairie Miller. [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/feb2001/schl-f03.shtml] Certain issues raised in that conversation need to be clarified.
An interview with German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff
By Prairie Miller, 3 February 2001
The following is an interview with well-known German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff, director of The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum , The Tin Drum , Swann in Love and numerous other works. His 1999 film, The Legends of Rita (Die Stille nach dem Schuß ), chronicled in fictional form the fate of certain members of the Red Army Faction (the Baader-Meinhof group)—radicals responsible for terrorist attacks in West Germany—who sought refuge in the Stalinist GDR (East Germany).
An interview with Paul Cox, director of Innocence: "Filmmakers have a duty to speak out against the injustices in the world"
By Richard Phillips, 6 January 2001
Filmmaker Paul Cox spoke with the World Socialist Web Site during a recent visit to Sydney for the Australian release of Innocence, his latest film. Born in Holland in 1940, Cox immigrated to Australia where he became a photographer and then, in the early 1970s, a filmmaker. Since then he has produced 18 features and several documentaries, including Man of Flowers (1983), My First Wife (1984), Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh (1987), Island (1989), A Woman's Tale (1991), Exile (1994) and Lust and Revenge (1996).
"It is a lot easier to stay with the establishment, but this is not my way of life"
Japanese film director Shohei Imamura speaks to the World Socialist Web Site
By Richard Phillips, 19 September 2000
Veteran film director, Shohei Imamura, recently visited Australia for “Under the Southern Cross”, a two-day season of Japanese films screened in Canberra and Sydney as part of the Olympic Arts Festival.
Interview with David King at the opening of his exhibition The Commissar Vanishes
"Stalin and his regime destroyed the revolution."
By Stefan Steinberg, 29 December 1998
An interview with photographer David King
Pennebaker and Hegedus: seminal figures in American documentary film
By Richard Phillips, 12 August 1998
This is the last in the series of articles on the 45th Sydney Film Festival.
David Walsh looks at the San Francisco film festival
Blacklisted film director John Berry honored
By David Walsh, 9 June 1998
This is the last in a series of articles about the 1998 San Francisco International Film Festival
An interview with Richard Linklater:
"You can't hold back the human spirit"
By David Walsh, 27 March 1998
World Socialist Web Site arts editor David Walsh interviewed Richard Linklater recently in New York City, where the filmmaker was presenting his new film,The Newton Boys, at the American Museum of the Moving Image. Linklater, the director of Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise and SubUrbia, is one of the most interesting filmmakers currently working in the US.
Interview with Kim Dong-won, director of The Six-Day Fight in Myong Dong Cathedral
"Our situation requires us to make films dealing with social issues"
By Stefan Steinberg, 3 March 1998
An interview with Kim Dong-won, director of The Six-Day Fight in Myong Dong Cathedral.
Interview with Hubert Sauper, co-director of Kisangani Diary
"We cannot call ourselves democrats when people are still treated like animals"
By Stefan Steinberg, 3 March 1998
An interview with Hubert Sauper, co-director of Kisangani Diary.
Interview with Hsu Hsiao-ming, director of Homesick Eyes
By David Walsh, 6 October 1997
I first asked Hsu Hsiao-ming why he had chosen to make a film about foreign workers in Taiwan. Hsu explained that these workers had only started arriving in the country three or four years ago. "I didn't sense suddenly," he went on, "that there were many people around us who didn't look Chinese. But gradually I began to notice Filipino babysitters pushing strollers and also I began to notice the workers on the construction sites. Suddenly we had many foreign workers and I began to take an interest in their lives."
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