The thirty-eight tales of Cinema Stories combine fact and fiction, and they all revolve around movie-making. The book compresses a lifetime of feeling, thought, and practice: Kluge -- considered the father of New German Cinema -- is an inventive wellspring of narrative notions. "The power of his prose," as Small Press noted, "exudes the sort of pregnant richness one might find in the brief scenarios of unknown films." Cinema Stories is a treasure box of cinematic lore and movie magic by "Alexander Kluge, that most enlightened of writers" (W. G. Sebald). Alexander Kluge, born in Germany in 1932, is a world-famous author and filmmaker (his 23 films include Yesterday Girl, The Female Patriot, The Candidate), a lawyer, and a media magnate. He has won Germany\'s highest literary award, the Georg Büchner Prize.

Examines the personal life and the professional work and success of the director of "Pulp Fiction"

This book presents a concise introduction to the often complex study of narrative theory. In part one, Aspects of Story, major theories of plot structure, character, and fictional worlds are applied to cinema. Part two, Aspects of Discourse, discusses how the story is communicated, examining techniques of cinematic narration such as time manipulation, perspective, editing and sound. Each chapter concludes with questions encouraging students to produce their own analysis of the narrative strategies of films.

Aki Kaurismäki is an enigma, an eminent auteur who claims his films are a joke. Since 1983, Kaurismäki has produced classically-styled films filled with cinephilic references to film history. He has earned an international art-house audience and many prizes, influencing such directors as Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson. Yet Kaurismäki is often depicted as the loneliest, most nostalgic of Finns (except when he promotes his films, makes political statements, and runs his many businesses). He is also depicted as a bohemian known for outlandish actions and statements. The Cinema of Aki Kaurismäki is the first comprehensive English-language study of this eccentric director. Drawing on revisionist approaches to film authorship, the text links the filmmaker and his films to the stories and issues animating film aesthetics and history, nostalgia, late modernity, politics, commerce, film festivals, and national cinema.

The period 1907–1913 marks a crucial transitional moment in American cinema. As moving picture shows changed from mere novelty to an increasingly popular entertainment, fledgling studios responded with longer running times and more complex storytelling. A growing trade press and changing production procedures also influenced filmmaking. In Early American Cinema in Transition, Charlie Keil looks at a broad cross-section of fiction films to examine the formal changes in cinema of this period and the ways that filmmakers developed narrative techniques to suit the fifteen-minute, one-reel format. Keil outlines the kinds of narratives that proved most suitable for a single reel’s duration, the particular demands that time and space exerted on this early form of film narration, and the ways filmmakers employed the unique features of a primarily visual medium to craft stories that would appeal to an audience numbering in the millions. He underscores his analysis with a detailed look at six films: The Boy Detective; The Forgotten Watch; Rose O’Salem-Town; Cupid’s Monkey Wrench; Belle Boyd, A Confederate Spy; and Suspense.

This little book aims to help you figure out how to get your story told on big screens or small. It offers nearly thirty years of observation of how things happen in the business of entertainment. Dr. Ken Atchity's Hollywood experience ranges from writing to managing to producing; he's seen Hollywood from nearly every angle.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower—the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii—a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida’s swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean—and the reader—will have more respect for underdog determination and a powerful new definition of passion. In this new edition, coming fifteen years after its initial publication and twenty years after she first met the “orchid thief,” Orlean revisits this unforgettable world, and the route by which it was brought to the screen in the film Adaptation, in a new retrospective essay. Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. Praise for The Orchid Thief “Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed and full of empathy . . . The Orchid Thief shows [Orlean’s] gifts in full bloom.”—The New York Times Book Review “Fascinating . . . an engrossing journey [full] of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and backstabbing.”—Los Angeles Times “Orlean’s snapshot-vivid, pitch-perfect prose . . . is fast becoming one of our national treasures.”—The Washington Post Book World “Orlean’s gifts [are] her ear for the self-skewing dialogue, her eye for the incongruous, convincing detail, and her Didion-like deftness in description.”—Boston Sunday Globe “A swashbuckling piece of reporting that celebrates some virtues that made America great.”—The Wall Street Journal