Fifty Contemporary Film Directors examines the work of some of today’s most popular and influential cinematic figures. It provides an accessible overview of each director’s contribution to cinema, incorporating a discussion of their career, major works and impact. Revised throughout and with twelve new entries, this second edition is an up-to-date introduction to some of the most prominent film makers of the present day. The directors, from differing backgrounds and working across a range of genres, include: Martin Scorsese Steven Spielberg Sofia Coppola Julie Dash Shane Meadow Michael Moore Peter Jackson Guillermo Del Toro Tim Burton Jackie Chan Ang Lee Pedro Almodóvar. With further reading and a filmography accompanying each entry, this comprehensive guide is indispensable to all those studying contemporary film and will appeal to anyone interested in the key individuals behind modern cinema’s greatest achievements.

This book provides an accessible overview of each director’s contribution to cinema, incorporating a discussion of their career, major works and impact.

From Luc Besson to Quentin Tarantino, Fifty Contemporary Film-makers offers an up-to-date guide to the individuals who are shaping modern cinema.

Fifty Hollywood Directors introduces the most important, iconic and influential filmmakers who worked in Hollywood between the end of the silent period and the birth of the blockbuster. By exploring the historical, cultural and technological contexts in which each director was working, this book traces the formative period in commercial cinema when directors went from pioneers to industry heavyweights. Each entry discusses a director’s practices and body of work and features a brief biography and suggestions for further reading. Entries include: Frank Capra Cecil B DeMille John Ford Alfred Hitchcock Fritz Lang Orson Welles DW Griffith King Vidor This is an indispensible guide for anyone interested in film history, Hollywood and the development of the role of the director.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

One of the most significant contributors to the American independent cinema that developed over the late 1980s and 1990s, Hal Hartley has throughout his career created films that defy convention and capture the stranger realities of modern American life. The Cinema of Hal Hartley looks at all of Hartley's film releases - from cult classics such as The Unbelievable Truth and Trust to oddball genre experiments such as No Such Thing and Fay Grim to short films such as Opera No. 1 and Accomplice - and makes a case for seeing Hartley as an important and successful American auteur, despite the director's decline in status in the later stages of his career. Employing both industrial and close textual analysis, the book considers aspects of Hartley's work such as genre, gender and form, as well as dimensions far less frequently discussed in studies of indie directors, such as place and cultural identity, offering a broad and innovative study of a productive filmmaker who continues to show a singular disregard for the expectations of both the mainstream and the indie cinema industries.

The biographical film or biopic is a staple of film production in all major film industries and yet, within film studies, its generic, aesthetic, and cultural significance has remained underexplored. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture fills this gap, conceptualizing the biopic with a particular eye toward the "life" of the genre internationally. New theoretical approaches combine with specially commissioned chapters on contemporary biographical film production in India, Italy, South Korea, France, Russia, Great Britain, and the US, in order to present a selective but well-rounded portrait of the biopic’s place in film culture. From Marie Antoinette to The Social Network, the pieces in this volume critically examine the place of the biopic within ongoing debates about how cinema can and should represent history and "real lives." Contributors discuss the biopic’s grounding in the conventions of the historical film, and explore the genre’s defining traits as well as its potential for innovation. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture expands the critical boundaries of this evolving, versatile genre.