A filmmaker and a film theorist construct a dialogue around a close reading of eight Godard films, in chronological order, beginning with My Life to Live (1962) and ending with New Wave (1990). Their close reading follows the unfolding of the films as if the two were sitting at a flatbed, with the benefit of a filmmaker's eye for the formal issues of shooting and editing and a theorist's attention to the relations of text and interpretation. Includes bandw photos. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A filmmaker and a film theorist construct a dialogue around a close reading of eight Godard films, in chronological order, beginning with My Life to Live (1962) and ending with New Wave (1990). Their close reading follows the unfolding of the films as if the two were sitting at a flatbed, with the benefit of a filmmaker's eye for the formal issues of shooting and editing and a theorist's attention to the relations of text and interpretation. Includes bandw photos. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book brings together two major filmmakers-French New Wave master Jean-Luc Godard and German avant-gardist Harun Farocki-to explore the fundamental tension between theoretical abstraction and the capacities of film itself, a medium where everything seen onscreen is necessarily concrete. Volker Pantenburg shows how these two filmmakers explored the potential of combined shots and montage to create "film as theory."

"The two demonstrate a profound shared passion, a way of literally being one with a medium and speaking about it with a dazzling lyricism interspersed with dryly ironic remarks, fueled by a conviction that inspires them to traverse history. Their point of intersection is obvious. Duras, a writer, is also a filmmaker, and Godard, a filmmaker, has maintained a distinctive relationship with literature, writing and speech."--Cyril Béghin, back cover.

Cinema is quite simply a unique book from one of the most influential film-makers in the history of cinema. Here, Jean-Luc Godard looks back on a century of film as well as his own work and career. Born with the twentieth century, cinema became not just the century's dominant art form but its best historian. Godard argues that - after Chaplin and Pol Pot, Monroe and Hitler, Stalin and Mae West, Mao and the Marx Brothers - film and history are inextricably intertwined. Godard presents his thoughts on film theory, cinematic technique, film histories, as well as the recent video revolution. He expounds on his central concerns - how film can "resurrect the past," the role of rhythm in film, and how cinema can be an "art that thinks." Here Godard comes closest to defining a lifetime's obsession with cinema and cinema's lifelong obsession with history. --

"Jean-Luc Godard, like many of his European contemporaries, came to filmmaking through film criticism. This collection of essays and interviews, ranging from his early efforts for La Gazette du Cinema"

This edition of Herzog on Herzog presents a completely new set of interviews in which Werner Herzog discusses his career from its very beginnings to his most recent productions. Herzog was once hailed by Francois Truffaut as the most important director alive. Famous for his frequent collaborations with mercurial actor Klaus Kinski - including the epics, Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, and the terrifying Nosferatu - and more recently with documentaries such as Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Into the Abyss, Herzog has built a body of work that is one of the most vital in post-war German cinema.