A comprehensive overview of the director Jane Campion and her work. Campion is one of the few women film-makers working today who has managed to create a unique body of work. A true independent film-maker, she has attracted many ‘A’ List Hollywood actors to appear in her films. Who else but Campion could have convinced a tattooed Harvey Keitel to run buck-naked through the New Zealand landscape in The Piano, or for the multi award-winning Kate Winslet to pee down her legs in the middle of the desert in Holy Smoke? Campion is also an outspoken champion in recent debates about the lack of women in senior creative positions within the film industry. This book covers Jane Campion’s remarkable career from her Palme d’Or winning debut short film Peel to her recent return to television with the Top of the Lake series, reflecting on the influence of her study in anthropology as well as her formative years growing up in New Zealand. Reviews “Ellen Cheshire’s rich and thoughtful study accessibly and incisively gets us to the heart of why Jane Campion’s films connect with viewers around the world. This book is hugely enjoyable and insightful.” -- James Clarke, Writer, Media Labs, what you need to know. "I've been fascinated with Jane Campion's career ever since I saw "The Piano" make its debut at the movie theater. Ellen Cheshire did a very good job in detailing the gifted Campion's "brilliant career..." ****-- Diane H, NetGalley "The strength of the book for me is the critical analysis from early short films to box office successes, ranging from the actors involved and the awards gained. I particularly like the appraisal of mood, colour, camera angles and locations which brings the movies alive again for me. A bit like those special box sets and DVDs that carried extra edited bits and alternative scenes/endings." **** -- Richard L, Net Galley About the author Ellen Cheshire has a BA (Hons) in Film and English and a MA in Gothic Studies and has taught Film at Undergraduate and A Level. She has published books on Bio-Pics, Audrey Hepburn and The Coen Brothers and contributed chapters to books on James Bond, Charlie Chaplin, Global Film-making, Film Form, Fantasy Films and War Movies. For Supernova Books, she has also written In the Scene: Ang Lee, and contributed to Silent Women; pioneers of Cinema eds. Melody Bridges and Cheryl Robson (voted best book on Silent Film 2016) and Counterculture UK; a celebration eds. Rebecca Gillieron and Cheryl Robson.

Publisher description

An innovative collection of original essays on Jane Campion, renowned female auteur filmmaker. In Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity a diverse group of contributors challenge the view that Campion's body of work lacks coherence or unity to instead examine the important characteristics and themes that underlie it. Editors Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox, and Irène Bessière have compiled rich, original scholarship on Campion's oeuvre to probe issues previously neglected by scholars--like her debt to New Zealand sources and her personal views of family dynamics--and those that benefit from additional insight--such as her place in the feminist filmmaking tradition. This volume also investigates Campion's distinct cinematic style in light of these issues to examine the source of her enduring cross-cultural and international appeal. Contributors in the first section explore the creation of subjectivity and identity in Campion's films, which include well-known works like The Piano and Holy Smoke, to trace the unique perspectives of Campion's characters and Campion herself as director. In the second section, essays analyze Campion's close relationship with literature and argue that the singular vision in her literary adaptations stems from her New Zealand background and her personal mythology. Contributors in the third section argue that while Campion devotes considerable attention to the evocation of feminine internal space, she also uses the symbolic potential of her external physical locations to register what is taking place in the inner life of her characters and reflect their search for personal fulfillment. A final group of essays presents a variety of responses to Campion's films, demonstrating that Campion is a highly personal and idiosyncratic director who nonetheless manages to fascinate viewers across a broad cultural spectrum. Taken together, contributors in Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity present a compelling analysis of Campion's status as a leading female filmmaker with close attention to her distinctive cinematic style and particular mise-en-scène. The collective nature of this volume will appeal to students and teachers of film, literature, and gender studies, as well as fans of Campion's work.

This is the second volume of the widely acclaimed Art of the Cut book published in 2017. This follow-up text expands on its predecessor with wisdom from more than 360 interviews with the world’s best editors (including nearly every Oscar winner from the last 30 years). Because editing is a highly subjective art form, and one that is critical to the success of motion picture storytelling, it requires side-by-side comparisons of the many techniques and solutions used by a wide range of editors from around the world. That is why this book compares and contrasts methodologies from a wide array of diverse voices and organizes that information so that it is easily digested and understood. There is no one way to approach editorial problems, so this book allows readers to see multiple solutions from multiple editors. The interviews contained within are carefully curated into topics that are most important to film editors and those who aspire to become film editors. The questions asked, and the organization of the book, are not merely an academic or theoretical view of the art of editing but rather the practical advice and methodologies of actual working film and TV editors, bringing benefits to both students and professional readers. The book is supplemented by a collection of downloadable online exclusive chapters, which cover additional topics ranging from Choosing the Project to VFX. In addition to the supplementary chapters, access to the full-color, full-resolution images printed in the book—and other exclusive images—is included.

Ang Lee came to the fore in the 1990s as one of the ‘second wave’ of Taiwanese directors. After studying at New York University, Lee returned to Taiwan where over the next three consecutive years he directed three comedy-dramas focusing on aspects of the East vs. West culture and its impact on the family – Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman. Considering Lee’s background it is surprising that he should be approached to direct the most British of novels, Jane Austen’s Sense And Sensibility. It was a tremendous critical and commercial success. Since then Lee’s projects have been both eclectic and striking – he took on the American suburbs of the 1970s and the war-torn American South of the 1860s in The Ice Storm and Ride With The Devil. But it was his triumphant return to the East with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which has transformed him into an internationally successful director. He followed this with his somewhat flawed foray into the Marvel Universe with Hulk. His heartbreaking adaptation of Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain brought him international critical and commercial success. But forever the genre and language-hopping director, Lee’s next films were much smaller in scale and reach – Lust, Caution (a Chinese erotic espionage thriller) and Taking Woodstock (American comedy-drama). His most recent film was an adaptation of Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi pushed the boundaries of CGI animation and showed how a director with great visual flair could enhance a film with 3D. His continual desire for embracing new technology divided critics and audiences for Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, an adaptation of Ben Fountain’s 2012 Iraq-war set novel, and The Gemini Man with Will Smith. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ellen Cheshire has a BA (Hons) in Film and English and a MA in Gothic Studies and has taught Film at Undergraduate and A Level. She has published books on Bio-Pics, Audrey Hepburn and The Coen Brothers and contributed chapters to books on James Bond, Charlie Chaplin, Global Film-making, Film Form, Fantasy Films and War Movies. She is also one of a team of four writers for the new A Level WJEC Film Text Book published in 2018. For us, she has written In the Scene: Jane Campion and In the Scene: Ang Lee, and contributed to Silent Women: Pioneers of Cinema eds. Melody Bridges and Cheryl Robson (voted best book on Silent Film 2016) and Counterculture UK: a celebration eds. Rebecca Gillieron and Cheryl Robson. With a foreword by Professor James Wicks James Wicks, Ph.D. writes about pop culture. He is the author of two books. Transnational Representations: The State of Taiwan Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s (Hong Kong University Press, 2014), and An Annotated Bibliography of Taiwan Film Studies (Columbia University Press, 2016) with Jim Cheng and Sachie Noguchi. He grew up in Taiwan, completed his dissertation on Chinese Cinema at the University of California, San Diego in 2010, and is currently a Professor of Literature and Film Studies at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California where he teaches World Cinema and Postcolonialism courses.

Jane Campion is one of the most celebrated auteurs of modern cinema and was the first female director to be awarded the prestigious Palme d'Or. Throughout her relatively short career, Campion has received extraordinary attention from the media and scholars alike and has provoked fierce debates on issues such as feminism, colonialism, and nationalism. In this detailed account of Jane Campion's career as a filmmaker, Deb Verhoeven examines specifically how contemporary film directors 'fashion' themselves as auteurs - through their personal interactions with the media, in their choice of projects, in their emphasis on particular filmmaking techniques and finally in the promotion of their films. Through analysis of key approaches to Campion's films, such as The Piano; In the Cut; Sweetie; An Angel at My Table; and Holy Smoke Deb Verhoeven introduces students to the passionate debates surrounding this controversial and often experimental director Featuring a career overview, a filmography, scene by scene analysis and an extended interview with Campion on her approach to creativity, this is a great introduction to one of the most important directors of contemporary cinema.

An examination of Jane Campion's The Piano from a variety of critical perspectives.