Cineaste articles from June 1993

Cineaste archives from June 1993

I find the tragicomic things in life; an interview with Mike Leigh. (Interview)
June 22, 1993... In an era when the 'death of the author' has been loudly proclaimed, the work of the British writer-director Mike Leigh disproves this kind of facile generalization and suggests a new model of authorship. Perhaps one of the few figures who will...

The devil's director. (German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl)
June 22, 1993... The man who directed the first Nazi fiction feature, S. A. Man Brand (1933), found steady work as a filmmaker in postwar West Germany. The director of Baptism of Fire (1940), a documentary celebrating the Luftwaffe's aerial triumph over Poland,...

Her talent was her tragedy; an interview with Ray Muller. (controversial filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl) (Interview)
June 22, 1993... A maker of National Geographic-style travel films and 'highbrow' arts documentaries for German television, Ray Muller didn't feel particularly qualified to direct a documentary about Leni Riefenstahl when the offer came his way. He also feared...

Identity politics at face value: an interview with Scott McGehee and David Siegel. (directors of 'Suture') (Interview)
June 22, 1993... Once in a while, a small film comes along that, by counterbalancing a lack of mainstream cachet with a burst of creativity, leaves the audience stunned and the cinema spinning. This happened at the 1993 Toronto Festival of Festivals with Suture,...

No blacks or whites; the making of Luis Bunuel's 'The Young One.'
June 22, 1993... Produced and cowritten by exiles from McCarthyism, adapted from a story by Peter Matthiessen, and directed by Luis Bunuel, The Young One was released in 1960 and died the death of a work whose time had not yet come. Today, this Mexican-produced,...

Portraying the rhythm of the Vietnamese soul; an interview with Tran Anh Hung. (Interview)
June 22, 1993... Tran Anh Hung was born in Vietnam in 1962 and moved to Paris with his family in 1975. He studied cinematography at the Ecole Lumiere where he made his first short film, The Married Woman of Nam Xuong. In 1991 he made his second short, The Stone...

Re-creating their media image: two generations of black women filmmakers. (includes filmography)
June 22, 1993... A veritable media sensation has greeted the arrival of hip-hop, 'home-boy' filmmakers of the Nineties such as Mario Van Peebles (New Jack City), Ernest Dickerson (Juice), John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood), and Albert and Allen Hughes (Menace II...

Stimulating a dialog among African-American viewers: an interview with Daresha Kyi. (Interview)
June 22, 1993... Daresha Kyi is a 1988 graduate of the film and television program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She has also received a Certificate in Direction from the Conservatory Program of the American Film Institute through TriStar...

From Hollywood to Hanoi.
June 22, 1993... Produced, written, and directed by Tiana Thi Thanh Nga; cinematography by Michael Dodds, Bruce Dorfman, and Jamie Maxtone-Graham; edited by Roger Schulte; music by Allan Gus. Color, 76 mins. Distributed by Friendship Bridge Production, c/o The...

A search for roots and identity: an interview with Tiana Thi Thahn Nga. (Interview)
June 22, 1993... Tiana Thi Thanh Nga was born in Saigon and lived there until 1966, when she moved with her family to America and became a U.S. citizen. She studied acting and directing and worked with Asian-American filmmakers such as Wayne Wang and Emiko Omari....

Short Cuts.
June 22, 1993... Produced by Cary Brokaw; directed by Robert Altman; screenplay by Robert Altman and Frank Barhydt based on the writings of Raymond Carver; cinematography by Walt Lloyd; edited by Geraldine Peroni; production design by Stephen Altman; music by...

Schindler's List.
June 22, 1993... Produced by Steven Spielberg, Gerald R. Molen and Branko Lustig; directed by Steven Spielberg; screenplay by Steven Zaillian based on the novel by Thomas Keneally; cinematography by Janusz Kaminski; edited by Michael Kahn; production design by...

Philadelphia.
June 22, 1993... Produced by Edward Saxon and Jonathan Demme; directed by Jonathan Demme; screenplay by Ron Nyswaner; cinematography by Tak Fujimoto; edited by Craig McKay, production design by Kristi Zea; music composed and conducted by Howard Shore; starring...

The Piano.
June 22, 1993... Produced by Jan Chapman; written and directed by Jane Campion; cinematography by Stuart Dryburgh; edited by Veronika Jenet; production design by Andrew McAlpine; music by Michael Nyman; starring Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin...

Heaven and Earth.
June 22, 1993... Produced by Oliver Stone, Arnon Milchan, Robert Kline and A. Kitman Ho; directed by Oliver Stone; screenplay by Oliver Stone based upon the books by Le Ly Hayslip; cinematography by Robert Richardson; production design by Victor Kempster; edited...

The War Room.
June 22, 1993... Produced by R. J. Cutler, Wendy Ettinger and Frazer Pennebaker; directed by D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus; cinematography by Nick Doob, D. A. Pennebaker and Kevin Rafferty; edited by Chris Hegedus, Erez Laufer and D. A. Pennebaker; sound by...

Jean Cocteau: Autobiography of an Unknown.
June 22, 1993... Is there an example in the history of cinema of a poet and writer turned filmmaker to compare with that of Jean Cocteau? One other name comes to mind--Pier Paolo Pasolini. But Cocteau's life, because it was longer and because he lived earlier,...

A Diary for Timothy.
June 22, 1993... Humphrey Jennings was one of the most talented and imaginative of English documentary filmmakers of the 1940s. Most of his films carried a distinctive signature--a vision characterized by lyrical, emotionally resonant sound and images. Though...

Jules and Jim.
June 22, 1993... The reputation of Francois Truffaut (1932-84) as one of the world's most beloved filmmakers, and a film buff's favorite in particular, is largely due to his background as a film buff turned film critic turned filmmaker. He was a man whose entire...

West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns.
June 22, 1993... "The Western is essentially about conquest," writes Kim Newman in the introduction to Wild West Movies. Two other recent books on Westerns, Gunfighter Nation by Richard Slotkin and West of Everything by Jane Tompkins, essentially agree with...

A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960.
June 22, 1993... A book about the 'woman's film,' and written in clear, intelligible prose, is almost as alluring as the best of the films themselves. A Woman's View, a bulging, 500-page meander through many movies, performs an important double function of...

Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise.
June 22, 1993... To many screen buffs, Ernst Lubitsch's best films remain the epitome of romantic comedy. Lubitsch has had emulators and imitators, but none of them quite compare and it is safe to say that his vaunted style, his 'touch'--although he had mixed...

Greed.
June 22, 1993... The BFI Film Classics series invites monograph-sized essays from an idiosyncratic group of contributors (Laura Mulvey, Salman Rushdie, Richard Schickel, etc.) and turns them loose on the title of their choice from the BFI's notorious canon of 360...