Yet another excellent book from Focal Press’s Film Craft series, author Mike Goodridge pools together insightful interviews conducted with some of the world’s top directors like Pedro Almodovar ( All About My Mother, Talk To Her ). Olivier Assayas ( Irma Vep, Carlos ), The Dardenne Brothers ( Rosetta, The Child ), Guillermo Del Toro ( Blade II, Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy ), just to name a few.

Listed below are the 16 directors interviewed in the book :

– Pedro Almodóvar
– Olivier Assayas
– Susanne Bier
– Nuri Bilge Ceylan
– Park Chan-wook
– Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne
– Guillermo del Toro
– Clint Eastwood
– Stephen Frears
– Terry Gilliam
– Amos Gitai
– Paul Greengrass
– Michael Haneke
– István Szabó
– Peter Weir
– Zhang Yimou

Also included are short supplements on 5 “legacy” directors, namely Ingmar Bergman, John Ford, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock and Akira Kurosawa. These are really just short snippets introducing the various directors works in a nutshell – the real juice of the book comes from interviews with the 16 directors listed above.

(above) The mini series Carlos directed by Olivier Assayas, based on the real life terrorist known as Carlos The Jackal. The story is riveting, the cinematography beautiful and the art direction superb. Lots to like. This film is released by Criterion on blu-ray.

(above) Rosetta was the first film from the Dardenne brothers that I watched, subsequent films include L’enfant and The Son. Their narrative style is hard to categorize but its certainly a refreshing change from your standard Hollywood fare, though probably not to everyone’s taste.

The interviews are in-depth and really give you great insight into the directors though process – these are greatly complemented by the numerous production and film stills making the reading experience much more enriching. There are more than a dozen films I’m keenly interested to watch/rewatch after reading the book.

“Film Craft : Directing″ details :

– Author : Mike Goodridge
– Dimensions – 6.1 x 0.6 x 9.2 inches
– Soft cover, 192 pages
– Full color

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