Cinema Today: A Conversation with Thirty-nine Filmmakers from around the World

288 Pages·2010·1.05 MB·English

by  Professor Elena Oumano

Cinema Today

Cinema Today
A Conversation with Thirty-nine
Filmmakers from around the World
ELENA OUMANO
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Elena Oumano
Cinema today : a conversation with thirty-nine fi lmmakers from around the world /
Elena Oumano.
p. cm.
Filmmakers interviewed: Tomas Alfredson, Özcan Alper, Olivier Assayas, Serge Bozon,
Catherine Breillat, Andrew Bujalski, Charles Burnett, Pedro Costa, Constantino Costa-
Gravas, Claire Denis, Sergei Dvortsevoy, Jihan El-Tahri, Ari Folman, Matteo Garrone,
Bette Gordon, Eric Guirado, Lance Hammer, Mia Hansen-Love, Mary Harron, Scott
Hicks, Courtney Hunt, Agnès Jaoui, Kyoshi Kurosawa, Pablo Larrain, Anne Le Ny,
Lucrecia Martel, Brillante Mendoza, Teona Strugar Mitevska, Gerardo Naranjo, Lucia
Puenzo, Shamim Sarif, Paul Schrader, Céline Sciamma, Jerzy Skolimowski, Jean-Marie
Téno, Ivo Trajkov, Melvin Van Peebles, Gary Winick, Jia Zhangke.
ISBN 978–0–8135–4876–0 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978–0–8135–4877–7
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Motion picture producers and directors—Interviews. 2. Motion pictures—
Production and direction. 3. Screenwriters—Interviews. 4. Motion pictures
authorship. I. Oumano, Elena.
PN1998.2.C5675 2010
791.4302’320922—dc22 2009052307
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is
available from the British Library.
Copyright © 2011 by Elena Oumano
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press,
100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this
prohibition is “fair use” as defi ned by U.S. copyright law.
Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
For Lukas Alexander Roth and Sela Grace Roth

CONTENTS
Introduction ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1
Cinematography 1
2
Cinema and Sound 26
3
Working with Actors 48
4
Cinematic Rhythm and Structure 79
5
The Process: Pre-Production, Production,
and Post-Production 92
6
The Business: Financing, Distribution, and Exhibition 148
7
Cinema, Art, and Reality 165
8
The Viewer 187
9
Cinema and Society 209
Profi les of the Filmmakers 233
Tomas Alfredson, Özcan Alper, Olivier Assayas, Serge Bozon,
Catherine Breillat, Andrew Bujalski, Charles Burnett, Pedro Costa,
Constantin Costa-Gavras, Claire Denis, Sergei Dvortsevoy,
Jihan El-Tahri, Ari Folman, Matteo Garrone, Bette Gordon,
Eric Guirado, Lance Hammer, Mia Hansen-Love, Mary Harron,
Scott Hicks, Courtney Hunt, Agnès Jaoui, Kiyoshi Kurosawa,
Pablo Larrain, Anne Le Ny, Lucrecia Martel, Brillante Mendoza,
Teona Strugar Mitevska, Gerardo Naranjo, Lucia Puenzo,
Shamim Sarif, Paul Schrader, Céline Sciamma, Jerzy Skolimowski,
Jean-Marie Téno, Ivo Trajkov, Melvin Van Peebles, Gary Winick,
Jia Zhangke

INTRODUCTION
When the far-fl ung bits and pieces borrowed from older, more established
arts are shaped into a smooth, composite whole to make great cinema,
something entirely new, powerful, and exciting results—moving images and
sounds that follow their own rules of movement, space, and story to reveal
a livelier, more passionately intense refl ection of the world as we experi-
ence it. This metamorphosis begs the perennial question, what is cinema?
Famously posed by seminal French fi lm theorist André Bazin, the question
has never been answered to everyone’s complete satisfaction, so we con-
tinue to explore it today, even while recognizing that cinema’s unique magic
eludes description through mere words and that it may not always be wise
to deconstruct the illusion. Yet, when thirty-nine international fi lmmakers
share various and sometimes oppositional views on their art, perhaps we
can piece together their ideas and approach a more comprehensive under-
standing of what cinema can be and how it can work. After all, who is bet-
ter qualifi ed than fi lmmakers themselves to describe cinema’s collision of
various art forms, textures, images, sounds, rhythms, and other expressive
elements, as well as to dissect the frustrating, exhausting, and exhilarating
process by which a fi lmmaker’s vision fi nds its way onto the screen?
The usual way we receive information about an art from its makers
is via the interview’s choppy question-and-answer format. But reading an
interview can be tedious, and plowing through a collection of interviews in
which the same topics, issues, and questions are directed to each subject
in turn, over and over, can be even worse, like being trapped in a revolving
door. Cinema Today attempts to spring the catch on that revolving door
with a symposium-in-print format created by editing my interviews with
thirty-nine independent and personal fi lmmakers. My questions have been
removed and their answers grouped together under the various key cinema
topics that form this book’s chapters.
ix