Original subtitles

Without these people, cinema doesn't

exist. Welcome back to Foundations of

Film, and today we'll be looking at

cinema's greatest directors. But what's

the benefit of looking at director? What

even is the role of a director? Well, in

general, we can say that the director is

the film's vision. When we think about

what a film shows us, it's the director

that decides how all of that will be

shown. They are the creative soul of the

film. And our vision of cinema exists

because of filmmakers that permitted us

to see the world through their lens. But

why hone in on filmmakers and not just

great films? Well, what we must

understand is that films can only be

told through a voice. No film exists in

a vacuum. And behind every movie that

you've seen lay a style that came from a

person with a distinct method. It may

seem invisible to us at first, but the

perspective of the person behind the

camera is the reason why we see what we

see. Their decisions are infinite. Why

must the camera move this way? What

should the pace of the sequence be? What

should be left out? And these voices,

these approaches are typically

consistent through an individual's

filmography. Now, a collection of films

is a completely different thing than

watching a single film in that you can

compare them. And comparison is one of

the most necessary skills you can

develop in watching films. It's a way of

taking the reference that we're building

and actually applying it. And one of the

best ways to begin using it is in the

comparison of filmmakers. So the first

benefit of this is that by learning more

about filmmakers, you're aware more so

of what lens the film is being told from

a filmmaker that you're more well-versed

in. You know how they show things, what

they're interested in. Very often

directors in their repertoire will reuse

techniques, thematics that become

instantly recognizable when delving

further into their work. So what is it

that we gain from these individual

voices? Well, think of it like a sport.

Some athletes may play the same

positions, but they will play them

completely differently. And this is the

same as a director. They all direct, but

how is it that they direct a film? And

upon collecting information of various

directors, we can then apply a further

comparison, one that emerges between two

voices, measuring collections of work

against another. How do filmmakers

differ in pace? What is it that they

both attempt to say with similar or

differing techniques? The voice of a

filmmaker should be one of the first

things we understand about film because

these are the people that have mastered

the form. Those who comprehend its

purposes more than any others. And this

list is a foundational list of such

voices that are fundamental in

understanding the broad spectrum of

approaches that have thus far made up

the cinematic landscape. I've selected

over 70 filmmakers, but in doing so,

there are so many that are not

mentioned. For every filmmaker shown,

there are at least another three who are

not. And thus far, all the filmmakers

shown in this introduction are not

mentioned. But this makes them no less

masterful. The purpose of this list is

to elucidate what makes these

foundational filmmakers important. And

as such, these should be the people

whose language we should master and

understand first to show us the far

expanses of cinematic possibility. The

language of cinema is infinite. But

today, the aim is for you to gain a

collection of eclectic filmmakers whose

filmography you will hopefully delve

into and begin to understand its

importance. Each section will be a small

dive into the techniques, context, and

what each filmmaker offered to the story

of film. If you're intrigued in any of

these filmmakers, go and discover more

about them. Many of them have writings

that further elucidate their approach to

their art form. They have interviews and

publications that help us further

understand their approach. The filmmaker

is the voice of cinema. Ultimately, they

are cinema. And today we shall look at

some of the best. This is Foundations of

Film, the masters of cinema.

Gorge Melier. How can we talk about the

masters of cinema without the person who

gave us the idea of the magic of the

movies? Gorge Melier was a magician.

Literally. He worked in France through

the 19th century and managed to attend

one of the private screenings of the

Lumiere cinematograph which upon seeing

he immediately attempted to buy. The

Lumiè being understandably very

protective of their new invention which

could change the world declined the

offer by Melier but inspired rather than

dejected Melier decided to work on

creating his own camera based on the

Lumière's machine. And he did and he

shot films with it. Melier made his own

films and they were not like the other

silent films of the time. Yes, they were

shot on a tripod from an unmoving

perspective that resembled theater, but

his approach was radically different.

Melier wasn't interested in the

capturing of reality. Melier was more

concerned with capturing the spectacle

of the unreal. His innate understanding

of trickery translated seamlessly to the

nature of cinema, becoming a pioneer for

special effects. While people were still

trying to figure out the best way film

could be industrialized and marketed,

Melier was painting his film strips,

splicing several pieces of film together

to create new forms of editing,

designing sets and stories that were not

only treated as fantastical works, but

furthered our literacy towards film as a

whole. He was cutting between varying

settings in order to tell his

narratives. And his devotion to the

whimsical was what made him a pioneer in

helping sophisticate the language and

structure of film. There's something so

pure about Melier as a filmmaker, which

I can't help but find some solace in

because he approached cinema as

something childlike, as something

joyful, a medium that could bring

happiness to everyone involved. And so

although many of the filmmakers we will

explore here deal with the depth of the

human condition and the seriousness of

the art form, one can never forget that

it begins with Melier's filmography that

was devoted to making a fantasy world

come to life through the joy of

discovering new techniques. Something

that we can also simply refer to as the

magic of cinema.

Sergey Eisenstein. I've mentioned before

that if you are to formally study film

theory, then the beginning of that

journey will most likely begin with the

theorists of the Soviet Union. And

although there is great depth to be

found in artists like Java Vertov, who

for my money actually created the

greatest edited film of all time in Man

with a Movie Camera, the entire theory

they developed regarding editing can

find its genesis in the work of Sergey

Eisenstein. His most pivotal work is of

course battleship pmpkin which will

remain one of the few films that must be

featured in any kind of cannon due to

its importance of development of

language. The arrival of battleship

pmpkin can only be compared to Dorothy

opening up the door to Oz in that the

world of cinema discovered for the first

time a world which it could no longer

undo. Editing was the art form within an

art form for the Soviet film school as

it was what differentiated cinema from

any other visual medium. Eisenstein was

the preeminent filmmaker to approach

editing from a completely new

perspective. That being montage theory.

The priority of editing a film was less

to do with continuity and more to do

with what was called the third meaning.

Those being ideas that emerge when two

pieces of film are spliced together. In

Pmpkin, this can be seen as the rising

of a statue of a lion while a city is

bombed. The two pieces of film isolated

are completely unrelated, but in editing

them together, they synthesize to create

an idea. This is obvious to us now, but

it's obvious to us because of

Eisenstein. From here on, editing gained

the opportunity to be an

intellectualized art form within film.

And as such, Eisenstein's work is closer

to that of a mathematician than of a

traditional filmmaker. The rhythm of

film came in the number of its shots, in

the precise timing of a sequence, even

how the composition of a frame could be

symbiotic with the rising or falling of

a film's tension. More than a filmmaker,

Eisenstein was a theorist of cinema and

his works film form and film sense are

vital to fully understanding the

intellectualization of his film making.

However, the same film making prowess

can be seen outside of his propaganda

work post-Russian revolution with his

fantastic and sadly unfinished

masterpiece Ivan the Terrible.

Abel Gonz I always encourage people that

want to learn more about film to return

to silent cinema. It's an era of

unbridled creativity because of the fact

that influence and reference had yet to

take root. There was no standard set for

how a film should be or how certain

ideas can be translated and so

everything had to be invented. However,

there may not be a better artist to help

uncover the joys of this kind of

creativity more than Ibel Gans. His

magnum opus Napoleon is perhaps the most

creative work that's ever blessed

cinema, featuring an array of techniques

that completely shatter our expectations

of what cinematic language is. taking it

to its most ostentatious edges.

Combining three screens at once,

attaching cameras to swinging

chandeliers. It's so celebratory of

innovation. And yet, this was the

language of Gance throughout all of his

work. Abel Gans's role in the story of

cinema was to elevate it, to become the

art of the 20th century. Gance treated

cinema with a religious fervor as though

it were a literal new language whose

methods of translation were infinite.

Film for Gansce was the medium in which

the next homeriic epic was to emerge.

And so he treated it with this dazzling

spectacle as though the respectful

reaction we must show towards it is

simply one of awe. Every opportunity

that Gance had to amaze with his film

making, he took the opportunity to do

so. He signed his films with his

signature the way an artist would sign a

painting because Gance truly felt that

cinema was high art even before others

were aware of it. And by infusing the

medium with his constant ingenuities, he

showed all of us that it was exactly so.

FW MNO. Few filmmakers can profess to

possessing a legitimate versatility.

However, FW MNO in his short career

managed to have phases that would rival

any great master. His most well-known

work was Noseratu and his early films

comprised of collaborations with Bella

Losce possessed enough mastery of genre

work that he could have simply been one

of the foundational horror filmmakers.

But Mno was to be more than that. When

analyzing his work in the space of a few

years, Mno made multiple masterpieces

across multiple genres. Foust, The Last

Laugh, Taboo, and Sunrise, A Song of Two

Humans. These were films that displayed

an intensely creative mind that outside

of German expressionism, anything Monnau

seemed to put his hand to, he had an

intense understanding of. Sunrise is one

of the great humanist films regarding

the act of being in love and how love

can redeem all of mankind. And funnily

enough, he imbuss this same sentiment in

his FA adaptation. all the while

creating a silent epic whose visual

aesthetic should be envied to this day.

His understanding of the moving camera

as early as The Last Laugh is a

cinematographic feat rivaling the

importance of Citizen Cain. The reality

is that when watching a Mno film, there

is undoubtedly a horror thread that

seems to run through all of his work.

his draw towards shadowy figures, his

constant inclusion in his images of

darkness pervading, almost leaking,

poisoning his images, but he still had

the versatility to evoke the exact

opposite sentiments. It's rather

astounding at how confident he feels in

his work. Murdo's name is central to the

story of cinema, and if it weren't for

his untimely death at the age of 42, I'm

certain that his name would ring as a

titan of the medium, which he

undoubtedly would have become.

DW Griffith is a name that rings through

cinema and leaves a sting. A name whose

only companions are perhaps Lenny

Ryenstall and Triumph of the Will that

can profess to echo with the same

uncomfortable realization that great art

can be made for evil. DW Griffith is a

fantastic filmmaker. In fact, I question

anyone that disregards his filmmaking

ability and my immediate reaction is

that you mustn't have seen his work

because upon watching the works of

Griffith, to call him great is a vast

understatement. The modern film simply

doesn't exist as we know it without

Griffith. His ability to imbue sequences

with an urgency and an energy propelled

early cinema into its first recognition

of what modern cinema would become. the

action sequences, the spectacle, using

the camera as a guide for where the

audience is being taken and what they're

being shown. The ingenuity of Griffith

comes in all scales, large and small.

Many masters that are to follow profess

their admiration towards Griffith

because through his advancements of film

language, he was able to elucidate upon

the structure of what modern film would

become. He was the catalyst that took

cinema out of its infancy and filled it

with a life that simply did not exist

before him. I encourage you all to watch

The Birth of a Nation because you'll

never understand the importance of it

historically if you deny the power of it

as an artistic achievement.

Benjamin Christensen.

One of the most peculiar artists to

emerge during silent cinema was Danish

filmmaker Benjamin Christensen. His

work, even for the time, was rather

undefinable. Not that his work didn't

make sense, but rather that to him genre

was a fluid thing. His most famous work

is Hakan, a part documentary, part

research, part horror essay film whose

aesthetic is spectacular and enviable.

However, when we look at his first film,

The Mysterious X, we see the use of

camera and all forms of misen that were

equally as revolutionary for the time.

He's not as known due to being

incredibly early in the film scene of

Scandinavia. However, those that have

been exposed to his work are made

instantly aware of his truly

unforgettable nature, a complete pioneer

in the truest sense of the word.

Buster Katon. Talking about Buster Katon

is like making sure everyone understood

a joke after they all laughed at it.

What is it that I could possibly say?

It's not just that Buster Katon was

funny or that his stunts were

outrageously dangerous. It's the fact

that he understood cinema to the level

of a master and used that to make us

laugh. I'll never not be amazed that a

film like The General could have been

made on sheer daredevilry alone.

However, I'm jealous when watching

Sherlock Jr. that somebody could have

been so good at so many things at once.

When you stop laughing at it and think

back on what you've just seen, you

realize, wait a minute, he's an

incredible filmmaker. It's not easy to

balance the content of a comedy with the

language of film because one can't

distract from the other. And I think

that Katon being as funny as he was, he

knew exactly what had to be on screen to

get the best laugh. Maybe that's just

instinct, but all I know is that what he

did, he did perfectly. I don't know if

Katon's work is funnier or more

impressive for his dexterity and

ingenuity of filmic language, but what I

do know is that he mastered both and

found a way to synthesize the two,

creating a brand new genre of comedy,

one that could only be replicated by

those that understood and loved the

power of film.

Charlie Chaplan. He may be the most

recognizable face of all filmmakers.

Often partnered alongside his

contemporary Buster Keaton. The two

approaches to comedy and film making

couldn't actually be more different.

Oftent times we remember Charlie Chaplan

as a funny man but not a filmmaker. And

so his process has kind of flown under

the radar for many people interested in

the medium. And because of such, what's

even less known is Charlie Chaplan's

approach to film making. Very rarely did

he film from a finished script. When

production began, there was always a

vague premise or situation, but

sequences were heavily reliant on the

improv and momentto- moment changes from

Chaplan himself. In fact, Chaplain was

incredibly controlling over his work. He

had a hand in every single aspect of a

film's creation. Why did the studios

allow him such creative freedom? Because

he was Charlie Chaplain. And in order to

understand him, you have to understand

what Chaplain was for the era. He was

the most famous actor and filmmaker in

the world both critically and

commercially. He was so popular and

that's what facilitated the lack of

restrictions to his own work. Because of

this, films of his that are now

considered classics underwent constant

changes in evaluations because Chaplain

operated on a spontaneous basis to the

point that the narrative was often

discovered as the film was being made.

Many people regard Chaplain as a product

of the time regarding his style as

nothing more than slapstick, which is

true. There is plenty of slapstick in

his work. However, compared to his

contemporaries, Chaplain's comedic style

is far more sophisticated. Almost every

piece regards his characters with

humility. His iconic character of the

[ __ ] wasn't a punching bag. Often

times, his stories were about a decent

man attempting to find dignity and about

the struggle for love in a harsh world.

Chaplain may be a funny man, but to

anyone that's seen his work will

remember it more for its beautiful takes

on the nature of humanity.

Fritz Long, there were a collection of

immigrants from Europe that managed to

break into the Hollywood system and

forged into cinema a hybrid of American

and European styles of film making.

Perhaps it was down to his longevity

that Fritz Lang is often thought of as

the initial breakthrough artist of this

period. He managed a career that spanned

many decades. However, it's certainly

his silent works and earlier sound

pictures for which Lang is most well

regarded. Beginning in the school of

German expressionism, Lang brought with

him a vein of darkness. His masterful

films were reflections of the

recognizable collective shadow that

seemed to be rising in mankind through

Hitler's rising power and the physical

presences of evil. For most of the

earliest thriller filmmakers of the era,

Langs is perhaps the director whose

fingerprints we still see on the modern

film. His brand of sinister filmm fused

with entertainment was the forebearer

and helped launch the noir film as we'd

come to know it a few decades later. And

when we watch films such as his Dr.

Maboo series and M. We see the

beginnings of a form of thriller film

making which would reach its apotheiois

in the 1990s. It's hard not to recognize

a group of detectives trying to track

down a criminal mastermind without

thinking of some of the modern greats of

cinema and television today. Lang's work

remains incredibly modern by today's

standards. He understood what makes

audience tick and the kind of dark drama

that we were intrigued in. It's quite

amazing to see how closely his work

communicates with the work of today. And

we talk about Lang as if he was just

exclusively this. And that's without

even mentioning that his most

long-lasting film is Metropolis, the

film which built the mold for the sci-fi

epic

Victus Yostrom. The legacy of Victor

Yostum may come in his technical

innovations. However, it's also one

steeped in the emotional integrity that

his images offer. When you watch the

work of Siosum, you see a world whose

entire surroundings reflect the

character. The background acts as a

mirror. The darkened and lonesome nature

of the phantom carriage or a billowing

force that annihilates the boundaries

you build to protect yourself in the

wind. Sustrimm became one of the largest

influences for Bergman. So much so to

the point that he cast Sustrum as the

main role in Wild Strawberries. But that

influence is evident. There's something

powerfully silent about Seostm's work.

Even when compared to his silent

contemporaries, his work appears to

evoke something ghostly, something

still. His camera lingers and makes us

incredibly aware of the spirituality

that seeps out of his images. Sostra may

be a filmmaker that revolutionized

special effects in cinema the same way

that someone like Melier did, showing us

the camera's capacity with double

exposures dissolves. But his techniques

displayed the ethereal quality of film.

A form of film making that wasn't there

to titilate, but to make us ponder and

reflect upon those moments we experience

that echo for lifetimes.

[Music]

Alfred Hitchcock.

In many ways, Hitchcock is the complete

director. When learning the absolute

foundations of cinematic language, the

filmmaker that could summarize its

totality perhaps better than anyone else

is Hitchcock. With a career spanning

several decades, it was amazing how well

Hitchcock managed to keep his

idiosyncratic style while maneuvering

across the shifting landscape of cinema.

Dawning the moniker the master of

suspense, he became the first director

star when he rather than his actors was

the bigger name associated with his

films. The Hitchcock style is perhaps

most symbiotic with the thriller genre

as that's what 90% of his work fell into

and the techniques attributed to it were

one of complete mison sen. Every camera

angle, every color palette, every

whisper of sound is an opportunity for

storytelling beyond exposition. And each

one that presented itself Hitchcock

snatched and managed to use for

something completely inventive. In

Vertigo, he developed the dolly zoom,

simulating a warping of the screen where

things appear to enlarge and get further

away at the same time, completely

disorientating the viewer. In the

earliest days of sound cinema, in

blackmail, Hitchcock emphasized the

guilt of a character who during a

conversation can only hear the word

knife repeatedly.

>> Now, mind you, a knife is a difficult

thing to handle. I'm in a night

and night.

>> Whatever element of the film language it

was, Hitchcock pushed it to its limits.

Rope attempting to be a film in one

uninterrupted take. Psycho utterly

destroying the audience perceptions of

film structure. And yet Hitchcock was

and still is a universal director. He

showed that to be avantguard wasn't

synonymous with being so esoteric that

only a select few could enjoy your work.

The thing about Hitchcock's innovations

is that he developed a language that no

one else was using and yet everyone

could immediately understand. Where his

camera moved, the reasonings behind all

of his decisions didn't need to be

explained. They were obvious. They made

perfect sense. If anything, Hitchcock's

greatest gift to cinema was the reliance

on a common sense form of creativity.

Make the camera do what you think it

should do. And in turn, he took cinema

to its highest heights in all regards.

If you want to learn about film in all

its facets, then you can't go wrong with

Alfred Hitchcock.

Akira Kurasawa. Among the masters of

Japan's golden age of cinema, the name

which looms largest is Akira Kurasawa.

It's the name of a filmmaker whose style

is so all-encompassing that his very

presence seems to linger in the mind of

every other filmmaker who hopes to

create work as impactful as him.

Kurasawa was the vagna of cinema. Its

sensorial overload of the highest

caliber.

Kurasawa is one of the most painily

filmmakers coming from a background in

painting himself. He was known to

meticulously storyboard all of his work

and the result is an incredibly dynamic

form of visual storytelling. Kotasawa's

filmmaking career spanned decades and

although he was most known for his

samurai films, he was capable of films

of any ilk, any genre, any period. What

ties his films together though is the

sheer scale of his storytelling. Every

detail of a cotisawa image is planned.

Every possible inclusion to the image

was considered. He was the maximalist of

the golden age filmmakers. He would

employ the weather cascading rain during

a final battle, the wind billowing

through the grass to display the

internal turmoil of his subjects. When

not using black and white, his colors

were saturated and contrasting to their

background. His compositions are made of

giant infernos, marching armies, arrows

that fill the sky. Spectacle is the key

for the Kotasawa picture.

And yet with this flamboyance came an

equal level of substance. Whether it was

the intimate tale on mortality of Ikaru

or the cat-and- mouse thriller of High

and Low, the structures and narratives

of Kodasawa would have still been

successful without his mastery of filmic

language. But with them, his works are

in totality perfect. The influence of

Kurasawa cannot be underestimated. The

way that Griffith birthe the framework

for the modern film, Kurasawa did for

the epic, for the blockbuster. His

fingerprints can be seen on almost every

adventure film of the past 70 years. his

ability to infuse a scene with dynamism.

Whether that be the inclusion of

diagonal lines in compositions, the

moving camera with high focal length

shooting, the parallax movement of

composition that employs an extremely

close foreground with a deep background,

slow motion to emphasize action, snappy

editing to add style to the narrative

development, even silence when needed.

It seems like Kurasawa could do

anything. And when you watch this

absolute mastery of image and sound, you

come to the conclusions that he probably

could.

[Music]

Federrico Fellini. Beginning his career

as a prominent writer for Italian

neorealist cinema, Fellini was known

within the industry and spent 10 years

collaborating with others before he sat

in the director's chair. This is

important because with a filmography as

assertively autobiographical as

Fellini's, it makes sense that he was

known because the arrival of his work

came with such a strong identity.

Fellini was not just a figure, he was a

character of cinema itself, the

alliteration in his name, the level of

confidence in his work, how much of

himself he was unafraid to insert. The

work of Fellini is like the work of the

first rockstar filmmaker. To watch most

Fellini films is to be taken on a trip

through his life and his lens. The

coastal city of Rini and his

celebrations of Rome are the locations

in which all Fellini films take place

because they are his cities. Fewer

locations are as emblematic of a

director as Rome is with Fellini.

[Music]

It's almost as if our idea of it didn't

exist before he showed us what it truly

was. Fellini's films evoke a particular

brand of the love of life. One wherein

the flaws are as important as the

beauty. Fellini began his career as a

cartoonist and so his characters are

often outcasts, archetypes. His worlds

and its inhabitants have more in common

with a carnival troop than a traditional

filmic ensemble. And together they

celebrate their imperfections, most of

which came from the filmmaker himself. I

always say when regarding Fellini that

he's one of the filmmakers whose

filmography is best to view in

chronological order simply because

there's so much of Fellini in Fellini's

works. Doing so, you get to see the

development of a style. how a filmmaker

becomes more self-referential over time.

The numerous instances in which he

physically begins to appear on screen.

Fellini's worlds carry their own kind of

magic. Worlds in which the chaos of life

merges with lands of dreams and the

beauty of living is found in the

sometimes surreal concoction that is the

spirit of humanity. His work is about

the indulgences of the sweet life in the

vices that surround us as well as the

human inexplicable draw towards all

things sincere. He was a maestro of his

universe, a filmmaker who you could

never tell if he was serious or not, but

it all worked to fashion this

beautifully individual collection of

work.

Yasjiro Ozu. Out of all of the many

Japanese masters in the post-war period,

Ozu was the most human of them. He may

even be the most humanist of all

filmmakers. Beginning his career during

the silent era, like many Japanese films

of the time, most of them are lost.

However, the films that we do possess of

Ozu speak of a language and interest

that persisted throughout every one of

his films. Ozu's language is one of the

most recognizable in cinema in that it

never wavered. Whereas some artists have

periods within their collection of work,

Ozu forged his style and stuck to it.

When you see an Ozu film, you know

immediately from a single frame. The

truth is, when you've seen an Ozu

masterpiece, you've seen all of his

artistic journey. Ozu made familial

dramas, simple stories with no great

action. A daughter getting married,

children growing up, parents passing

away. Universal sentimentalities

approached in such a vulnerable and

beautiful manner that it's hard to think

that anyone's done it better. Ozu shoots

his films all in the same way. His

cameras at a low angle and doesn't move.

It shows a family household almost in

tableau as if this is the perspective of

the living area. This is the entrance

and so on. This technique was known as

the tatami shot as it most resembled the

perspective of a Japanese person sitting

on a tatami. When people speak to one

another, they almost always look

directly into the camera and the world

is interjected with sequences and shots

for quiet reflection of moments of

tranquility around us. What Ozu's style

ultimately offers is a hybrid of an

objective and subjective point of view.

He shoots his worlds as they are without

intrusion, and yet places us so

intimately within them. His composition

is one of complete mastery in both black

and white and color with a geometrical

rigidity throughout his scenery. His

work is incredibly simple and yet his

films are some of the most well composed

of all time. Ozu's work, however, is

most remembered in its importance for

the human condition. His films are

simply some of the most beautiful to be

made because they speak towards the

simple bitter sweetness of life. To love

and to suffer and wonder is part of the

overwhelming beauty of being alive and

we simply couldn't trade it for anything

else. And Ozu, perhaps more than any

other filmmaker, captures that essence

in its purest form.

John Ford. There's always been some kind

of barrier for genre work, perhaps an

even larger one for genre directors and

perhaps none greater than that of a

studio genre director. And yet when it

comes to the father, for so many

filmmakers, few would be able to negate

the influence and sheer mastery of

filmmaking language that became the

benchmark for so many watching the work

of John Ford. John Ford was a

filmmaker's filmmaker making over 100

films throughout his career. And similar

to Ozu, Ford did have a style, though

not as rigid. John Ford made westerns

and war films. And it's easy to look at

his work as a standardized view of how

to tell a story at the time, but what

you have to consider is that John Ford

was the one that set that standard. It's

as though he shot for efficiency. He

knew what he needed to do to make a

film. But for him, it's as though the

thing he was efficient at was mastery.

The way he stages crowds of people, his

landscape photography synonymous with

the mythos of the American West, the

edifying of humanity amidst nature. It's

difficult to overestimate the influence

of his lens.

>> I can sure use that coffee. Pass the

sugar, son.

>> Ah, fine. Fine.

>> Wait a minute, sister. I didn't get any

coffee yet.

>> Ford himself was known to be a rather

sirly character. Every instance of him

on camera and every anecdote regarding

him involves him losing his patience or

dismissing ideas that displeased him.

And yet his work carried the same

cavalcade of characters that we would

recognize time and time again because

they trusted his process. He was

prolific in creating a catalog of work

of such a consistently high level that

it beggars belief. But sometimes it's

difficult to measure an artist who

create so much. Do we isolate their

masterpieces or do we look at their work

as a whole to decipher what it is they

added to the story of art in its

totality? Well, what Ford offered was a

control with cinema. The often overly

disciplined nature of an artist that by

things being their way or no way, the

result can still be great art. almost

like a factory line. He used the motifs

that he wanted to use. He refused to let

people swear on set and absolutely hated

zoom lenses. But you can see that his

films are not ones of excess. They are

exactly what they need to be. And

sometimes it takes a firm hand for a

gentle conclusion.

Powell and Presburgger, better known as

the Archers. The combined talents of

Michael Powell and Emmerick Presberger

resulted in what is probably the

greatest directorial collaboration in

film history. Powell was primarily the

director while Pressburgger did most of

the writing. However, they credited

themselves with an equal share of

writing, directing, and producing. This

is because what the two shared was a

singular vision that echoes throughout

all of their films. Powell and

Presburgger individually had successful

careers, but they knew that their work

as the Archers was them at their best.

It was in their symbiosis where their

strongest vision for cinema was able to

come to fruition. The work of the

Archers is a world of technical and

majesty. But even in their black and

white films, do they share that same

level of magic within them. Their films

emphasize cinema's grandiose beauty.

[Music]

Paul and Presburgger's films were

cinematic spectacle, not in scale, but

in the breadth of their cinematic

abilities. storytelling through a

mixture of color and sepia creating

tableau of an individual across their

entire lifetime. Experimenting with the

structure of narrative itself, the

Archers were developing films in a style

so alien to their contemporaries. But

after all, this was their intention. The

Archers developed a manifesto together

as the foundational philosophy for how

they would make films. In it, they

emphasize that the only artistic

judgment they follow is that of their

own. They do not know anyone aside from

their financial backers any promises or

amendments for what the film would or

should be. They wanted their films to be

a year ahead of everything, a year ahead

of schedule and a year ahead of

creativity of other films of the era.

And so you can see in their works how

they develop these incredible sequences

of cinematic splendor that almost break

beyond the realm of cinema itself into a

theatrical production. Their films are

based in our realities. Yet they're the

most beautiful renditions of our

realities where goodness of people is

placed at the forefront and human

achievement is replicated in the very

fabric of their productions. When I

watch The Archers, I see something

that's often forgotten from cinema and

the arts in general, and that is

ambition. The drive to not only create

something great, but the belief in one's

talents to go beyond what you even know

you're capable of, what anyone believes

your entire medium to be capable of. And

together, they exemplify the magic of

movie making. And it could only have

been achieved because of the admiration

both felt for one another's immense

talents.

[Applause]

Carl Theodor Daer Daer began making

films in the silent era. However, once

he made arguably his magnum opus, The

Passion of Jon of Arc, every film he

made after that was a masterpiece. Da's

filmography is one of transcendental

silence and solemn pacing, making films

of an exclusively spiritual quality. The

otherworldly nature of mankind's spirit

echoes through themes of fate and the

divine. Daer was consumed by religious

thought throughout his life and he

displayed this through his work. Even

when a film like Day of Wrath emerged in

1943,

explaining what it's like to live under

an authoritarian and brutal regime, Daer

explicitly pronounced that it had

nothing to do with the Nazi regime, a

movement which he vehemently opposed

because Daer's work dealt with his

worldview, a religious worldview, and

the ambiguities and immaterialities that

emerge from such a spiritual outlook.

[Music]

Odette is a film which attempts to

infuse the world of miracles into our

own almost as the utopic vision of life

and it's sincere in its depictions. He's

a filmmaker whose work cannot be

separated from the deeply religious

beliefs that he possessed because

they're sewn into the fabric of his

work. The power of da is hard to

express. There's an ardent passion

towards the spiritual nature of mankind

which expresses itself in an intensity

that's unmatched even amongst many of

these masters. Da's directing style has

always expressed itself as though

there's something beyond that in the

sparsity of his frames lie the secrets

to the enigmatic quality of human

nature.

Ernst Lubich. It's hard to be the funny

man. It's even harder to take a brand of

comedy to the level of sophistication

that Erns Lubich did.

>> Seeing a ghost? Why does this car

suddenly stop? Everybody seems to be

staring in one direction. People seem to

be frightened, even terrified, some

flabbergasted. Can it be true? It must

be true. No doubt. The man with a little

mustache, Adolf Hitler.

>> During the 30s and 40s, Lubich was the

director for comedies in a style so

idiosyncratic to himself that his work

to this day can only be described as

having the Lubich touch, a combination

of innuendo and subverted expectation

where nudges and winks were given to the

audience regarding the very playful

approach to the propriety of social

decorum. Characters are lustful, greedy,

envious, but they're never cruel. And

it's Lubich's constant playfulness that

allows us to be on board with characters

that may be immoral or cynical because

they never lose their charm.

>> So, they call me concentration camp

airhard.

>> Yes.

>> Well, well,

excuse me a minute. I'll be right back.

They're able to have very rational

reactions to very irrational

circumstances. By today's standards,

Lubich's work may not appear to be all

that transgressive, following characters

that are thieves, a theater troop

attempting to infiltrate the Nazi party.

But what you have to understand is that

these approaches for the period were

radical shifts from what a comedy film

was proposed to be. These are characters

that find pleasantries in sin rather

than are appalled by it. And it was a

mode of being recognized by the

audiences of the time, even if many

studios sought to censor the work. But

the reality was that Lubich's films were

too good for that. It would have been

enough if Lubich was just making some of

the funniest films of all time. But they

also happen to be some of the most

tightly written films of all time.

Nothing out of place. Every joke landing

with precision and every action weaving

itself into a delightful tapestry of

cause and effect. It's all just the

lubic touch. And no one did it better.

>> You are a crook. I want you as a crook.

I love you as a crook. I worship you as

a crook. Steal, swindle, rob. Oh, but

don't become one of those useless good

forno jigalos.

>> Ason Wells. He's known for making what's

supposedly the greatest film of all

time. Anyone that would have made

Citizen Kain would undoubtedly have it

overshadow their career? Unless, of

course, you were Ason Wells. For what

kind of mind could have spawned such a

catalyst for the entire artistic medium?

A mind of complete mastery of the form?

A mind of absolute understanding of art

in its totality. Wells is one of

cinema's greatest forebears. However,

his perspective was more attuned to the

arts as a whole rather than isolated to

cinema. Wells had a plethora of

knowledge taken from the fine arts,

literature, theater that's rarely

transposed towards cinema. However, his

lens of arts as a singular coalescence

undoubtedly influenced his film making

adaptations of the works of Shakespeare,

video essay films about art forgery.

Wells was a total artist and what he did

for cinema was done with the conscious

awareness of a master of a form. Now

however I have something more than a

hope

and Jim Gettis Jim Gettis has something

less than a chance.

>> His greatest work seems so far beyond

anything else that was made. He was

cinema's first true Renaissance man.

Whether he was writing, acting,

directing, he had a vision for cinema

that seemed so much greater and

ambitious than others at the time. But

Wells amongst the Hollywood studio

system was the original ot. He didn't

adhere to the conventions and what was

required of him by the higherups. Always

seeking to gain complete creative

control. With this he completely

expanded the vocabulary of cinema and

sought new possibilities for narratives

and thematics in his films. He propelled

cinema forward in the perception of a

high art further than most others did.

His work just like himself seemed to

come with an excess, a confidence and

assuredness that made Awesome Wells

impossible to ignore. Watching his films

and their ability to reinvent the form,

it's difficult to comprehend just how an

individual perspective could have been

so successfully innovative.

>> Ladies and gentlemen, by way of

introduction, this is a film about

trickery and fraud,

about lies.

>> Billy Wilder. If there were a legacy

left by Billy Wilder, it would be that

of the blueprint for the writer

director. Wilder's films are not

regarded for their cinematography or

their ostentatious manners of

storytelling. Wilder's films excel in

their most simple form, that being the

screenplay. When watching a Billy Wilder

film, you're going to see an incredibly

taught narrative made of only the

sharpest dialogue. Characters speak as

though their lines have been plucked

from a great well of sayings.

>> You're Norma Desmond.

>> Used to be in Silent Pictures. Used to

be big.

I am big.

It's the picture that got small.

>> The back and forth between characters

excel their dynamics because every line

spoken by a person is filled with double

entandras, metaphor, symbolism. And it

can be something sinister or something

comedic. Because not only did Billy

Wilder write all of his directorial

works, he also happened to be one of the

most versatile writers in Hollywood.

Wilder was known as one of Hollywood's

forebears of the film noir genre. Double

Indemnity gives us all of the archetypes

that would later flood the genre. The

fem fatal, the shadowy voice over of a

slickalking, troubled protagonist, as

well as all of the visual iconography of

our world that's being slowly overtaken

by darkness. Wilder could keep an

audience engaged like it was no one's

business. He had a knack for gripping

you and not letting go. But then he was

just as gifted at comedy.

>> I broke a nail trying to get the tray

out. You want to buy yourself a new

refrigerator?

>> I didn't mean right now.

>> For every serious drama that Wilder

crafted, he was penning some of the most

influential comedies that cinema had

ever seen. And he treated all of his

characters with equal respect, as much

as each film allowed. He was able to

take t cast actors and give them career

best performances in roles no one would

ever consider them playing. Billy

Wilder's Worlds are the kinds of films

that exemplify the golden age of

Hollywood because there's something to

be said about executing the fundamentals

to perfection. Character, story,

dialogue. When it's all done well, we

don't need much more.

>> And nobody's pulling out. We went into

this together and we're coming out at

the end together. It's straight down the

line for both of us.

Remember

>> Luis Bunwell. As one of the newer art

forms, cinema has less frequency with

being recognized alongside the other

mediums within the grand story of art.

Often when art movements occur, they're

either isolated within cinema or occur

outside of it. However, an artist like

Lewis Bunwell is one of the few that

found himself embedded in the ongoing

movement of surrealism. Going as far to

have collaborations with Salvador Dali,

nothing could affirm his place in the

movement more. Bunwell's film making can

almost not be viewed innately within

cinema. His artistic philosophy is one

that exists outside of his boundaries,

connected as much, perhaps even more, to

the overarching art movement. There was

in fact an official collection of

surrealists led by Andre Bratton who

welcomed Bunwell into the ranks as its

first filmmaker. But because he made

films, a filmmaker he was nonetheless.

Bunwell's employment of surrealist

imagery comes with maybe Yungian

connotations. Maybe they do mean

something, but maybe they're also

completely individualistic images.

things that offer a reaction to the

filmmaker and no one else. A kind of

subjective truth.

[Music]

Initially, Bunwell began his filmmaking

journey as a kind of rebellion against

the bourgeoa and their expectations

towards art. This would become even more

evident throughout his work as Boomwell

was not to create avantgard imagery for

the sake of it. He was in fact a very

political filmmaker. He often targeted

the Franco regime fascism and yet did so

in such a unique individualist style

that it never became meaningless. One of

the benefits of Bunwell as a surrealist

is that he always seemed to be aware

that his image is surrealist. And so

there's always this tinge of humor that

pervades his work. As though he's able

to recognize the absurdism of what's on

display, all the while never abandoning

the logic of his worlds, which all of

his characters unquestioningly abide by.

But what elevates Bunwell outside of the

avantgard is that his work did always

feel like it had a lot to say. And he

was able to demonstrate this with some

of his best work being much more

grounded realist dramas. His work may be

recognizable by its uncatategorizable

imagery, but Bunwell's core mastery was

that of a storyteller.

Hey,

Howard Hawks. When thinking about the

styles of filmmakers, when you have to

actually compile them one against one

another, it's very easy to explain what

distinguishes that filmmaker from

another. But when it comes to a

filmmaker like Howard Hawks, I've always

found it difficult to say what it is

that makes him great. The reality is he

is one of the great American filmmakers.

His Girl Friday, Rio Bravo, Bringing Up

Baby, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Red

River, The Big Sleep. And yet, I don't

know what ties these works together in

an artistic vision. Hawks made great

films, versatile films, but what he did

differently, it's hard to say, but maybe

that's his secret. The Big Sleep and Rio

Bravo are genre pieces, but they're

neither the originators or the most

groundbreaking of their sort, yet

they're some of the pinnacles of those

genres. Sometimes originality isn't the

be all end all. It's proficiency in what

you have to work with. But thinking on

his filmography deeper, there's a sense

of wonder in Hawks's works, and it's

something incredibly understated. Hawks

was a filmmaker that didn't feel the

need to try to be good at what he was

doing. When you watch his films, there's

such a simplicity to them. There aren't

any twists or turns. It just engages in

the delight of what they are. A western

is a western to its bones. His comedies

emphasize their comedic aspect. And in

many ways, by them not appeasing to the

requirements of a highbrow lens, they

actually managed to become works of art

that seamlessly ingratiated themselves

into the cannon. Hawks became one of the

first American filmmakers reference for

his otership. The irony being that Hawks

simply perfected what came before him

and removed the branding of a director

as much as possible to create films that

feel so unintruded upon. They are the

purest idea of what a classic film looks

like.

>> I thought you would.

[Music]

>> You want that gun? Pick it up.

>> Ingmar Bergman. I find it hard to fully

get across just how impactful the work

of Ingmar Bergman is. If you haven't

seen his films, then you've heard his

name mentioned amongst the most elite of

names within cinema. And if you have

seen his films, then you understand just

how difficult it is to explain the power

of Bergman's work for both cinema and

humanity as a whole.

[Music]

If I were to summarize what an Ingmar

Bergman film is, it's a profound

meditation into the most sacred places

of the human soul. Bergman is a

filmmaker interested in the human

spirit. That means that he'll deal with

death. He will philosophically ponder

about the transient nature of people. He

will think on religion and the power of

miracles. He will deconstruct the very

basis of art to find who and what we are

and how we speak to one another.

Bergman's films are not light films, but

they're not also necessarily heavy

films. They are just deeply serious.

Humor is not at the forefront of these

works. This is a place of deep human

introspection, but in ways that you

can't conceive of just how beautiful

they are.

Bergman's films are spiritual

existential pieces. Their themes are the

narrative. The complexities of our inner

world are placed at the foreground with

the subtext being the narrative and

setting in which they take place. They

are some of the most beautifully shot of

the period. And this is thanks to his

longtime collaboration with

cinematographer Sven Nickfist. Nickvist

iterated that Bergman wasn't a filmmaker

whose storyboarding was down to the

letter. Often on the day of shooting, he

would communicate the kind of mood he

wanted from that scene and they would

work from that. The majority of his

pre-production was done in the writing

phase, which he famously spent long

periods on. But when examining his

films, this makes sense because they

dwell within those personal, often

impossible to explain landscapes of the

human soul. And so in an attempt to

traverse the longing and mysterious

feelings we have within us, they can

only be expressed through sometimes

abstract means. A dance macab on a

hillside, a single color overwhelming

the screen or the film collapsing

altogether. Bergman is deeply

philosophical as much as he is reliant

on instinct to just go with what the

film makes you feel as though it

operates on a kind of dream logic. The

fact is whether you examine it

philosophically or from a filmmaking

language point of view, there's nothing

you could say that Bergman didn't

display the output of a master

filmmaker. His films are the films that

would be placed in a museum to display

the pinnacle of the art form at its

highest level.

[Music]

Roberto Roselini, most well known for

his war trilogy, Roselini was monumental

in establishing the framework for what

Italian cinema would become over the

following years. The value of his work

lies in its authenticity. When making

Rome open city, he was using the ruins

of postwar Rome as his backdrop.

Shooting during curfew, using expired

film to shoot, Roselini established that

film was a medium which could do so much

more than just delight. It was capable

of sending powerful necessary messages

to the world. And these necessary

messages are what remain throughout

Russellini's filmography. films of our

common feelings. When narrative doesn't

concern us in our daily lives, our lives

are the narrative.

>> Victoria Dea. I feel that while

mentioning Roselini, Vtorio Dika should

also be mentioned for perhaps the

initial contribution to the movement of

Italian neo realalism. Dika's work is

more emblematic of the movement in

establishing a new kind of cinema. Films

that are not glossy, whose stories are

not even necessarily enjoyable. And yet,

many could argue that there's more of us

in these films than any of the great

studio productions. The films of The

Seeker are as simple as they can be.

They don't feature actors. They're shot

on location. They follow simple people

with simple problems where injustice

falls upon them through no fault of

their own, but because life can

sometimes be unjust. But Deika as a

filmmaker in particular features a

dignity towards his subjects regardless

of their circumstances. Be they

criminals, be they outcasts, the seeker

puts foremost that his subjects are

people, something that the world of film

too often forgets. He lays bare the

topics which we sometimes struggle to

tackle because they hurt the soul too

much. But Deika exposes them to the

light and finds in its rays something

healing for the spirit of mankind.

[Music]

Frank Capra. Frank Capra, much like

Howard Hawks, situates himself in that

almost invisible category of filmmaker

where it's difficult to discern exactly

what he does differently. However, when

you look at his output, there must be

something distinguishable. But with

Capra, it becomes more obvious in his

thematics because his work has such an

innocence about it. Perhaps it came from

the fact that Frank Capra grew up in

poverty and had an idyllic rise towards

stardom in Hollywood that his films

serve as the portrait for cinematic

optimism. Although at the same time,

when we watch a film like Mr. Smith Goes

to Washington, we do see glimpses of the

understanding of pessimistic outlooks

and darker tones within his work. But

regardless of their delivery, Capra's

films feel primarily as though they are

messages to his audience. That a single

man can make a change to a regime or

just to the people that he loves. That

true love will triumph. That even in his

most serious of works, it's as though

that Capra cannot separate himself from

the goodness of the world and a goodness

that he hopes people will see.

>> Good idea, Ernie. Toast to my big

brother George, the richest man in town.

>> Kenji Mizaguchi. When speaking again of

the Japanese masters, none were more

ethereal than Kenji Mizaguchi. Although

his work similar to Ozu was very

humanist, Mizaguchi's approach was from

a much more transcendental place.

Working primarily in the jidage genre,

which were Japanese period pieces,

Mizaguchi used the medieval era of Japan

to explore the quiet celestial scenery

of the human soul.

[Music]

>> Mizaguchi was known for shooting in long

takes. Often his camera would slowly

drift like a lingering fog. His films

evoke such grace, particularly his

post-war films, which is what gained

most of his international acclaim.

Mizaguchi didn't shoot close-ups. He

framed actors in a single plane, and his

ghostly sound effects he would use as a

light motif throughout his films.

Sensorially, we never leave the spectral

world that Mizaguchi establishes for us.

His world is a world of the human soul,

though it's also one of ghosts and the

memories of spirits which still

materialize in one form or another.

His

relationship with the spirit of people,

as though told through a Japanese folk

tale, makes him one of the most profound

of all filmmakers. And revisiting his

work, you realize just how deep they go.

Mizaguchi places the psychology of his

characters at the forefront of his work.

And oftent times, these are characters

dealing with some deeply wounding grief.

And yet he communicates this theme with

the idea of a mystical and supernatural

landscape that is physically present in

his work. And framing all of this within

this distant lingering camera evokes a

contemplation within us. We have to

think about it that we witness an image

so powerful and yet there's always space

around it as if we're looking for the

image in context of something else and

find none. It's a simple yet profound

way of showing that this is the way life

just is

Satya Re the principal figure in Indian

cinema. Satya Re's films give one a true

sense of place with work that's

intrinsic to Indian culture and yet came

from a mind that was equally enamored

with many of the cinematic masters we've

mentioned thus far. Ray's films speak of

the life of normal people living in both

the rural regions of India as well as

the contrast with its urban counterpart.

You know you're watching a Ray film

because of how it's shot.

[Music]

Although telling stories of ordinary

people, Ray's films make you as aware,

perhaps even more aware of the context

of these people as their environment

becomes integral to understanding them,

not for what they represent, but who

they truly are. Ray's landscapes are

majestic and are captured through a vast

and serene perspective of an incredibly

simple world. His films could be

regarded as realist films, although I do

think that there's a strong undercurrent

of romanticism within them, particularly

regarding his aesthetic. Rey exalts his

characters with powerful close-ups,

often framed in manners to deify them,

highlighting their very human beauty.

His scores play continually throughout

his films as though they're just another

fabric of the mison sen almost to a

point that the music may as well be

diagetic. It's so tied to the goings on

on screen. But the realism comes with

everything else. Ry would shoot on

location with natural lighting and his

work is incredibly minimalist compared

to his contemporaries. There isn't much

within his frames to distract from the

focal point of his films. His

[Music]

most highly regarded cinematographer was

Subraata Mitra whose first film he ever

shot was Patali because he was by

profession a still photographer.

However, Rey chose him because he felt

that those familiar with the moving

camera couldn't adequately capture the

mood he was after. Mitra revolutionized

cinematography on the set of Patap

Panchali by developing the

industrychanging techniques for bounce

light photography to get the most light

available in the frame. As such, Ray's

films have a look of the outside world

which is still unlike anything I've

seen. It's so distinctive and it's

because there was literally no one else

in the world making films like he was.

[Music]

Jang Lang Wa Jang Lang Wa occupies a

place in cinema that stems from a long

lineage of almost pre-ordained artistic

mastery. After all, his father was the

impressionist painter Pierre Augustoir,

almost embodying that impressionistic

wisfulness present in the movement.

Reme's filmmaking style is one of

openness of constantly moving parts

where the camera seeks to capture the

breadth of the magnificence of life. His

frames stretched wide. Characters would

wander in and out of them and nothing

felt supplementary. Every dialogue,

every character receives no preferential

treatment over another.

Fenoir's lens was one of coexistence.

The upper class and the working class

living in this symbiosis with one

another. Contrasts clashing. And yet his

style never feels jarring. His camera

floats. Everything feels fluid and light

as we move through all of these

differing perspectives, which gives his

films this playful sense of kinetic

energy. We're always moving, always

interested in everyone and everything.

Kenmoir believed that cinema should

reveal things to us, not that it should

dictate the way things are. And so, he

shows us all of these varying

overlapping conditions almost as an

empathic form of cinema. Clenoir's films

never shy away from the light-hearted or

the comedic, but his lens primarily was

to glimpse at perspectives beyond our

own. These mass ensembles remind us that

cinema can be a vessel for

contradictions within itself. That a

film can hold friction without feeling

its tension. And that the highest form

of this is what embodies the beauty of

imperfection.

[Music]

John Houston. Before becoming a renowned

filmmaker, John Houston aimed first and

foremost to become a professional

painter. Even throughout his filmmaking

career, he was creating portraits, which

is why perhaps Houston is not known for

any kind of technical innovations and

rather he's remembered as a filmmaker

for the tone he brought to his works.

Houston never really settled on a

signature style or settled on anything

for that matter. Having been married

five times and having a cavalcade of

women, he was the kind of person that

was always looking to change. And this

was something that applied to his work.

He began making noir films before noir

was even a thing. Then he was making

biblical epics, adapting the great

American novel. Although, if there is

something that ties Houston's work

together, it's a kind of death drive.

Houston was interested in people.

Perhaps that same curiosity that made

him interested in capturing portraits of

individuals as his films dealt with

characters ultimately seeking something

that would destroy them. From his debut,

The Maltese Falcon, we see his

unmistakable flawed portrayals of

humanity as they pursue an ideal that's

ultimately a fabrication. Greed devours

the subjects of Houston's work, as it

was perhaps a theme that man himself was

all too familiar with. But by traversing

through his personal life, Houston made

something quite magnificent. He was

drawn to something elemental. We see it

in the way he presents a harsh world

completely indifferent to his character

struggles and in turn masks the myth of

what a human being is, showing them as

what they are. All of their weight is

removed as they're laid bare in their

own hubris.

twice. No wonder we had such an easy

time stealing it. You you imbecile. You

bloated idiot. You stupid fat. You

Masaki Kobayashi.

The interesting thing about Kobayashi is

that compared to many of the other

Japanese filmmakers that emerged from

the golden age, Kobayashi was the one

that became the most neglected both

inside and outside of Japan. His work

for the longest time was almost removed

from the conversation of any kind of

cinematic cannon. Perhaps it was because

at the time Kobayashi's depiction of

Japanese society was something radical.

His aim was to transgress and put forth

his uncompromising vision. Throughout

all of his career, Kobayashi didn't make

as many films as his contemporaries.

Yet, his style was just as salient.

Kobayashi was interested in the schisms

between content and form. His subjects

are often men of conscience trapped

within a system that encourages them to

act against it. Whether this be the

nature of Japan's relationship with

their post-war beliefs or the samurai

code itself, Kobayashi saw a kind of

disobedience to these longlasting

supposed truths for a kind of awakening

for man to reconcile himself with his

convictions. Kobayashi's vision was a

severe one, dealing with human

corruption and the erosion of human

dignity. And yet rather than a realist

or transcendental approach, Kobayashi

possessed a strong aesthetic vision.

Structurally, Kobayashi would take

reference from Japanese folklore and

theater with a film like Hadakiri having

the protagonist tell the story to

another character which we then see. The

whole thing plays out closer to a

traditional Japanese play. He enjoyed

combining the customs of Japan within

cinema, even if it meant to subvert our

expectations of them.

[Music]

>> And he shoots in a rather

expressionistic style removed from the

realist modes of film making. The camera

displays things from on high as if we

see the groundwork for the play

unfolding. The soundtrack from Tou

Takamitsu who worked with the likes of

Teshi Gahara also brought that fusion of

the traditional with a dismantling of

the past. Clear focuses on geometric

composition put Kobayashi in a category

of filmmaker with one foot in the

classic and another in the future. His

work possesses this unifying tension

across all of its facets. His films are

one that have to challenge you where

you'll never get exactly what you

expect. And the ongoing rift between the

aesthetic and the content was

Kobayashi's method of developing his own

unique brand of moralist cinema.

[Music]

Stanley Kubri. No filmmaker's voice

rings louder than perhaps Stanley Kubri.

If you had 1,000 shots of film laid in

front of you, you'd be able to identify

which one was his. Kubri's approach to

film making was interesting because a

large proportion of his works are

adaptations. Yet the style he

implemented on them was so his own that

they may as well be original works.

Kubri worked with any genre there was

war film, science fiction, comedy,

horror. But what they have in common is

a Kubric touch. So what is the Kubric

feel of a film?

>> I've still got the greatest enthusiasm

and confidence in the mission

and I want to help you. Kubri's work is

many things. The first word that comes

to my mind is that they're

confrontational. Everything in a Kubric

frame is being addressed to you in a

kind of way that I describe as playfully

aggressive. There's a kind of artifice

within the worlds of Kubric because

everything comes with an excess.

Whenever costume is relevant to a

character, it will be the most out there

alien costume you could conceive. In

regards to his film language, everything

is pushed to the extreme. A zoom becomes

rapid and intensified. A low angle

encroaches on the character in such a

way that their very being becomes

warped. The same characters that stare

directly at you under their excessively

furrowed brow. The confrontational

aspect of the film exists in all

aspects. He shoots highlighting the

symmetry of the frame and so his

onepoint perspective is typically right

in the center of the screen. It's as

though the film is attempting to

physically impose itself on our world.

The artifice of a Kubri film is a unique

thing in and of itself. His films

actually have an incredible attention to

detail that most filmmakers would

bypass. But Kubri wanted that

authenticity, if authenticity would be

the right word, because at the same time

there exists this complete morphing of

the human experience. When characters

speak, they speak in the most

intensified versions of what that

emotional experience could portray. A

big black mark, I tell you, for everyone

we don't reclaim, a confession of

failure for every one of you who ends up

in the stripey hole. Jack in The Shining

doesn't display madness. He displays an

almost inhuman level of disconnection

from rational human experience. And this

is where Kubri's cinema exists on the

fringes presented on a pedestal, a grand

stage for the most exuberant cinematic

techniques to take place, made

impossible to ignore. Kubri's

methodology was famously that of an

extreme perfectionist. stories of

shooting the same shot dozens of times,

forcing his actors through hell. But the

result is a filmography which I

personally describe as the absolute

filmography. Kubri's output is one

wherein there's nothing repeated

throughout his work. He approached each

film as though it was its own isolated

piece of art that required its own

language, its own atmosphere, and spoke

about its own things. Kubri made these

films as perfect as he could make them.

He spent years on each film, delving

into it at levels other filmmakers would

never dream of doing. Everything that he

wanted to say about the Vietnam War is

in Full Metal Jacket. Everything about

being married and faith in your partner

is in Eyes Wide Shut. And he was able to

have this approach because he wouldn't

let anything slide past how he wanted it

to be. His was a complete vision of

cinema where every single project was

treated as its own magnumopus.

To film 2001, a space odyssey and say

that the depiction of space was not

black enough can be seen by some to be

excessive. But this is what

differentiates the masters. The

certainty, the greatness must be in

excess.

>> You will not laugh. You will not cry.

You will learn by the numbers. I will

teach you. Now get up. Get on your feet.

>> Sergio Leone. The Golden Age was a far

more reliable era for genre work.

Filmmakers like Howard Hawks and John

Ford made the Western viable for many

years. By the time the 1960s rolled

around, those pillars had become less

reliable. The changing times demanded

changing perspectives. And perhaps did

no filmer make this more evident than

Sergio Leone. Sergio Leone was for all

intents and purposes a genre director

making only a handful of films but most

of them being westerns or rather the new

spin-off genre of spaghetti western.

Leone was fundamental in the forming of

the spaghetti western the new

transgressive vision of the American Old

West. One of romance and honor.

Spaghetti westerns deconstructed this

and made stories of criminals, chaos,

and style.

[Applause]

The heroes of Leon's work are anything

but and were shot in a manner that

exaggerated those very tendencies and

would become synonymous with the genre.

Leone shots are big. He would shoot

everything in wide angle. The scenery,

his faces, whatever composition Leone

settled on, you can guarantee that it

filled the screen. He staged his

subjects in frames within frames,

playing with the deep focus of barren

landscapes, making even distant figures

appear so powerful. The thing about Leon

and his work is that you never don't

know where you're supposed to look and

what you're supposed to feel. It's like

he came from the traditional school of

film making, but with an edge.

Ultimately, his film techniques are the

same as classic cinema. clear staging,

low angles for dominance, but simply

taken to a slightly more extreme level

that results in some of the best

directed films of all time.

>> So,

>> keep your shirt on, Capuan.

>> We got to wait for this all to dissolve.

>> There's a theatricality to Leone. His

aren't realist works by any sense. Just

listen to his soundsscapes. There may

not be another filmmaker whose scores

overshadow him, but few could argue when

listening to Leone's work conducted by

the masterful Neo Moricone. Characters

are defined by light motifs. In Once

Upon a Time in the West, it's harmonica

playing his aonomous instrument. In The

Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, it's the

five note motif from the main theme

played in different instruments denoting

the characters. His films are their

musicality. And it's that same blending

of the romantic, the adventure, the

brooding nature of the music which is

present in Leon's images. They're both

incredibly obvious in what they want to

make us feel. But if there was something

that elevated Leon's work beyond the

classically cinematic, it was that he

just had a cool factor.

[Music]

Jeanlu Goda. He is the face of the Novel

Vag. And regardless of what you think

about his work, fewer filmmakers have

changed the trajectory of cinema more

than Jeanlu God. Coming straight from

Kaidu cinema as a film critic under the

tutilage of theorist Andre Bazon. God

sought to reimagine the cannon of cinema

and possessed a keen admiration for the

Hollywood studio filmmakers like

Hitchcock Hawks and the like rather than

the classic tradition of most European

filmmakers at the time. But God's

greatest contribution to cinematic

discourse was that he thought the next

filmic innovation was to come with otur

theory. The notion that the director

must possess an individual voice to be

the truest author of his work. And one

thing that cannot be said about God is

that his work doesn't possess a salient

voice. Godar was the original

post-modern filmmaker. His being the

work you could point to if you required

a definitive point to say that the

modern sensibility of film making had

arrived.

[Music]

[Music]

For God, all rules for film making up to

that point were thrown out of the

window. Not only did he issue continuity

editing, he removed all rules from

montage altogether. Goddar's films are

filled with junk cuts. A character may

be speaking and we cut gaps and phrases

from their sentences. He invoked this

kind of elliptical structure throughout

the narrative. Rather than spending time

developing the plot, he would

purposefully not show it and instead

show two characters talking about the

movie industry or even talking about the

idea of them being in a film themselves.

God's films were self-referential as

well as referential to the whole of

cinema. His work is closer to

theoretical practice than any kind of

traditional form of the visual medium.

The philosophy towards film making that

God employed was considered amateur-ish

at the time. But that was kind of what

he was going for to merge this lower

level, this behemian perspective and

fuse it with high art. And the truth is

he might be the most influential

director on this list. Few people

encounter God's films and we're not

instantly transformed at the

realizations at how one could make

films. Characters could have aides to

the audience. Films could reference

ideas on a whim and move on from them.

Structure and discipline would be seen

as restrictive once you've embodied

complete artistic freedom. Gdar

typically came up with what was going to

be shot on the day of shooting. And

where most may see this as fortune or

look, there is something to be said at

the schism that was caused in the art

upon his arrival. He's the duchon of

cinema. A simple question that we will

never stop asking.

[Music]

Michelangelo Antoni. Antoni was cinema's

first real modernist in the truest sense

of the word in that he was making films

about the modern world and they were

mood pieces. His narrative was one of

the lesser concerns of his films and

instead his major focus was the

disenchantment one feels with their

surroundings. Anton only shot his films

in long takes. Characters often compose

to their backdrop of a visually

oppressive but spiritually empty

landscape. They wander through them

aimlessly with no real destination in

mind. These are people with a complete

lack of purpose in their lives. And yet

many have attained the bourgeoa dream of

wealth and success. Antoni ushered

cinema into the present world. One where

his characters would communicate with

everything around them. music,

architecture, new and emerging ideas,

and found that none of it seemed

fulfilling.

[Music]

>> The reality is that when watching an

Antoni film, there is an argument that

can be made that they're meaningless. I

personally don't think they're

meaningless, although they are

discussing meaninglessness.

Some may view Antoni as a fatalist. His

middlecl class characters can often find

themselves in states of self-sabotage

simply to alter things, to find

something different within their lives

because no answers are offered in these

worlds which supposedly offer so much.

But when our characters are shown as

dwarfed within the frame, when their

sudden shifts in life result in them

standing in the same position as before,

we see an artist critical of a world

with no answers. Of course, we may be

able to establish the utopic world

visions of intellectuals as we never did

before. We can morph and alter the world

to our whim. And yet we find ourselves

amongst people incapable of offering

something new, something better,

something worthwhile. This dreamscape of

urban malaise is the location for all of

Antonio's filmic philosophy.

Jacqu Tati. In many ways, Tati not being

a filmmaker first is what allows him to

establish such a unique vision within

cinema itself. If otur theory is about

the filmmaker holding a unique

perspective and voice towards his work,

then what could distinguish someone more

than a person outside of the

restrictions of the medium? Tati was a

professional mine. And in the small

handful of feature films he directed, he

was the main actor. a character Msure

Hulu, a silent protagonist wandering

around a caricature of France that he

doesn't quite recognize. Tati makes

comedies about the absurdity of the

world and he tells us through pure

visual storytelling.

>> There he is.

>> You are going to be Napoleon

of the cuisine. We don't think of his

camera innovations when we visualize a

Tati film. The first thing we probably

think of is the set. Tati sets are like

giant children's sandboxes to play

around in. They were often the most

expensive parts of his films, and you

can see why. They are the main

character. For large periods of his

work, Msure Hulo actually disappears

offcreen, and we catch vignettes of

these pockets of the world. And when

looking at them with an unobtrusive eye,

we see just how ridiculous they often

are. Tat's work shares more in common

with a silent film than films of his

era. He would actually record the audio

after shooting and even have much of the

volume turned down. He wanted his films

to be an almost purely visual

experience. And you know what they are?

Anyone from anywhere can understand

Tati's films. They are collections of

visual puns and identifiable quirks of

modern society that are immediately

recognizable. But this is the power of

Jacati. Because it's one thing to make a

comedy about this kind of thing. It's

another to make a satire. Tati's films

are criticisms of modern technology and

hyperconsumerist ways of living, showing

how they so easily detract from a normal

human way of doing things and how they

can debutify our worlds. The

recognizable follys that saturate his

work are thus mirrors and ways for us to

evaluate our role in allowing these

worlds to exist. But rather than showing

them for their oppressive power, he

highlights silliness and so they lose

that power. And so Tat's depiction of

life becomes a joyous one. That falling

into these models of foolishness are

part of the human condition. But as long

as we keep our eye on true beauty, on

our pasts, on the things that really

matter, then we can enjoy the laughter

that they bring.

Alejandro Yodorovski. Many filmmakers

works are some kind of an attempt to

make conscious decisions that manifest

abstract ideas from their minds. But

that's not really the case with

Alejandro Yodorovski. Me explaining his

images wouldn't do much, which I'm sure

you can tell just by looking at his

images. Yodorski is undoubtedly one of

the filmmakers from this list whose

imagery garners the most visceral

reaction. His use of color, the scale,

his surrealism makes his work look

almost undefinable, that they dwell in

excess, that their purpose is to create

something visually insane. And although

they do that, the reality is much

simpler. Yodorovski is a practitioner of

psycho magic. the idea that

psychological wounds are to be treated

with some sort of sensorial experience.

Yodorovski believes certain images,

certain acts, certain archetypes

interact with the unconscious mind. And

this mode of being is inseparable from

Yodorovski's work. The films of

Yodorovski utilize imagery from the

tarot, from astrology, from generational

memory. Not because they're

representative of something else. is

because this is what Yodoroski sincerely

believes. We sometimes look at works

like this and implement our own

worldview onto them. However, this is an

instance in which to understand and

appreciate the work, you must accept the

worldview of its creator. Just as Dao

was drawn towards a Christian fervor,

Yodoski deals with hermeticism, alchemy,

and mysticism with that same sincerity.

What we may notice is that there is an

extremity towards Yodoski's work. Just

as we're amazed by his kaleidoscopic

images, even amused by some of its very

intentionally humorous satirical takes

on society, we can also be disgusted,

even frightened when those same

depictions turn horrifically violent. We

see torrents of blood, acts which some

would deem moral profanities. But from

the perspective of Yodorovski, we're

nothing more than characters in a tarot

deck. Every action is a symbolic

gesture. Our very existence is an

alchemical process made of blood and

waste and water and sex. To him, these

are not extreme thematics. This is the

life process. You can't subvert these

things because what they are is

inherently symbolic. that is closer to

the actual truth of them. His work

consists of comics, film, psychotherapy,

tarot, mime, but all are held under a

single philosophy.

John Cvetes Cvetes created the benchmark

for what would become American

independent cinema. Beginning within the

Hollywood system and creating some

decently successful dramas, Cvetes grew

disenchanted with the changing tide and

desired to make films his own way. What

this ultimately meant was that Cvetes

was to completely transgress the

perceptions of the studio system.

Forming his own production company,

Cvetes made low-budget intimate dramas

that served as masterclasses in exposing

the rawness of the human soul.

Right.

>> I was trying to be nice.

>> Wacko.

>> I like your friends.

>> I know it.

>> Cvetes wanted something new in his

films. He didn't want films about plots.

He wanted films where people interacted

with one another, where people had to

coexist despite their gigantic

differences, where people love and hate

one another at the same time, where

people do things on a whim just because

there's a void in their life, but they

don't know why, and they don't know what

to do about it. There is no climax then.

This is life, and it unfolds however it

unfolds. Cveti's films come from a post

newvag world in which cinema verite

offered a brand new approach to cinema

that we wanted that proximity that the

camera has the agency to look around and

see what it finds in that moment rather

than it being a pre-planned maneuver.

There's a spontaneity to Cveti's work

which is probably why his films are so

actor ccentric he didn't employ

workshops or many rehearsals. Cvetes

trusted his actors and managed to

maintain good enough relationships with

them to the point that they could decide

how scenes were going to play out. When

you say what Cveti's films are about,

you can give outlines. A woman under the

influence is about a wife and mother

dealing with a kind of mental

degradation. Faces is about a couple

determined to hurt one another

selfishly, but are still deeply in love.

But beyond these taglines, they're about

moments. Cavevet's characters are the

kind of people likely to go on diet

tribes about life, or they may react to

something a character said in a

completely irrational way, but in many

ways, this is the complexity of real

life. We don't have exactitudes for why

we do what we do. Of course, there may

be a broad answer to it, but nothing

that could be explained through the

digestible ease of a screenplay. And so

that isn't what Cveti seeks to do. His

filmmaking philosophy is one of raw

sentimentality.

Characters whose passion and pain is

real and a film language to let nothing

interfere with the most important aspect

of his work, which is the real life soul

of a real life person.

Wow.

Love moves at a hell of a rate of speed,

doesn't it?

>> Pierre Paulo Paselini. Few filmmakers

managed to have a career as celebrated

as Paselini while mired in as much

controversy as Paselini. Paselini was an

intellectual filmmaker. Perhaps he was

even closer to that of a philosopher

than a director. His filmography is one

of love and poetry as much as it is

about sex and violence. He dealt with

taboo subjects throughout his work.

Prostitution, homosexuality,

religion, all of which garnered

controversy due to the contradictions

emerging within his art as much as in

his personal life. A Pasolini film is a

provocation. Not that he aimed to make

audiences uncomfortable, but rather that

he challenged audiences in the most

extreme of fashions. Large portions of

his work include highly sexual themes.

But this is because he displayed a

distaste for the commodification of sex.

At the same time, he was interested in

exploring the alluring eroticism of

sexual acts. For him, politics and

profanities were just slight divergences

in the exploration of human desire.

[Music]

Paselini's films carry a grit with them,

not in how they're shot. If anything,

Pascalini seems to be that of an old

school mentality from antiquity that

seeks to exalt human beauty in its most

classical form. He adapts the plays of

Uripides, recontextualizes the great

works of literature, and shoots it all

in beautified compositions. The grit of

Paselini is something else. It's that

all of these moments of beauty have a

flaw to them. The human body is unclean.

The gilded manor is falling into decay.

A couple make love in the dirt.

Paselini's intrigue was towards a form

of beauty which never made us feel a

sense of comfort. There was always some

kind of rot beneath his images. Go and

look at his depictions of all facets of

society from the fascist authoritarians

to Jesus Christ and see how we all seek

to chase some kind of divine sacred. And

we do so through the primality of our

very being. Paselini's films are not one

of sentimentality. They're powerful

addresses to an audience which is

equally as capable as being consumed by

our own dominating obscenities. And if

Paselini was to create a disturbing form

of cinema, he did so at a great cost. a

cinema and philosophy that was so

incendiary that before the release of

his final and most controversial film

Paselini was brutally murdered.

>> Sydney Lamett. If you want to see a

filmmaker whose genius is almost

invisible, then this is where to look.

Lamett's work isn't flashy. It's rarely

hyper stylized. It's simple and to the

letter. Lame met's filmography revolves

around the directing of worldclass

screenplays. But unlike Billy Wilder,

Lamett was an adapter, a collaborator,

one who's concerned with bringing

pre-existing material to the screen. And

the majority of that material are films

revolving around severe moral questions.

You watch a Lummet film and you're

constantly asked, "What would you do?"

12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon

Network. These are works that dissect

the world as we know it. The systems in

place that make up our society that we

turn a blind eye to every day. And

Lamemet puts us right in the middle of

it. What does it cost for a police

officer to not fall into corruption?

What's the price we pay for

entertainment? Who really are our

anti-heroes?

Lame in turn peels back the veneer of

society and delivers to us characters

whose psychological profile is complex

and conflicting and places them in the

most fascinating circumstances.

Ultimately, Lummet is one of the most

accessible filmmakers because much like

Wilder again his films are not ones of

excess they are character and narrative.

He actively made films that didn't come

across as too aware that they were

making art, assuing avantgard film

making techniques. He wanted the

storytelling process of cinema to be

pure simplified. In turn, Lummet

developed one of the most stellar

filmographies for what all filmmakers

hope to achieve. A universal story told

in a masterful fashion.

>> I don't want to talk to somebody who's

trying to calm me. Get somebody in

charge here.

>> I am in charge. I don't want to talk to

some flunky pig trying to calm me.

>> You don't have to be calling.

>> What's he doing?

>> What do you get back there in there for?

>> [ __ ] back.

>> Robert Brasson. Somnity is not adequate

to define what Brissson's cinema evokes.

The correct definition of his work would

be Brsonian. Few filmmakers are capable

of receiving an aonomous adjective, but

Brisson clearly is a priority in the

list of those that do. If ever a

filmmaker stripped away the excess of

their work, then it would be Robert

Brass.

A filmography painted with blank

emotionless faces, rigid almost inhuman

movement and action, an obsessive gaze

of detail, and an almost transcendental

approach towards suffering. Brasson's

filmography is humilous based in

saturnine settings where hope is

discarded. Some filmmakers we've

mentioned celebrate life, but Brassan's

lens is one where in the act of living

is almost the act of a martyr. His

Catholic upbringing has been heavily

written around in many secondary

writings of Brasson. However, he himself

regarded having a consciously strong

awareness of the presence of God. God

being all around us was something he

aimed to capture in his work. As such,

the suffering he portrays is indeed da

and miserable, but there isn't as such a

fatalism within the work. At least this

isn't what the films leave me with.

Bassan possessed a completely unique

approach towards cinematography, one

that he articulated in his own writings

to elucidate on his film making process.

Brasson wasn't concerned with realism.

Cinema was innately artificial to him

and its essence of capturing image

removes all sense of very similitude

from say something like theater. In

essence, cinema isn't supposed to evoke

sentimentality or any kind of emotion

for that matter. It's to be a clinical

and objective observation.

[Applause]

As such, Brisson's methodology was

unlike any other filmmaker. His

collaborations with actors were

non-existent. He would tell his actors

exactly what to say, how to say it, and

how to move. They were just vessels for

action to occur to the point that he

referred to his actors as models. The

rigidity of their action removes any

kind of semblance that there's an

individualism to their action. And thus,

instead, Brson shows us that a person is

their action and that all action is

objective. Violence is violence. Sin is

sin and with that comes a harsh lens

which aims to view things with an

objectivity in the hope of perhaps

finding some manner of spiritual

neutrality. Brasson's work is incredibly

powerful. He deals with themes of oni in

or the unjust suffering of a child in

mushet. The tragedy befalling both being

that they're so dispassionate in their

displays of cruelty. Yet through such a

lens is how we understand cruelty within

our world. That goodness and evil are

not acts that can be rationalized.

They're barely acts that can be

differentiated.

For Brassson shows us a startling world

of immense power, of the dispassionate

lens of a passive god, present yet

silent.

[Applause]

Lissa Shepico. Sadly, some filmmakers do

not have an opportunity to expound on

their powerful voice. Such as the case

for Soviet filmmaker Lorissa Sheptico.

With only the opportunity to make a

handful of films before dying in a car

crash at the age of 41, Shepico carved a

language of visual poetry through her

poetic symbolism. She uses powerful

expressions of the human face addressing

the camera intruding on us. All the

while, there's a serenity in between

moments of harsh violence in which it

feels as though the character's spirit

for a brief moment escapes from the

confines of the frame and drifts,

wandering these empty landscapes, even

if for a brief restbite from the

harshness of the real world. Sheptico

spent much of her life suffering, being

hospitalized for mental illness, and

having a spinal injury whilst in a

sanitarium makes it even more beautiful

that when watching her work, we see such

a lucid language that reaches towards

something divine. Sheptico was able to

take the interior and make it exterior,

almost orchestrating her sequences with

a musicality where all that takes place

on screen are the complexities of

emotion between individuals as well as

between human beings and their

landscapes. Sheptico made films about

war but did not make political work.

Whether it was about soldiers captured,

threatened with the punishment of death

in the ascent, or those struggling with

a civilian postwar life in wings,

Shepico placed the human being at the

forefront and the responsibility we have

in retaining our humanity.

Victor Ree. Having made four features in

50 years, Victor Reth has an approach to

film making that seems almost wistful,

as though he only makes films when

there's an urge, a need to make films,

which may explain why the human emotion

that seeps from these intimate whispers

are so strong. Watching Arth's films is

to be caught in a trance, comforted by

the silence, submerged into a dreamscape

of memory, where what we experience is

the weight and immensity of all that's

unseen. In Children of the Beehive is a

child's obsession with death. In Elsour,

a child awakens to find her father, an

almost psychic figure, has died. These

are the landscapes that Artha traverses.

Places of longing, of memory. His worlds

are deafeningly silent, and any

sensations that emerge within them

possess the affection of some majestic

guardian. A soft breeze blows across a

desert, a darkened room illuminated by

the flicker of a projector, the warm

honeycolored hues of light shining

through stained glass, a child closing

her eyes to dream. Arth is a gentle

observer. His work places us softly

within these worlds as something

empathic. He listens and waits amidst

the absence.

Dust will linger in the air and a small

gesture will feel comforting. Artha's

perspective is one where the past and

the present compete for one another in

the same space. We linger on the past in

some attempt to grasp it where we

currently stand or we tightly hold on to

what we have, finding a way to preserve

it before it disappears. His

documentary, The Quincree Son,

exemplifies this, following an artist

who sees himself as running out of time

to paint a simple tree that's growing

before it's too late. His process is

something delicate. It deals with the

pleading for life to just permanently

exist in this bittersweet limbo where in

so much meaning it emerges from. It's

beautiful work from the mind of someone

who we only wish could make more. But

the truth is that even this is conducive

to his work. We can't have everything

and things pass and move on. Sometimes

things end and that is the beauty of it

all.

[Music]

Martin Scorsesei. He may be the poster

for the love of cinema. He's the student

and master exemplified in a singular

source. Raised on a diet of the great

artists, it's hard to imagine Scorsesei

to have had a life anywhere outside of

cinema. As part of the new Hollywood

movement, Scorsesei emerged onto the

scene, giving cinema exactly what it

needed, a new transgressive language

with an absolute understanding of the

past.

[Applause]

The reality is that as great as Scorsese

as he is, you always get a sense that

the act of his movie making is an ode

for his love of the form. Every camera

move, every music choice feels as though

it's some kind of homage because in many

ways they are. It's why I always

emphasize people to watch silent cinema

because when you do, you realize that

complete ingenuity is impossible.

Everything you think is new has been

done before. And this seems to be the

notion of Scorsesei. To take from that

encyclopedic knowledge, he fuses what

works in legitimately new ways.

Scorsese's lens is the hyper masculine

world of tough men, nononsense street

guys that regardless of their ferocity

and danger possess an allure. They have

an energy about them which Scorsesei is

able to put in his films better than

anybody.

[Music]

Whether it's Good Fellas, Raging Bull,

Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsesei

simply knows the best way to convey the

energy that a film requires. Bringing

out the dead is a feverdream nightmare

of an ambulance driver. And the way the

camera drifts in and out of

consciousness is so alien, but it's

still Scorsese. It's that same kind of

language when Travis stares into his

drink in Taxi Driver. It's just what the

film needs, which most of the time is a

crescendo. Scorsese takes character

narration, whip pans from one scene to

the next. It's a kinesis that moves with

our subjects throughout a world that

feels alive. Although not mood pieces at

all, Scorsese's characters are typically

inseparable from their environments. And

as such, characters find themselves in

worlds they mold for themselves. The

energy of their surroundings appear

symbiotic to them, and as such, the

camera shadows them. And you'll often

find that with this, Scorsesei doesn't

seek to be bogged down by the other

specificities that some filmmakers are

concerned with. Continuity editing is

not a priority for Scorsesei, as this

allows him to experiment within shots.

give actors enough freedom to find that

right mood for a sequence to cut in

between and not be concerned about the

specifics but rather the totality of

what's going on. Scorsese has had one of

if not the longest career in film making

at the level he's at. Bergman for

instance has eras within his film making

beginning middle and late whereas

Scorsesei has beginning, middle, late

and very late. He simply has such a

repertoire of filmic understanding that

making films feels effortless to him.

He's the embodiment of all cinema and

his success is indicative of it.

>> So I was selling him [ __ ]

>> The way I looked at it, their money was

better off in my pocket. I knew how to

spend it better.

>> Jean Pierre Melville. Earlier I

mentioned how Fritz Lang was able

through some of his work to develop the

fingerprint for what the thriller genre

would later become. However, I would go

on to say that Jean-Pierre Melville

fully realized the genre and created it

as we now know it. Watching a Jeep

Melville film feels as though you're

watching a thriller made in the present

day. Everything about its pacing, the

sleekness of its look, Melville was able

to take the ominous ambiance of a

mystery and established a filmic

language perfect for its presentation.

[Music]

Melville incorporates silence in his

work, not out of necessity, rather

because it's the most rational

soundsscape that would exist around his

stories. He's very much a show don't

tell filmmaker. Sequences in which his

characters are looking for someone or

something. The character quietly darts

around looking for details like eyes

scanning a map. A technique that's

literally employed in the chase scene of

the samurai. A sequence so captivating

and forward thinking that it should be

foundational study for visual

storytelling. And that's what Melville

was, a visual storyteller. His shots are

wide open vistas of muted color

palettes, whispered conversations. Just

from atmosphere alone, you can tell that

you're watching a mystery thriller.

Watch the great works of Melville, and

you won't even need to look for how well

he establishes an atmosphere. The kind

of atmosphere that's become inseparable

from modern thriller storytelling. When

you see cameras slowly creep inwards.

When character tension reaches its

zenith in silent rooms and vastly

important conversations. When no action

is occurring, but you know that the next

one to be taken is vital. You know

you're watching a good thriller. And for

that we can thank Jeierre Melville.

Francis Ford Coppa, another of the

fabled movie brats to grace American

cinema of the 1970s. Coppa was the more

serious companion to Scorsese's kinetic

brand of filmm. There may be no

filmmaker in the world who's had a

better single decade than Francis Ford

Coppa in the 1970s.

Four films, two of which won best

picture, the other two won the palm

door. And the reality is is that this is

often the nature of examining certain

artists work. Because Coppella's

masterpieces are so saturated to a

single area that the rest of his

filmography is almost negligible. Copa's

work is about the inner workings of

morally complex individuals. Michael

Kolleó, Colonel Curts, Harry Call. He

seemed intrigued in characters that

become slowly devoured by something.

Whether that thing changed them or made

them more of who they've always really

been. There's really not much more that

can be said about Coppa's golden age of

film making. It's a collection of

nearperfect films. Every element of them

is a collaborative work of multiple

masters working at their absolute best.

Vtorio Staro using a changing color

palette for storytelling in Apocalypse

Now. Perhaps the greatest ensemble cast

ever assembled within both Godfather

films and water merch merging editing

and sound design for a brand new

landscape of narrative possibilities in

the conversation. Coppa's success is a

collection of things. It's practically

everything we see and hear in this brief

period that makes these films as good as

they are. You don't need to explain its

greatness because it's just brazenly

obvious. If filmmakers could choose one

era of films to have replicated from

another, I think many would pick this

short decade of excellence from Francis

Ford Coppa.

sent Fredo to pick somebody up at the

airport. I'm your older brother, Mike,

and I was stepped over.

>> That's the way mom wanted.

>> It ain't the way I wanted it.

>> Anus Vada. Although making what was

arguably the first film of the French

New Wave in La Panchakur, Anus Vada was

an affiliate of the movement, but not as

entrenched within it as those associated

with Kaidu cinema. Instead, Vard was

considered a leftbank filmmaker within

the movement. These were the filmmakers

that weren't as cinema ccentric within

their artistic process. Rather, they saw

cinema as equal to the many other arts

that they were influenced by. What Vard

did bring that distinguished her was a

sweetness, a sentimentality.

Whether it was in her humanist

documentaries or her playfully shot

narrative films, Vada expressed this

exuberance for the human experience,

shooting things with a childlike

curiosity.

Her voice was so everpresent because the

camera feels as though it's a onetoone

replication of her eye.

[Music]

V uses many techniques that are

associated with the new Velvar. Quick

jump cuts, splashes of color, almost a

design-like approach to composition.

However, the philosophy is entirely

different. Vada came from a background

in photography and had a fervent passion

for all artistic mediums, painting,

literature, theater. When watching the

gleaners and I, this passion expresses

itself constantly as Vanna jumps between

interests of books of her favorite

painters, the sculptures of an outsider

artist, even the pattern of damp on her

ceiling as some kind of organic

expression of nature. Vard's lens was

one that just saw the best in things.

Her filmmaking evokes a sentiment of

true happiness and care for others. Her

subjects are dignified and respected

from the fictionalized vagrants in

Vagabond to the real life benefactors of

the actors of her first film in the

beaches of Agnes.

But returning to her aesthetic style, it

was not like that of God, which was

about the snappiness of things. Vada has

a keen aesthetic eye, and what she looks

for is beauty in all angles. You never

quite know how Vard will shoot a

sequence, but she seems to always manage

to arrange her framing and color to

create something legitimately beautiful.

Vada embodies Joy Deviv, which makes her

filmography even more astounding to know

that she did tackle many serious,

sometimes even horrific subject matter

and did so with astounding dexterity.

Because of her early arrival on the film

scene, VA has the reputation as one of

the great female filmmakers. But I don't

think that does her justice. She is in

fact one of the great filmmakers.

[Music]

Steven Spielberg. I mean, is there a

name more associated with the role of a

director? He's the filmmaker that

someone who knows nothing about film

names as a filmmaker. And it's not

because he makes the biggest films of

all time, although he's made some of

them, or that he's the most artistic

voice of his generation. is because

Spielberg possesses a kind of golden

ratio of film, a kind of comprehensive

understanding of the masters, a humanism

of the great voices of cinema, and the

same joy and wonder that we see at the

genesis with Melier. The truth about

Spielberg is that many dismiss his work

as purely entertainment, but without any

kind of artistic edge. For one, I don't

necessarily believe entertainment to be

a downfall of art, but this also

wouldn't be exactly true. When we go

back a generation and view the works of

Hitchcock, Cotasau, Ford, and many

others, there's a very salient line

between their work and the work of

Spielberg.

If anything, Spielberg may be an even

more accessible version of a Hitchcock

in that every visible aspect of film

making is on display in his work. His

films are like lessons on how to make a

film. When I think of a Spielberg image,

I think of large crowds of people moving

to and fro, filling the screen with

energy. But it's all so masterfully

composed. Another of the movie brats, he

doesn't do a scores where large arrays

of people add a chaotic dynamism.

Spielbergs is ordered. Their movements

are completely composed with cameras

swooping in and out of characters.

Character action carefully coordinated

so that action is able to display their

personality. If multiple characters are

in the vicinity of one another, watch

how Spielberg directs them with subtle

interactions to show their

relationships. Spielberg is a master at

making exposition interesting by filling

necessary dumps of information with

visual interest. People can say what

they want about the depth of his work,

but you can never say that he isn't

adept at crafting an image. And truth be

told, most of Spielberg's works are also

like ods to cinema. We get lost in the

almost oporatic heights of ET, the awe

of discovering a new world in Jurassic

Park. Spielberg is a sensorial

filmmaker. He wants his audience to feel

amazed by cinema the same way that he

was as a child, for us to feel about the

form the same way that he did. Because

film is a language that speaks to us in

ways that feel larger than our real

life. And Spielberg's absolute mastery

of the foundations of film is deserving

of our respect. Because how could it

not? It makes us feel too much.

[Music]

Rea Vera Fastpender. Fastpender is in

contention for the most prolific of the

master filmmakers, rivaling even the

output of John Ford. In a career

spanning just over 10 years, Fastbinder

made over 30 films. And these weren't

films that had a methodology of how to

get them completed and out there.

Fastbinder cinema is jagged, theatrical,

and drenched in violent fusions of

cruelty and tenderness. Fastpender truly

evokes the sentiment that an artist

should make what they want. He tore

through genres in one moment making

melodramas then making hypercolled

erotic thrillers and before you knew it

he was delving into sci-fi dystopias and

no topic was too taboo for Fastbinder

becoming a controversial figure because

his individualist approach satisfied no

one. Faspinder deals with capitalism,

homosexuality,

Nazism, and would receive opposition

from many simply because he explored

these ideas through some of the most

uncomfortable lenses, even willing to

speak out against the things he believed

and upholding the ideas he rejected.

Because Fastbinder's films are about

power, whether it be between lovers,

allies, or enemies, characters yearn for

submission. love becomes a defiant act.

There's a tragic and beautifying aspect

to how Fastbinder portrays the human

condition, always transgressing it to

its most profane, yet admiring it as

though passion is the thing that

beautifies all humans. Fastpender cinema

is not a pure cinema. It's a gritty and

uncomfortable cinema. He sought to

explore the realities of daily

prejudices and how the human being is

ripe for exploitation. His style was

that somewhere in the middle of a brass,

an ou, a pasolini, and even a kubric.

It's something completely unique. His

films don't feel like surgical slices,

though. They feel like blunt hammers

awkwardly smashing their way through any

kind of idealistic vision of the world.

Faspinder's life was his art. And that

fury, that excess, that was able to

reveal such a truth came from a man that

was also determined to live on the edge

and provoke a society. But he was

unwilling to offer any soothing comfort

towards. His cinema comes with a rage,

yet a rage that reminds us that love is

but a step away from cruelty, and one

cannot exist without the other.

Robert Alman. There was a new breath of

life given to cinema in the work of

Robert Alman. And I mean that in almost

a literal sense. What Altman brought to

cinema was a new way to capture life. We

may talk of the influence of several

filmmakers on those that would come to

be, but Altman preceded the hyperedited,

quick pacing, postmodern structure that

would come to full fruition in the

1990s. Alman made films about worlds. It

was ensemble casts where the story was

that life ensued and unfolded in front

of us.

Alman would allow extras to speak on

set, actors to talk over one another.

There's an authenticity when you see a

concert take place in a Robert Alman

film because a concert was taking place

and a film just managed to get made

within it. go and listen to some of the

soundsscapes of an Altman film and

sometimes it gets so extreme that you're

like, what's going on? He used to place

microphones on other actors so that he

could layer these different areas of

sound to create this ambiance of an

entire world space that stretches beyond

the frames of the film. And when you see

how his films are constructed, they're

made of nothing but arrays of people.

and we capture vignettes of what they're

doing and we cut back and forth between

their stories. Many are left unresolved.

We'll see a side character that appears

for a single scene and then disappears.

It's just a collage of some mood of a

time and an attempt to capture that in a

bottle. And he does

chasing her.

You know, right?

>> There really is this strong ability to

craft an entire way of existence with

Alman's work. I'm describing it as if

there's an urgency, but when you watch

it, it all feels so casual. Everything

just blends together to make these

amazing mood pieces. He shot almost

exclusively in wide shots and every

frame of his has so much going on in it

that there is no focus to it. The whole

chaotic manner of existence is the

meaning. There's very few films that

stand out as having as unique an

approach to transgressing the standard

form of film making. But there are even

fewer that succeeded as well as Alman

did.

>> Radar.

>> Yes, sir. I guess I better call first a

couple of surgeons over from the day on

the night shift.

>> I'm putting a call in to General Hammond

and I hope he saves those

>> Kenlo

kitchen sink realism emerged in postwar

Britain and was the British answer to

Italian neo realalism dealing with

themes of cultural disillusionment after

World War II. The lens moved from

broader ranges into the domestic

hardships of everyday people. The

movement has been influential throughout

all of British cinema to this day with

one of its strongest voices emerging in

Ken Loach. Loach's films are in their

purest form about people. People from

strong workingclass cultures who speak

with thick workingclass accents whose

problems are vastly political but shown

through a lens of the personal.

>> You need to leave the building.

This is ridiculous.

>> Jesus Christ.

>> Who's first in this queue? I am.

>> Do you mind if this young lass signs on

first?

>> Oh, no. You carry on.

>> There you go. Now you can go back to

your desk and let her sign on and do the

job that the taxpayer pays you for.

>> Loch's characters are often suffering

through poverty. There's no system in

place for their voices to be heard. And

they're typically shown in a kind of

limbo state with no possibility to

ascend through the ranks of society,

trying their hardest only to be stuck at

the bottom rungs of the ladder. Although

Loach's films may come through a very

political lens, it's hard to deny the

passion which he feels for human

justice. Whether it's a struggling

mother at a food bank or a postman down

on his look, there's always a

heart-wrenching view towards the

humanity of people that no matter who we

are and where we come from, we should

all be treated with dignity. And this is

the message that Ken Loach's work

ultimately leaves us with. You've got to

feed them when they're hungry. See you

not only do out when they're at feeding

time like yeah they got these Jesses on.

So all time

what

>> Jesses

>> Eric Romer the final of our new Velvar

associates Romer was the most observant

of the new way filmmakers. His style of

cinema was one that dealt in

conversations modes of transition in a

sense more than perhaps any other

filmmaker mentioned here. His films

really are not about anything. They

unfold on sunny beaches and along serene

country roads plastered with triadic

color. This was a far stretch away from

the pop infused worlds of Godard's

vision of a postwar France. This was a

vision almost returning to the past of

that impressionistic countryside

idealism present in the 19th century.

Rome seeks to find the drama in being

human, not in action. There's no moment

in a Rome film which supersedes any

other. We simply watch as we're carried

through conversations about life as the

day fades into the afternoon.

[Music]

The ordinariness of Rome's images must

not be confused with the mundane.

However, this would be difficult to

argue upon seeing his work because what

you have is an almost exceedingly

satisfying vista where oceans break

towards the horizons and in the midst of

it, characters just speak. They discuss

their ideologies, their pulls between

personal want and a grander

responsibility. And Rome discovers in

this millu of the ordinary a deep

passion for all aspects of living.

Nothing matters in a Rome film because

everything matters. Every minute

reaction to a person's confession, every

slight hesitation and contradiction in a

human being, they're all laid in front

of us in a rather cathartic way of

viewing the serenity of life by making

its greatest complexities appear all the

more universal and all the more simple.

>> Speak French.

Shantel Akaman. And here we view the

exact opposite. A lens wherein the

mundanity and simplicities of life are

transgressed into vast complexities of

recontextualized action. Amen is closer

to making video art than making

traditional cinema. Her film making is

about confronting us with the daily

mundanity of real life where nothing

happens. A woman cooks. Another

organizes her furniture. Another waits

for a train to arrive. And in the midst

of this lack of meaning, Akaman adjusts

her gaze and lends us a hyperfocus on

the inane. In turn, actions that were

once ignored become unignorable. They

become something other. Why must we

watch this for so long? Why is there

such an insistence on focusing on the

meaningless? Why are these human

behaviors delivering such discomfort?

Spaces once denoted to domestic life

become claustrophobic. If VA denoted the

love of life, then Aceman's lens treats

life like a prison, an unescapable slow

death where the only way out is through

violent release, through a complete

upheaval of the way we believe life is

supposed to be. The audience for Akaman

become voyers, silent observers that

must acknowledge that some of the great

truths of life lie unexposed to the

world. And Acean exposes them to

sunlight. And in doing so, those great

secrets turn to shame. Some films are

not enjoyable to watch. And this could

easily be said about Akaman, but they

are necessary.

Andre Tarovski.

The silence imbuss the fogcovered

landscapes. Figures trapped in time

stand almost catatonic within them as a

dripping of water can be heard falling

from a relic of the past. This is where

we will find ourselves when alongside

Andre Tarovski. making only seven films,

but with a style so strong, fewer

filmmakers seem to hold such conviction

in their belief and methodology as he

did, gifting us a filmography of the

most transcendental kind.

[Music]

Time in Taroski's films is unlike

anything else. We're forced to

experience its saturated nature with

long takes that drift beyond our

characters like the film is falling into

some kind of daydream or that we're

ongoing a kind of outof body experience

that the landscape of the film's

narrative is taking place here on the

ethereal and spiritual realm. Tarovski

was a devoted orthodox Christian which

like other filmmakers we've mentioned is

something inseparable from his work. He

wrote in his seinal writing sculpting in

time that he thought of the artistic

process as akin to prayer. And when at

the finale of Andre Rublv we're

confronted with the or inspiring

frustration towards the icon paintings

of his aonomous subject is a process

that does not hide itself. Tarovski

seemed to find serenity in nature as

some manner of creation we find

ourselves in. Like a subject becoming

aware it finds itself in a painting.

Often the literal landscape appears

alien. Yet Tarovski imbuss his work with

such texture that it feels material. The

crackling of aged books, overgrown grass

amidst rusted railways, the age and

decay of a world offering some transient

beauty. Because there is an intrinsic

sense of nostalgia within Tarovsky's

work. In his film Nostalgia, we see his

longing for artists and a mode of being

which he had no firsthand experience

with. Yet the desire to have that within

oneself and Tarovski expresses the self

as a spiritual being. The landscape of

dreams and desire are one in the same.

We exist alongside a world that's

elemental. Fires billow and his lens

towards the growth of a tree or the

swaying of a plant can only be examined

through a lens of amazement. Tarovski

frequently takes aside moments to bask

in the sheer astonishment of nature.

When watching a Tarovski film, you'll

find yourself almost trapped, almost

forced to address the present transients

of our experience. Tarovski doesn't edit

his sequences. Many of them play out in

real time or some warped version of real

time that makes our experience so much

more different when compared to watching

other films. He said of his own process

that his editing was about editing

blocks of time, not continuity, not

montage theory. For him, it was about an

atmosphere that only reveals itself over

an elongated period. And Tarovski takes

these feelings of a shot and organizes

them alongside one another. This was

Tarovsky's approach. He wasn't making

films to be intellectualized. He was

embodying a spiritual form of cinema

that was to communicate things about our

ancestry, about fleeting death, about

humility within the vast cosmos. He

found animals to have a spiritual nature

about them and often let his camera rest

on them because with animals comes a

purity, a lack of knowledge of good and

evil. And this is Tarovski. They're not

moral forms of cinema. They aim to take

us to another realm that we can't even

explain. And truthfully, he does.

Tarovski developed one of the most

beautiful and celestial forms of film

making and in just a matter of a small

amount of films became a filmmaker of

incredible influence. But more

importantly, an artist that managed to

take us far beyond our human capacity.

Vera Herzog. His role is to play the

voice of God. And what a strange God he

is. Whether he is traversing the

devouring soul of mankind through the

jungle, interviewing real life death row

inmates or the absurdest view of a

drugaddicted police officer, it is a

peculiar perspective of the human being

that Vera Herzog possesses.

>> I want the opera house.

I want my opera house.

I want the opera house.

This church remains closed till this

town has its absence.

>> A lot of people admire Herzog for his

weirdness, which it is. Few filmmakers

could have worked with Klauskinsky,

never mind having several collaborations

with him that have gone down in infamy

as some of the most insane stories about

the making of a film. But Herzog cinema

is a kind of madness. It's about men

approaching volcanoes. It's about evil

arriving in a town to poison it. It's

about unquenchable ambition. It's about

those that have no place within society,

even if that means that they must carve

their own to exist. Herzog is a

filmmaker of great breadth. His work as

a documentarian is as important as his

fictional work. And yet, we never know

exactly through what lens he will view

the world. But there is always a thread

of Herzog peering into the unknowable

and finding himself amidst a nature

which he finds to be inherently violent.

Herzog possesses a rather objective lens

when examining the world in that there

often is no great mystery to the things

we see. There is no subtext. In his

words, "A man is a man as much as a

chair is a chair. It cannot be anything

else." which makes it fascinating to him

to often view such subjects which have

immense depth and the result is this

kind of empty poetry where his

fascination lies in the ruin of man

without ever losing respect for the

dignity of him. His world is one where

reason and madness do not differ all

that greatly from one another and that

man is a confused creature in an

incredibly indifferent world.

And what haunts me is that in all the

faces of all the bears that Treadwell

ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no

understanding, no mercy. I see only the

overwhelming indifference of nature.

Sh Iamura. After Japan's golden age, we

can really view how filmmakers that

followed aimed to transgress the form.

Perhaps the zenith of this new era film

making can be found in Shoi Imamorta.

Imamorta actually began his filmmaking

career working as an assistant to Ozu on

his films. This seemed to have a

profound effect on him as he would then

proceed to make films almost as an

abject rejection to the kind of cinema

Ozu made about Japan. He worked

initially as a studio director but

sought to gain his own voice and upon

embracing an independent approach to

film making his subversive style

completely saturated his work. Imamorta

was transgressive in the sense that

contradiction and juxtiposition was to

reveal new lenses for cinema. Comedy was

fused with disgust filmed in documentary

realism. Brutal tales of survival become

ones of deep compassion. Although in

general, compassion was not at the

forefront for Imamorta. He was no ou.

For Imamorta, humans are about the

flesh. They are chaotic beings driven by

yearning for power by any means. To

watch an Imamorta film is to be thrown

into the swamp of the human condition.

Imamora was, as he stated, interested in

the lower half of the human body. He

followed serial killers, those abandoned

by society. And yet I must say that

although there is a lack of glamour in

his work that it appears messy and deals

with the primal nature of mankind, there

is a kind of grace within it. There's a

kind of transcendental thread that I see

in Immort's work that when these acts

occur, they almost occur in strong

silences. That his depiction of Japanese

life was not orderly, but there was

something restless about it. As if in

those serene, orderly frameworks must

exist people who refuse to abide by it.

Mikuel Hanukkah, the ultimate balance of

formalism and postmodernism. Hanukkah

presents us with a dispassionate lens to

observe a violently sterile view of the

modern era. Hanukkah's films are for

many difficult to watch. The world he

portrays has an uncomfortable violence

to it as something that explodes out of

what is seemingly normal everyday lives.

However, to Hanukkah, the normal

everyday life is anything but.

>> Fagling.

>> Hanukkah's aesthetic is similar to

brassons, close-ups of body parts that

separate the human being from the

action, putting them in an almost

mechanized state, the semnity of many of

our subjects. However, Hanukkah's films

are more realistic than Brasson's. As a

matter of fact, you can argue that

Hanukkah deals with a hyperrealistic

aesthetic in all facets. His attention

to detail is unlike any filmmaker's

attempts at capturing the current era.

And what he seeks to do is to diagnose

the dehumanization that occurs in

day-to-day lives. Hanukkah often deals

with the middle class bourgeoa. Those

whose lives are not wanting for

anything. The segments of society that

peique his interest are the affluent

television presenters, classical

musicians, socialites, professors. And

it's the minutia of their resignation to

a life of modernity that causes immense

anguish. A family becomes distraught at

the lack of meaning in middle-class

consumerism. A man who reaps the

benefits of an affluent lifestyle is all

of a sudden watched by an unknown voyer.

And this also brings us to the crux of

Hanukkah's lens, that other notion of

hyper realism.

[Music]

Hanukkah portrays the ideas of modern

communication to be something

fragmented. He's drawn to the varying

forms of surrogate communication,

screens, games, sign language,

television, layers upon layers of

subverted meaning that seem to distract

human beings from their innate

condition. When you watch a Hanukkah

film, you're pulled into a world which

is all too recognizable. But by his

objective camera lingering, cutting to

black, just showing things as they ought

to be shown, that same world becomes so

repellent. Hanukkah's work does not

glamorize, doesn't intrude on the truth

of when and how we live. His filmography

is a powerful example of discontent with

many aspects of the modern world. Yet

what separates him most is his eye. The

manner in which he's able to comprehend

postmodernity better than arguably any

other filmmaker and still deliver it

through the formalist method of film

making. Static cameras dispassionate and

perhaps most distinguishable, incredibly

serious.

Paul Thomas Anderson. If the movie brats

were the sequel to the golden age, then

the ilk of filmmakers like Paul Thomas

Anderson continue that trend of ongoing

influence, just as the filmmakers of now

and onward are most likely influenced by

this new school. The earliest works of

Paul Thomas Anderson are most evidently

influenced by the 1970s era of American

cinema, particularly when compared to

the work of Robert Alman and Martin

Scorsesei to the point that techniques

can be straight lifted from their work

and seen in Anderson's such as the whip

pan transition of Scorsese's fast-paced

sequences and Altman's ensemble style is

immediately recognizable in works like

Magnolia and Boogie Nights. However,

this isn't to diminish the work of

Anderson, as these works are fantastic

in and of themselves, but it must be

said that over time, his lens matured

and his own voice developed.

>> I have a competition in me.

I want no one else to succeed.

I hate most people.

Anderson's framework became one of a

unique kind of mastery. He began

crafting deep character studies and it

seemed as though his viewpoint expanded

in scope. Whereas his earlier work deals

with familial bonds, relationships

between people, his later work explored

a richness of themes, quests for

absolute power, religious

indoctrination, love on a more primal

level. However, he never lost that charm

of his earlier work and manages to

infuse those techniques alongside these

more fleshed out thematics. For me,

Anderson is one of those pure filmmakers

that exist today. His understanding of

when the camera needs to be made salient

and when it doesn't possesses such an

acute understanding of the form that

those are the kind of things that you

look for and say, "This is a guy that

gets it." Composition is not what

Anderson's known for. And yet, when we

establish characters in a new area, or

when they confront one another, those

simple rules of composition and camera

positioning display such a fundamental

understanding of the form within what

are essentially incredibly

forwardthinking post-modern works. This

is one of the common threads of many of

the filmmakers of this era that their

perspective is brand new and yet they've

mastered what the previous masters

already had established for us in

musical collaboration, in screenwriting,

in character building. Anderson displays

mastery in spades.

>> I It's no business of ours what Mrs.

Rose decides to do with her life. that

she can no longer behave like this and

be dressed by the House of Woodcock.

>> Spike Lee. Spike Lee signs off all of

his films, but not in the way that Abel

Gon did. Lee does it in a simpler way.

He calls his films a Spike Lee joint and

ends with saying, "You dig?" Because

Spike Lee has a rebellious twang to his

film making, but not necessarily one

that feels overtly aggressive or even as

political as many other filmmakers here.

Even though the majority of his

signature work can only be viewed

through a racial lens, Lee's work is

alive. His techniques often simulate

that same kind of street aesthetic

embodied in the counterculture of the

80s and '9s. The camera is canered,

handheld, and characters confront the

audience just as the film itself

confronts us.

>> Hold up. Time out. Time out. Y'all take

a chill. You need to cool that [ __ ] out.

And that's the double truth.

>> Lee's film making is something

transformative. It was a new lens of

transgression for what film could be and

personified the nature of how this new

era of film had the capacity to inhabit

so much to be all at once satire and

serious, dramatic and comedic. All

things bleed together in a spikely

joint. There's a burning fire to make

films that show you not what you believe

the world to be, but what you know it to

be. And you have to show it all. And as

an addendum to this, there are those who

would not watch Spikeley's work simply

because it's viewed through a racial

lens. And I bring that up now because

there will have been many, I'm sure, of

it, that will also not like the fact

that many filmmakers I've also mentioned

thus far are inseparable from, say, a

religious lens. To those people, I say,

if you're willing to convince yourself

and others that the work of a Tarovski

is to be separated from his religious

worldview, then you would also have to

say Spike Lee should not be viewed

through his racial lens. It's not

important. Obviously, we see how foolish

that sounds. And so, this is just a

reminder that filmmakers come with

perspectives you may agree or disagree

with. However, what is important is

their mastery of form. Spike Lee came

with a brave and unique new language at

a time when the horizons for filmmaking

possibilities exploded and to still

emerge from that millu with a standalone

voice. Then you must have created

something very special. I thought you

were smart, but you just another one of

those cats strutting down the avenue in

your clown suit with all that mess on

you looking like a monkey. The white man

sees you and laughs. He laughs because

he knows you ain't right.

>> Man, who are you?

>> No, the question is who are you?

>> Abasami,

what is cinema reduced beyond its

simplest form? If we keep falling on the

premise that narrative and character are

what most films ought to be, then what

do we say are films that choose to

remove that for even less? This is what

we see in the work of Abbas Kerostami. A

filmmaker whose work is built around the

absence of things where elliptical forms

of film making are imposed to take

things away from the image leaving us in

a state of longing. Like many of the

great Iranian filmmakers, Kiranami

evokes a sense of poetry to his image

that intermingle with the simplicity of

life. A car travels along a road. A can

rolls down a hill. Trees sway in the

breeze. These are the things our

attention is directed towards rather

than the high drama which may be

occurring just offcreen. When I see a

Kira Stari film, I find it comes with a

sense of realism that's all its own, as

if he wanted to uncover a kind of

fictionalized realism. Conversations are

halfheard. Stories are left open to

possibility. He imposes as much of the

real life spontaneity and randomness of

things into the framework of a film.

What we're left with in this cinema of a

mission are grand meditations on time

and being.

[Music]

A Kiraastami film is an intimate

observation on the fragility of the

human soul displayed in the most

delicate manner. We hover along

landscapes with such patience because in

a Kiraami film we don't need to go

anywhere. Everything that the film needs

to say is right here in front of us.

There'll be no great revelations, no awe

inspiring spectacle. He made fiction

films, documentaries, but most were

hybrids in between as though neither

complete fiction nor non-fiction was

sufficient to fully weigh on the human

condition. And if you want to prepare

for Kristami's perspective and what

exactly his focus often falls towards,

then look at his final film, 24 frames.

24 frames of animals in nature. This is

his lens. Life in motion. And that is

enough.

David Croninberg. If body horror were to

be personified in a single filmmaker, it

would unquestionably be David Croninberg

as its representative. You don't have to

delve deeply into Croninberg's

filmography to see where his interest

lies. Croninberg's philosophy is

centered around the human body and test

to see where the limits of it can be

stretched to metaphorically and

literally. We have a perception of how a

violent act is to play out in cinema.

Yet, when that same act emerges in a

Croninberg film, it seems almost

excessive. And yet the reality is that

that gruesomeness is what's actually

missing from most other cinema. If we

are to find katharsis in violence,

shouldn't we at least be honest about

it? Croninberg portrays the desires of

the human flesh, the need to be

stronger, to be more than what we are,

and show the consequences of what that

would mean.

>> Got pretty good at it, haven't I?

Yeah, it's almost second nature.

>> Stop biting my nails.

>> What does it mean to separate from our

own body in some macab fetishization to

these new technological intertwines of

sexual desire as we see in films like

video drrome and crash. The difference

is that although Croninberg is an

incredibly philosophical filmmaker when

it comes to our relationship with the

human body amidst rapidly changing

social landscapes, Croninberg shows it

in its most extreme form. Bodies that

transform, that ooze with puss, wounds

that make flesh unrecognizable.

Croninberg's perspective is that of an

absolute materialist. If we separate

ourselves from what we are at the most

base level, where does it place us? Is

it possible to dehumanize ourselves past

the point of recognition, to feel utter

disgust at the acts that we perform?

Croninberg cinema is a cinema of the

flesh. Not one that celebrates its

indulgences, but one that warns of the

declining slope that causes us to

stumble into the abyss of our own

desires.

David Lynch. A filmmaker's greatest

attribute might be to establish a unique

voice. A voice so powerful and so

identifiable that you've essentially

trademarked the act of being you. This

is what we get with David Lynch. Some

may call his work surreal. Some may call

it weird. But you cannot deny the

Lynch's work is memorable.

With films of nightmarish characters

plucked from our subconscious, settings

of the absolute innocuous turned into

something uncanny. darkened hallways,

strange voiced men, stilted dialogue, an

unmatched atmosphere to unsettle and

disconcert. The work of David Lynch can

look opaque or even meaningless to the

layman. But I argue that to understand

Lynch's work, is one of the simplest

tasks you can do. And I say this as

Lynch, more than most filmmakers here,

has been very candid about his artistic

approach, just perhaps less open

regarding the specificity of his work.

Lynch works from his subconscious. We

all have one. Imagine you were to take

your deepest dreams, those that feel so

real and impactful to you, and just show

them on screen. In its simplest form,

this is the world that we inhabit in a

David Lynch film. It's not a film based

on dream logic. It is dream logic. There

are truths in our subconscious that

don't have a oneto-one translation in

the waking world. yet they linger with

us and we don't disregard them. The same

can be said of Lynch's work. A man in a

darkened room inhales an unknown

substance before collapsing in a sexual

frenzy. A man smiles at a dinner table

while a girl behind him cries. And it

goes on and on. There's so much to say

about Lynch's work, yet so little to

explain. Every technique he employs, if

just accepted without intellectualizing,

can be understood with such clarity. If

anything, they are experiential,

sensorial works. What they make you feel

is what the film is about.

This sequence of a telephone ringing in

a not completely dark room as a low

frequency hum can subtly be heard and

the red wall fades into an unseen abyss.

Surely the atmosphere that clearly

pervades the scene is enough to tell you

what it's about. But then we ask, well,

what about those other facets of Lynch?

the non- nightmarish ones, the

strangeness of a Twin Peaks, or the

obsession with Americana. Well, it's

because Lynch has no cynicism in his

work. Some will often try to relay the

idea that characters speak a certain way

with Lynch because it's a commentary.

But the fact of the matter is Lynch's

film making is one of the most sincere

you can experience. When the sun shines

an Angelo Badament score rings like an

angelic chorus is because Lynch likes

the idea that we can look at the world

through this lens also. And so the same

approach is applied when watching. Just

look at what you're seeing and it should

be very obvious to you. What you see is

what you get. Lynch trusts his instinct

when it comes to film making. There's a

truth within him that he feels and has

meditated on long enough that he knows

it to be true. And rather than thinking

and explaining what that means or what

it signifies, sometimes the best thing

to do is to put it out there as your

truth. And hopefully it will be someone

else's.

Ask me

>> how'd you get inside my house?

>> You invited me. It is not my custom to

go where I'm not wanted.

>> Kristoff Kislovski. If Lynch's work is

about creating art through the narrative

of the subconscious, then Kislosski's

film making is set on a purely emotional

landscape. Kisloski's films are almost

saintlike in that they act as quiet

whispers of immensely important codes

for the human condition. Kisloski talks

to us about mortality, love, the human

spirit, the binding moral forces that

connect us all and delivers it to us in

such a profoundly beautified aesthetic

that asks us what kind of world are we

looking at? How is it that by such a

subtle change in our perspective, the

world can look so pleasing to us

regardless of what goes on within it?

Kislovski was a director where the total

aesthetic was symbiotic to his film

making process. Many of his finished and

unfinished works were attempts at

creating parallels to structures within

art and the story of humanity. artistic

tptics retelling the Ten Commandments,

an unfinished project of the Divine

Comedy. And with this, the visual

telling of each was approached with the

sentimentality that was necessary.

Kislovski shoots through panes of glass,

through reflections in the water. He

uses silhouettes, old lenses, color

filters. He reminds us that film is a

language which is not only philosophical

but also has the potential to make us

feel through its abstraction and it's in

those abstractions where its greatest

poetry will emerge. Kislovski was able

to capture the divinity of life to take

the humble and make it oporatic to take

the human being and show that within

them lies something vast and eternal.

[Applause]

Ha Miyazaki. If he's not the greatest

animator, then who is? Whether we

measure him by his dexterity, his

creativity, his humanism, many of us

wish to have what seems to exist in

excess in Miyazaki. A similarly

Kubrician approach to animation.

Miyazaki's method is one of complete

control. His films often taking several

years to complete and almost utterly

disregarding the industry standard

approach to animation that exists in

Japan. The fact is there is no one like

Miyazaki. Famous for his almost

nonchalant pessimistic philosophy. The

one thing that this never touched was

his art. Miyazaki's animations take the

most beautiful aspects of life and cast

them into the most beautifully rendered

animations you've ever seen. Animation

has far too often been disregarded as a

children's medium. And the reality is

that Miyazaki actually leans into that.

He feels that children are the only ones

who fully understand his work. There's a

purity with his perspective. Not that

all children are good or moral. He often

shows that children can be petulant and

selfish, but that they are the purest

humans. They own their flaws and

everything that they experience is so

vast. It's as though they have an ocean

of experience at every small detail of

life. Because Miyazaki has this balance

of the macro and microcosms of life

where in one moment we see the

personification of many great spirits

battling against us. He then allows us

time to meditate, to simply sit and

acknowledge where we are and what we

are. So much detail is spent within

Miyazaki of those tender moments with

people, small unravelings of a treat,

the organization of your things, the

little moments that add to the humanity

of a person. Because we are just beings

going about our business. And it's often

not the cataclysms of life where this is

displayed. It's in those intimate

moments. The hug of a person, the

grasping of a hand. In these moments, we

have no agenda. We have no intent other

than getting through our life and seeing

what comes next. And Miyazaki displays

that life will have infinite things to

throw our way. But although its

landscape is confusing and chaotic, it's

more often than not something to be

mesmerized by. that there will always be

a sun- soaked grassy hill under a pure

blue sky. That love and family and

goodness will reign supreme. And that

these worlds are real. That imagination

and quietude are one in the same. And

life is nothing more than our own

journeys through both.

[Music]

LZ Vontria. His collaboration with

Thomas Vintterberg to establish the

Dogma 95 movement may not only be the

most common act attributed to LZ Vontria

is also most telling of his approach to

the medium of film. Dogma 95 was a way

to reinvision the standards of film. It

encouraged no diagetic music. Films had

to be shot on handheld and on location,

not in a studio. And although only a

handful of true dogma films were made,

it's that ethos to turn cinema on its

head that stayed with Vontria even after

the movement had run its course. There's

a jokester within Vontria, even though

he makes sincere work that film should

always aim to provoke.

>> Or perhaps according to a religion that

doesn't exist yet,

according to a god that hasn't yet

manifested himself. But then you can

imagine anything.

[Music]

>> Vontria has made work which has been

censored, caused mass walkouts, even

commented on his own work in ways that

got him banned from the canned film

festival. But being a persona nongraata

is where Vontria revels best because his

work is all about the discomfort of all

things. Exposing the artifice of film by

showing us the camera. Making the film's

perspective expound on some of the most

controversial ideas a filmmaker could

explore. Exploiting the slave trade to

sensationalize. Empathizing with a

serial killer, accepting the

meaninglessness in the end of the world.

I don't believe that Vontria falls into

the category of many of the humanist

filmmakers, but I also don't think he's

necessarily misanthropic either.

Vontriers is a cinema of friction, a

need to contradict social norms in all

their facets. Whether that means that

the film form itself must be completely

altered or that the societal truths must

be overhauled, that is the kind of film

Vontria wants to make. A Vontria film

will deliver itself in chapters closer

to a novel. It will be shot in a realist

sense to evoke improvisation and then

present tableau in the exact opposite

style. That is vontria, the disagreeable

aspects of man. That truth must come in

counterbalance. That whatever is

accepted must be the opposite. And that

there is always space for the profane.

>> Chaos

reigns.

>> Edward Young. Through the 80s and 90s,

Taiwanese cinema went under a resurgence

with a group of filmmakers working to

give Taiwanese film a true identity. The

movement is known as Taiwan New Cinema

and it gave to us other master

filmmakers such as Hosa. However, our

focus right now is filmmaker Edward

Yang. Edward Yang embodied what Taiwan

new cinema was. Stories about Taiwanese

families, emphasizing the internal world

and the deep emotions that emerge in

daily life, all displayed through a

bittersweet and incredibly strong visual

aesthetic. Few works can match the

simple human depth of Edward Young's

work as we gaze at people basking in the

quietude of life enacting itself upon

them.

They reflect, they feel, and the world

around them echoes their sentiment as

the sounds of a distant city hums in the

background. You sit in the fluorescent

light of a building while outside is

still. You remember your life and think

on your memories as the world around you

changes. We see life enact itself across

varying generations and see the beauty

of how things change as well as feel the

sorrow of all that's been forgotten.

Yang evokes all of this through his

still manner of film making to sit and

watch as the beauty of human emotion

reveals itself in its most tender

renditions.

[Music]

TheoAngelopoulos.

When we slow down the pace of cinema,

sometimes it feels intimate. However,

with other filmmakers, it feels

monumental.

This is the case for Theo Angelopoulos.

The films of Angelopoulos feel as though

they're shrouded in history as we watch

cameras drift across endless terrains as

the strange figures within them become

shrouded by mist. Shots in Angelopoulos

films feel long as in many instances we

drift in and out of time within them. We

fade through temporal blocks without

ever explaining the reasoning behind it

and then find ourselves in almost

surreal landscapes. Many of the

interjections from Angelopoulos are

moments in which the audience is

literally supposed to reflect on what's

just occurred. The great sense of

longing. How atmosphere and nature seem

to bring with it a shared and connected

sense of humanity. As the fog rolls in,

as the snow falls, as the people stop

and stare, it's as though the world

reflects the spirit of humanity. and

that from nowhere at all are we all of a

sudden overcome with emotion and memory.

Atmosphere is what burns slowly in the

work of Angelopoulos. That it's in that

feeling of a space and time where we'll

find the most truth. Angelopoulos's

meditative gaze ensures us that the past

never leaves us. For everywhere we go,

we'll feel its immense weight dispersed

amongst the quiet whispers of a

deafening silence that surrounds us.

David Fincher. The obvious benchmark of

the thriller genre whose line moves

through Jean-Pierre Melville undeniably

also passes through David Fincher.

Fincher has set the blueprint for what

the modern-day thriller looks like. His

mastery of the technicalities of cinema

have granted him the ability of complete

control over all his images. A Fincher

film doesn't really have flaws in the

image. Everything looks as it's supposed

to look. There's a clarity almost

clinical precision with how the mison

stem interplays with each other.

>> Problem they're just down the basement.

Not many people have basements in

California.

>> I do.

>> Fincher is known as a perfectionist, but

not at the almost obsessive level that

Kubri was. He's a filmmaker that knows

exactly what he wants, doesn't need to

discover where the film is going. He

researches and plans ahead extensively,

and it's hard not to see. Fincher is a

director that places the camera on a

tripod and shoots. But the few instances

that the camera does move, you notice

it. The camera moves alongside people,

it shows internal shifts, and he's even

willing to take it to its most extreme

edges. It's a style that carries him

through all of his work, including

dialogueheavy dramas like The Social

Network. But when we think of what

matches the style of Fincher, it's

undeniably films with a sinister edge.

Things that require that precision,

where the camera perfectly glides over

to where it needs to be. And when

looking at a wide shot or a master, it's

shot with such clarity as though

everything you could look for is right

in front of you. You can examine the

frame to your heart's extent, but

everything appears in its right place.

Fincher is a filmmaker vastly intrigued

in the macab killers, weirdos, the

fringes, and their portrayals are

considered so authentic, so

uncomfortably close to our own world,

precisely because of Finch's complete

efficiency at capturing the world as he

wants it to be captured.

I picture cracking her lovely skull,

unspooling our brains, trying to get

answers.

The primal questions of any marriage.

Peter Greenway. We may not come across a

filmmaker on this list or anywhere else

that you could put forth an argument

that they may in fact despise cinema.

Although if there were a case for

anyone, I would attribute it to Peter

Greenway. Greenway is unlike any other

filmmaker we've mentioned because his

films are the least cinematic in every

conceivable way. Peter Greenway trained

as a painter before he became a

filmmaker. And across all of his

filmography, you'd have to say that to

pick a word to describe his work, it

would be painterly. If not that, then

perhaps theatrical, some other medium

outside of cinematic. Greenway

structures his films through tableau. He

may use chapters of the film segmented

as books or days for a tasting menu.

He's never one to shy away from altering

the narrative expectations of cinema to

lean more towards other visual and

non-visual mediums. The irony being that

in this deconstruction of cinema,

Greenway's work results in some of the

most impactful of the medium.

[Applause]

>> I'll give you the best education. I'll

tell you what.

>> His content is often shocking or

extreme, but the dichotomy is that it's

presented in the most ostentatious of

fashions to beautify it. His

collaborations for set design, costume,

and cinematography are very often

collaborations with some of the

greatest, most talented individuals of

those fields using Jean Paul Goautier to

make the costumes. Sasha Vienni, a

cinematographer, and of course his

longtime collaboration with musician

Michael Nyman that makes fully realized

scores that are as important as the

visual element. Greenway is a filmmaker

about reimagining the very idea of what

cinema is supposed to represent. His

stories march forward in ways we're not

familiar with seeing through cinema. And

whether the purpose is to utterly

destroy the form or offer a new

perspective on its very welcome artifice

is up for debate. But Greenway has

become a far too overlooked filmmaker

for making truly innovative work unlike

anyone else. He's like a more clinical

vontria or a less cinematically inclined

Kubric. Ultimately, he's like a master

like no other.

the cinema of the apocalypse. Bellatar's

films are monochromatic dredges into a

pit of darkness. He began making more

social realist works. However, it was at

the midpoint of his career that Tar

truly developed the style that we know

him and will remember him for. Black and

white, hopeless, violent, slow. A

Bellatar film weighs on you. Shots go on

for six, seven minutes at a time and

take us nowhere. We're trapped in these

worlds. Worlds where rain hammers the

sludge soaked ground. The wind bellows

as the filth and dirt are strewn around

us. And the evil spirit of man has

awoken to take us all with him.

Some people struggle to make it to the

end of a Bellatar work. He forces us in

spaces where the very drabness of time

is felt. We feel entrenched in the mud,

motionless. He surveys the landscapes

that seem so vast. And our realization

is that we will never leave these places

and neither will our characters. And as

for characters, it wouldn't be difficult

to say that Tar has a pessimistic, some

may even say misanthropic view of

people. The drunkards throw themselves

around like animals in filth. The nature

of man is to debase and destroy, and all

mankind is slowly sinking into its final

abyss.

It's incredibly dark work with not much

hope to be found within it. And yet, I'm

mesmerized by it, fascinated by its

horrifying truths and Tar's ability to

represent the terrifying inertia that

makes itself present through so much of

life. The perspective may be hellish. It

may even be cancerous towards the human

condition, but it most certainly is a

masterful perspective.

Quinton Tarantino. Is there a filmmaker

of this generation that's had a broader

influence on the cinema of the following

decade? Some would say that Tarantino is

all style, no substance. And there's a

relative amount of truth in that. The

amazing thing about Tarantino is that

he's managed to garner a career making

whatever films he wanted to make.

Everyone knows where his influences came

from and what he's referencing. Some

have taken issue with Tarantino taking

plot points, shots, characters, and

lifting them directly from other works

and inserting them into his own. But

he's never hidden this fact. His work is

such a pastiche of a particular brand of

exploitation films, a celebration of bem

movie creativity, but elevated to

something new and exciting.

The fact is that if this is Tarantino's

biggest filmmaking sin, then he's no

different from any other filmmaker that

pays homage or has something else in

their methodology that others may find

artistically or even ethically

distasteful. And with that, all we need

to do is examine what Tarantino did

bring to the film making landscape. a

genuine reshuffleling of cinematic

narrative, emphasizing the dramatic

possibilities for nonlinear

storytelling. Every single one of his

movies goes back in time to introduce a

character, retells a segment from

another person's perspective, and the

result is that this keeps the pace and

intrigue of a film at a high level. The

French New Wave was able to become a

self-aware medium when it came to its

art, but no one captured the impact of

an individualized pop culture experience

like Tarantino did. Art forms and pieces

that only a select few managed to catch

before they disappeared from general

discourse. Through his sharp dialogue,

which cannot be understated, Tarantino

exposed just how limitless a person can

be when it comes to reference. He fully

captured the totality of a post-modern

pop culture landscape and made it

something fun, exciting, and ultimately

different. Tarantino has always been

like a collage filmmaker, taking a

moment from a martial art film, a shot

from the golden age of cinema, a song

from a spaghetti western, and threw them

all together in the same way that the

Beasty Boys made Paul's Boutique. But

just like them, there was always enough

originality within it that the work

separated itself as something brand new.

We know a Tarantino film immediately

when we see it because so much of him is

in there. We can see his lens from a

mile away. It's the rockabilly,

hyperviolent, saturated, pop art,

foul-mouthed, exploitative love of

cinema. And watching a Tarantino film is

a love letter to all of film. And they

act as reminders for just how much many

of us really love this medium.

>> Which one is two Monroes?

>> No, it's not.

>> That is Maril Monroe.

>> That is my van Doran.

>> And I don't see Jenny Mansfield. She

must have night off or something.

>> Wow. Yaw

Y is a filmmaker that evokes something

special in his work. A kind of nostalgia

for a world you've never seen before. A

world that feels like the future and the

past all at once. With a formidable

collection of works such as In the Mood

for Love, Chunking Express, and Happy

Together that certified his unique

vision, his films in collaboration with

cinematographer Christopher Doyle are

kinetic visions of a colorful universe

that makes us feel in one part alienated

and in another incredibly connected to

it.

Similar to Kislovski, one car uses the

warping of the film frame to create a

view of the world that's by no means

synthetic, but is drawn towards neon

lights, color filters, low shutter

speed, jittering effects within the

camera. Characters in one car films are

framed in all ways but traditionally.

And yet the avantguard approach is not a

complete deconstruction of film form.

It's rather opening new visions for how

film can look. Like Yang, Wankawawaii

views people in relation to their

surroundings, always reflected in its

surfaces, always caught within the

crowds of where they are. There's an

energy in his work that makes things

both exciting and melancholic at the

same time. You just see these images and

it's as though we're blurring the human

with the chaos of urban life as the two

aren't fighting for space but are

learning to live symbiotically with one

another. And all of this is told in

stories of human connection, love

stories, that which is being lost. And

it's as though all of these artificial

urban jungles have blended themselves so

much with us that they feel it too. The

world of one car y doesn't aim to

disconnect us. It finds visions that we

may find solace in the times and places

that we are because we can't be anywhere

else. Wherever we may feel great sorrow

or heartache, we will always feel it

somewhere. And that emotion will be tied

to that place. That place being for some

part of us a home.

The Cohen brothers. It's the greatest

directorial partnership since Powell and

Presburgger. Joel and Ethan Cohen have

made work on their own. However, it was

their collaboration spanning over 25

years that the Cohens crafted an almost

unparalleled collection of oddly comedic

genre pieces. The Cohen brothers have

such a unique style that's so

idiosyncratically theirs. They love

weird characters, but not absurdest

weird, just kind of normal weird

one

two

three

four. all silently.

They thrust you in these worlds so full

of strong characters. I'm not sure there

are many filmmakers that are able to

bring in cameos, single scene

characters, and make them so memorable.

A Cohen brother film throws you in the

deep end and expects you to swim

alongside the strangest depictions of

people and circumstances without any

instance of an explanation. They just

have an ability to imbue their work with

such a strong identity, not just

visually. Their films are primarily shot

by Roger Deakons, and that wide lens

back and forth between characters should

never be dismissed for just how

effective it can be. When you sit with

these characters and just see everything

around them, it's like you're there with

them and you get to experience a true

sense of who they really are. There's

nothing hidden. You're just experiencing

this oddball world as it is. The Cohens

make genre pieces, but genre pieces that

are specifically theirs, choosing to set

Fargo, a kidnapping thriller gone arry

in the place least cinematically

equipped for such an event to occur. The

Big Labowski is a rabbit hole thriller

whose protagonist is barely even

connected to the events at hand. They

will take the bones of a noir film and

fracture it, make it modern until the

whole piece becomes like a cosmic joke.

The humor is bleak and slapstick all at

the same time. The world of the Cohen

brothers is one where things will never

go right. As though the spontaneity of

the universe is constantly fighting

against the film even taking place.

Plans will unravel. Chaos will ensue and

we'll be left grasping for some meaning

in a world where clearly there was none.

Things happen. But isn't it unique when

really interesting things happen to

really simple people and really simple

things happen to really interesting

people.

>> And it's either heads or tails

and you have to say call it.

>> Look, I need to know what I stand to

win.

>> Everything.

>> How's that?

>> You stand to win everything. Call it

>> Christopher Nolan. I have a lot of

admiration for Christopher Nolan. So

much discussion of the production of

films is about what a filmmaker had to

do in order to get the film made. They

had to make sacrifices. They had to cut

the budget. Nolan doesn't seem to have

those issues. He's reached a level of

success in his work that the idea of

scale for him seems to be a non-issue.

Nolan is in a privileged enough position

to be able to make essentially whatever

film he wants to make. And I think that

he should be fondly looked upon that in

a time when studios can throw hundreds

of millions in a film's advertising to

make the dullest, most predictable

pieces of entertainment, Nolan is always

trying new forms of narrative and to

push the medium forward in a myriad of

ways. Remember, you are the dreamer. You

build this world. I am the subject. My

mind populates it. You can literally

talk to my subconscious. That's one of

the ways we extract information from the

subject. He's always been a filmmaker

whose vision is catalyzed by the

cinematic experience. To Nolan, cinema

is the theater. He shoots in IMAX.

Wherever there's a scene that can be

done with practical effects, that will

be opted for rather than CGI. It should

be commended that at the level of

blockbuster film that Nolan has been

capable of making is always been done

through some attempt at reinvention. The

superhero genre was completely altered

after his lens of it in the Dark Knight

trilogy. The ambition of a story within

a story within a story of Inception.

These blockbuster reimaginings all

hearken back to his early work in things

like Momento where we can keep the bare

bones of film making relatively simple.

Nolan's not a director where you'll see

fourthwall breaking transgressions or

sweeping deconstructed camera motions.

His innovations tend to come from

elsewhere. Even in his simpler stories,

there remains a strong sense of

identity. Nolan's work is the

extravagant. That human drama should be

experienced at its apex. The human story

should be connected to the sound of a

sweeping orchestra. Memory should not be

alluded to. It should emerge vividly in

the person's mind. Nolan is not a

filmmaker of subtlety, but that doesn't

make his film making unsophisticated.

If anything, at the scale he makes his

films, he may be the most sophisticated

of all blockbuster filmmakers of the

past few decades.

Park Chanuk. If Nolan's work is the

extravagant, then Park Chanwuk is

cinema's ornate sadist. Park Chanwuk

understands narrative as revenge, but

it's a revenge embellished with the

mixture of a fashionista and a surgeon.

Park John Chanwuk's film making is

precise. He composes frames like an

architect and at the same time will

deliver hammer blows and rip the teeth

out of the subjects inhabiting them. The

style of Park Chan Wuk is clean. He's

like Fincher in many regards except that

his fringes fall off the scale.

Parchwalk revels in the contradiction

that cinematic vengeance bestows on us.

We want characters to wreak havoc on

those that have wronged them. And in

doing so, we find oursel with characters

attempting to ascend through their

violent retributions, all the while

being dragged to the depths of hell for

doing just that. There's something

inherently biblical about his work.

Violence is treated almost as a

ritualistic thing and all actions are

intertwined with eroticism. The

destruction of flesh casts us in a

frenzy. Yet once that subsides, we're

left with a void. A character will stand

in a vacuum of pure white snow when that

which should have been resolved remains

elusive and the end of our path has led

us to nowhere. Parkchan Wuk films are

oporatic in their presentations. The

heights of human wrath to the depths of

human despair choreographed to grand

symphonies. An octopus is ripped apart.

Parents watch footage of their children

being murdered. We desire some grand

catharsis from a Parchanwok film because

he seats us on that dangerous edge like

a blade hovering an inch away from our

eye. There is something profoundly

alluring to a form of cinema that's this

angelic and depraved. His films are

works that seduce us into a world of

violence and speak of our endless desire

to purge those urges one way or another.

[Music]

Ashkar Farhadi. We've spoken very often

about moral cinema of the past and the

frequency with which it was able to

emerge. But if there were a filmmaker of

the modern era to recapture the very

complexity of morality, then it would be

Ashgar Vadhardi. Vadi begins his works

in the simplest of scenarios. The family

home, domestic disputes, and over time

they gradually unravel and before we

know it, every decision that's made

begins to reverberate. These are not

just familial dramas anymore. They're

seismic moral tests. What does a lie

become in the face of one's honor? How

can we live by our value system if it's

dictated to us by society? All of this

takes place in a Farhadi film amongst

the bubbling passion of familial love

and how it can so easily become a

poison, turning everything it touches

into resentment. Farhadi casts no

judgment on his worlds, but the films

present themselves as these great stages

of action where we inevitably do. And

the only result we can garner from them

is that people are equally guilty and

innocent in all of their transgressions.

A human being is made up of their

religion, their status in society, their

family, and you are the one that must

make an absolute decision on their

culpability towards sin. Farhadi is a

fascinating filmmaker because he's not

just a director of drama. His work has

just as much intrigue as a mystery

thriller. So much of his work unfolds

with key information revealed to us as

great revelations, completely altering

our perspective of that that's occurred

thus far. But then what's this teaching

us? That our lens is always subject to

change. That we can never achieve

complete objectivity when there are

infinite ways of viewing even a simple

objective event. The genius of Farhadi

is that this is what his cinema is built

from. A collection of whatifs, absences,

things left unanswered. There is no

ending. We're left stranded in the

consequences of that we do not know and

forced to make a decision about them.

And much like the story of the masters

of cinema, what makes him excel is that

understanding that although there will

be an infinite array of voices, you can

only hear so many.

[Applause]