The Cineaste Interviews 2

Filmmakers on the Art and Politics of the Cinema

Gary Crowdus and Dan Georgakas, editors

In an age of mindless celebrity profiles and fellating Q and As, the interviews in Cineaste are among the most consistently thoughtful, insightful, and thorough available anywhere. The subjects are invariably articulate, and usually at the cutting edge, aesthetically and politically, of moviemaking today. We can rejoice at having these pieces preserved in book form.

Philip Lopate, author of Totally, Tenderly, Tragically: Essays and Criticism from a Lifelong Love Affair with the Movies

Cineaste, America’s leading magazine on the art and politics of the cinema, has been acclaimed worldwide for its interviews with filmmakers and film critics. In the early 1980s, a collection of some of the best of these was published as The Cineaste Interviews. Now, Cineaste Interviews 2 takes on the aesthetic and political issues that have dominated the film scene over the last twenty years. The focus of this particular collection of twenty-five interviews is on the role of the director.

Gary Crowdus founded Cineaste in 1967, while studying film production at New York University, and he has headed the editorial board ever since. He has worked in film and video distribution with The Tricontinental Film Center and Unifilm (1968-1972). He is presently President of Distribution at The Cinema Guild. He is the editor of and a contributor to A Political Companion to American Film.

Dan Georgakas has been an editor of Cineaste since 1969; he is coeditor of In Focus: A Guide to Using Films, Solidarity Forever, and The Encyclopedia of the American Left, and co-author of Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, and author of The Methusaleh Factors—Strategies for a Longer Life.

In an age of mindless celebrity profiles and fellating Q and As, the interviews in Cineaste are among the most consistently thoughtful, insightful, and thorough available anywhere. The subjects are invariably articulate, and usually at the cutting edge, aesthetically and politically, of moviemaking today. We can rejoice at having these pieces preserved in book form.

Philip Lopate, author of Totally, Tenderly, Tragically: Essays and Criticism from a Lifelong Love Affair with the Movies

The interviews in Cineaste are simply marvelous. They convey a host of interesting information and insights. I learn a lot from these thorough and provocative interviews, whether it be the director’s subtle or outrageous turn of mind, or the fate of some of their films in the marketplace. Cineaste is certainly one of the best—if not the best—film magazines in the country.

Dan Talbot, New Yorker Films

Equally fascinating and informative, Cineaste Interviews 2 sets the standard for insightful discussions with leading film artists about the social concerns, political implications, and aesthetic decisions behind their work.

Richard Peña, Program Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center

Like the first collection of Cineaste interviews this volume features no-nonsense encounters that avoid the self-serving blandness, narcissism, superficiality, and fraudulent objectivity so often characteristic of interviews that only serve the industry as part of celebrity culture. The stress in these interviews remains where it must be: on the social uses and misuses of film, the creation and control of culture, the victories and the brutal constraints placed on the cry for human freedom.

Amos Vogel, Founder, New York Film Festival