“Openings”. With examples from 1943 to 2013, from China to Iran, Australia to Finland, we look at how to open a film: from mysterious, direct, floatin...
“Believability”. It’s easy to spot, but not so easy to understand. Believability is about simple human stories, the truth about life, real emotions, a...
“Conversation”. A basic human interaction—how to make it cinematic? “Framing”. Frames describe and paint the scenes. They shape the cinematic world. ...
“Staging”. Scene staging is an element of film form pointing clearly to cinema’s origin: theater. “Journey”. Movement is key to a motion picture, and...
“Adult/Child”. Most famous movie genres—war pictures, westerns, etc.—are about adults, but in this chapter, Jane Fonda narrates the story of eighteen ...
“POV”. Is cinema the art of point of view? Jocelyn Moorhouse, Ida Lupino, Edith Carlmar, Sofia Coppola, Liliana Cavani, Kelly Reichardt, Larisa Shepit...
“Bodies”. Bodies in cinema can be enticing, athletic, or brutalized. Jane Fonda narrates this chapter about how some of the great directors—including ...
“Home”. Refuge, shelter, or prison? Sharmila Tagore narrates the story of home on-screen in the great films of Edith Carlmar, Lynne Ramsay, Mai Zetter...
“Politics”. Another aspect of everyday life. From silent cinema to the twenty-first century, movies from the visually astonishing THE ENCHANTED DESNA ...
“Melodrama”. A genre as popular as comedy, but what are some of the great scenes in melodrama? Sharmila Tagore narrates a story that takes us from the...
“Tension”. Thrillers, and so much more. We look at gripping scenes in films as diverse as Joel DeMott’s documentary DEMON LOVER DIARY, Kathryn Bigelow...
“Reveal”. How does Lynne Ramsay do a reveal, in MORVEN CALLAR? How does the great actor-director Kinuyo Tanaka? Or Sarah Polley? Or Alice Rohrwacher? ...
“Life Inside”. Novels are great at describing thoughts, but how do films do so? In this chapter, we see how great directors from France, Ukraine, the ...
“Death”. The biggest subject in life, the most universal subject—no wonder that Japan’s Kinuyo Tanaka, Canada’s Caroline Leaf, Spain’s Ana Mariscal, H...
