The Cineaste Interviews: On the Art and Politics of the Cinema

by Dan Georgakas (Editor), Lenny Rubenstein (Editor)

Roger Ebert wrote the foreword to this collection of 35 in-depth interviews with the world's leading filmmakers and critics, from Fonda to Fassbinder, from Canby to Costa-Gavras, from Sarris to Sayles.
Cineaste, America's leading magazine on the art and politics of the cinema, has become known for its in-depth interviews with filmmakers and film critics of international stature. The best of these interviews are now collected in this volume.
The Constantin Costa-Gavras, Glauber Rocha, Miguel Littin, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ousmane Sembene, Elio Petri, Dusan Makavejev; Gillo Pontecorvo; Alain Tanner, Jane Fonda, Francesco Rosi, Lina Wertmuller, Roberto Rossellini, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Gordon Parks, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, John Howard Lawson, Paul Schrader, Agnes Varda, Bertrand Tavernier, Andrew Sarris, Bruce Gilbert, Jorge Semprun, Vincent Canby, John Berger, Andrzej Wajda, John Sayles, Krzysztof Zanussi, Molly Haskell, Budd Schulberg, Satyajit Ray.
The unique value of these interviews will be the comments by the filmmakers on the crucial artistic and political decisions confronted in the making of their films, many of which have become classics of their kind. The filmmakers and critics talk about their own development, films which influenced their work, and the continuing controversies and alternative approaches in filmmaking. They take on their critics and their own previous positions with a clarity and forcefulness to be expected from some of the leading practitioners of their art.
The interviews are introduced with a foreword by Roger Ebert, television commentator and critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Mr. Ebert discusses the relation of art and politics and some of the common perspectives which unite filmmakers of different cultures and of diverse artistic and political temperaments.
Among the subjects of these wide-ranging talks the choice between popular and experimental forms of narrative; the filmmaker's responsibility to society; blacks and women in the movies; the rise of third world filmmaking; Hollywood's left and progressives; the conditions of filmmaking in different societies; the challenges of independent production; different forms of censorship, from the U.S. to Poland; trends in criticism and auteur theory to feminism; the power of the reviewer.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction

416 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foreword by Roger Ebert, making distinction between a "message picture" (clear statement, which does not need to be necessarily expressed in a film form) and a truly "good" political film.
Where is the "politics" after all? In "specific artistic detail than in "messages"", Ebert claims (within the film narrative and/or style).
My question would be: does it even matter, whether a film is political or not? Directors themselves are surprised about the widespread popularity of their works which bear local (national) themes - thats because they are good films, and as such have unlimited, universal (humanistic) impact, Ebert explains.
Rather than observing which films are political and which not, it would be interesting (and this book does precisely that) to recognize political directors, whose films are both good (aesthetically) and who continuously portray socio-political issues.

[Muzzlehatch · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Cineaste" has long been the major - perhaps the only - voice in widely-accessible periodical form on the politics of cinema in the United States. Since 1967 this magazine has been devoted to lengthy delvings into serious cinema in all its forms, with forays into the progress - and frequent missteps - of commercial Hollywood as well. It's one of my favorite film magazines, and as older issues are tough to get, this collection of many of it's filmmaker interviews, published in 1983, remains valuable. The vast majority of interviewees are directors, though a few screenwriters and critics and actress Jane Fonda are heard from as well. Here's a rundown of the subjects - those with numbers in parantheses are given that many separate interviews in the book:

Tomas Gutierrez Alea
John Berger
Bernardo Bertolucci (2)
Vincent Canby
Constantin Costa-Gavras (3)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Jane Fonda
Bruce Gilbert
Molly Haskell
John Howard Lawson
Miguel Littin
Dusan Makavejev
Gordon Parks
Elio Petri
Gillo Pontecorvo (2)
Satyajit Ray
Glauber Rocha
Francesco Rosi
Roberto Rossellini
John Sayles
Paul Schrader
Budd Schulberg
Ousmane Sembene
Jorge Semprun
Alain Tanner
Bertrand Tavernier
Agnes Varda
Andrzej Wajda
Lina Wertmuller
Krzysztof Zanussi

Most of what I've read here has been eloquent and intellectually stimulating - all three of the critics (Canby, Haskell, Sarris) offer good insights into their work, and the choices and compromises that go with the profession; Varda and Sayles are as cogent on the page as they are behind the camera. I have a couple of small complaints, one being that sometimes the stress on politics leaves little sense of the filmmakers as artists - their approaches to the process of direction are often left in the dust for the most part; and it would have been nice to have more Hollywood people, particularly from the blacklist era (represented only by Schulberg). Well, you can't have everything, and this book does a good job at serving its primary aims and audience. Introduction by Roger Ebert - someone you wouldn't expect to have written for such a tiny audience later in his career.