Selected Film Essays and Interviews - (Anthem Film and Culture) by Bruce F Kawin (Paperback)

About the Book

A collection of Bruce F. Kawin's most engaging and important essays on film, accompanied by his interviews with Lillian Gish and Howard Hawks.

Book Synopsis

This engaging collection of Bruce F. Kawin's most important film essays (1977-2011) is accompanied by his interviews with Lillian Gish (1978) and Howard Hawks (1976). The Hawks interview is particularly concerned with his work with William Faulkner and their friendship. The Gish interview emphasizes her role as a producer in the 1920s. The essays focus on such topics as violence and sexual politics in film, the relations between horror and science fiction, the growth of video and digital cinema and their effects on both film and film scholarship, the politics of film theory, narration in film, and the relations between film and literature. Among the most significant articles reprinted here are "Me Tarzan, You Junk," "The Montage Element in Faulkner's Fiction," "The Mummy's Pool," "The Whole World Is Watching," and "Late Show on the Telescreen: Film Studies and the Bottom Line." The book includes close readings of films from "La Jetée" to "The Wizard of Oz."

Review Quotes

"Bruce F. Kawin's 'Selected Film Essays and Interviews, ' a collection of his writings spanning from 1977 to 2011, is a welcome addition to film studies literature. Kawin, Professor of English and Film at the University of Colorado at Boulder, writes in a style refreshingly free of the jargon and verbal clutter that all too often serve to obfuscate and distract in academic film writing. This volume collects a number of his most important essays and reviews as well as two interviews with Lillian Gish and Howard Hawks, respectively. [...] [A]n essential collection [containing] concise and thoughtful examinations on different areas of film studies." -Matt Barry, roguecinema.com

"The way in which the volume situates Faulkner and Foote in - even surrounds them with - such groundbreaking film scholarship productively skews more conventional accounts of these writers [...] [Scholars] would do well to heed Kawin's plea to 'get it right, ' to 'stand up for accuracy.' I can think of no better model in this pursuit than his 'Selected Film Essays and Interviews'." -Sarah Gleeson-White, "Mississippi Quarterly"

"This book is a splendid introduction to an influential writer you may not have had the opportunity to read previously. Kawin emerges as the quintessential cinema academic, a writer of (mostly) concise opinion imbued with an understanding of the technicalities of the medium and a real adoration for its possibilities; a unique overview of cinema as a multi-faceted artistic expression." -Jez Owen, "Film International"

About the Author

Bruce F. Kawin is Professor of English and Film at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His books include "Telling It Again and Again: Repetition in Literature and Film," "Mindscreen: Bergman, Godard, and First-Person Film," "The Mind of the Novel: Reflexive Fiction and the Ineffable," "Faulkner's MGM Screenplays," "How Movies Work" and "Horror and the Horror Film." He is also the co-author of the last seven editions of "A Short History of the Movies."

Howie Movshovitz teaches film at the College of Arts and Media at the University of Colorado at Denver. He has been a film critic on Colorado Public Radio since 1976 and has reported on film subjects for National Public Radio since 1987.