Film Culture on Art: Interviews and Statements, 1955-1971

brings together nineteen directors-Aldrich, Antonioni, Brakhage, Breer, Buñuel, Cukor, Dassin, Dreyer, Fellini, Huston, Leacock, Lubitsch, Melville, Milestone, Pasolini, Richter, Rossellini, Sternberg, and Vertov-who are among the leading auteurs in the history of cinema. Also included, in an appendix, are interviews with the cinematographer Boris Kaufman, the screenwriter Charles Spaak, and the playwright Arthur Miller. The interviews were all commissioned for the legendary American movie journal , which was founded by Adolfas Mekas and his brother Jonas in 1954 and became best known for exploring the avant-garde cinema in depth. ( ceased publication in 1996; during its existence, the magazine produced 79 issues.) Conducted in 's famously critical and committed style, the interviews in this volume catch each director or practitioner at a crucial juncture in his development as an artist, and stand as a historical record of the dominance of the Euro-American tradition in cinematic art-whether of the narrative or experimental kind. This is the first such collection of its kind in English, edited with a contextualizing introduction, critical biographies, career filmographies, and a comprehensive index by R. J. Cardullo. R. J. Cardullo was for twenty years, from 1987 to 2007, the regular film critic for the . He is the author or editor of a number of volumes, including (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), (SUNY Press, 2008), and (McGill-Queens UP 2004). Cardullo is also the chief American translator of the film criticism of the Frenchman André Bazin, with several volumes to his credit. His own film criticism has been translated into such languages as Russian, German, Chinese, Turkish, Spanish, Korean, and Romanian. After earning his doctoral degree from Yale University, Cardullo taught for four decades at the University of Michigan, Colgate, Wesleyan, and New York University, as well as outside the United States.