Yasujirō Ozu: the ingenious simplicity of great cinema
The life of Yasujirō Ozu Ozu was born in the Fukagawa district of Tokyo, the second child of 5 brothers and sisters. He regularly avoided school classes to see films like Quo Vadis or The Last Days of Pompeii. In 1917 he saw the film Civilization and decided he wanted to become a director. At […]
Kenji Mizoguchi, 8 must-see films by the master of Japanese cinema
Kenji Mizoguchi was born in 1898 in Tokyo. The father is a modest craftsman who has many financial difficulties and sells raincoats to soldiers during the war against Russia. To survive he moves to the Asakusa community, a place full of popular theaters and very poor artists, and is forced to offer his 14-year-old daughter […]
Samuel Fuller, 9 must-see films by the great American director
Who was Samuel Fuller? Samuel Fuller was an American director, screenwriter, and novelist. He has been called “the last great Hollywood author” and has directed 30 films in his career. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts on August 12, 1912 to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants from Kiev; Samuel studied journalism / communications at the University of Illinois before […]
Derek Jarman, 9 great indie films not to be missed by the English filmmaker
Derek Jarman was born in England on January 31, 1942. He studied art in London and began painting, setting up several successful solo exhibitions. In the 1970s he openly declared himself homosexual and led public struggles for the rights of homosexuals. Later he has to fight against the AIDS disease which he was diagnosed as […]
Hitchcock: biofilmography and 9 lesser-known films you can’t miss
Who was Alfred Hitchcock? The son of a modest family of merchants, his father was a fruit and vegetable trader, Alfred Hitchcock studied in a strict boarding school of Jesuit fathers. After the loss of his father he enrolled in a naval engineering school. After the war ended, he found a job as an advertiser […]
Orson Welles, life, style and 10 films to see absolutely
Orson Welles and the beginnings with the theater Orson Welles was born in a wealthy family in Wisconsin from a pianist mother and inventor father from whom he inherited both talents: already as a child he plays the piano and plays games of prestige. At the age of 8 he lost his mother and left […]
Alejandro Jodorowsky, an artist in search of the secrets of life
Who is Jodorowsky? Alejandro Jodorowsky was born in Tocopilla, a seaside city in northern Chile, on February 17, 1929, into a family of Jewish and Ukrainian origins. In 1953 he moved to Paris and began his theatrical activity. He creates the Panico theatrical movement together with the poet Beppe Costa. He collaborates for a long […]
Howard Hawks, his cinema and films to see absolutely
Howard Hawks was born into a wealthy Wisconsin family on May 30, 1896. He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and became an aviator during World War I. Later he became an employee of the aeronautical industry. Then he moved to Los Angeles where he met Douglas Fairbanks, a friend and partner of Charlie […]
Nanook and other films from documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty
Robert Flaherty, the director of the famous film Nanook of the north, was the undisputed pioneer of documentary and cinema-truth. All his filmography revolves around the great theme of the relationship between man and nature. He was born in Iron Mountain, a very small and cold town in the United States, in Michigan, on the […]
Murnau, the dark fairy tale, romance and the “living” camera
Friedrich Plumpe, aka Murnau is a German director born in 1888 on December 28 in Bielefeld. He is one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema. Most of his films are influenced by expressionism and kammerspiel. Youth After a childhood in which he already showed his penchant for art and theater by staging […]
Eisenstein: Battleship Potemkin is not a “crazy shit”
Who was Sergej Eisenstein? In Italy, tens of thousands of people know him above all for his most important film, the second of his filmmaking career after the Strike, The battleship Potemkin, but not for the extraordinary quality of the film. Those who are not Italian will probably find it hard to believe it. Eisenstein […]
Dziga Vertov: The metaphysical genius of a Pole who emigrated to Russia
Born in Poland in 1896, Dziga Vertov, born David Abelevič Kaufman, moved to Russia where he first studied medicine and then poetry and fiction. In Moscow he begins to take an interest in cinema thanks to surrealism from which he takes inspiration also for his nickname with which he becomes known, Dziga Vertov. After the […]
David Griffith, the inventor of analytic editing and modern cinema
David Wark Griffith had been a bad actor who occasionally worked in theaters in provincial towns and urban ghettos. During those years he was well acquainted with the psychology and way of thinking of the sub-urban proletarian and the people of the small towns, better than any film producer in business at the time. They […]
Luis Bunuel: an anarchist surrealist looking for a homeland
Luis Bunuel was born in Calendar, a small town in Aragon, Spain on February 22, 1900. He was sent to study in a Jesuit college. In all likelihood, this experience made up of rigid rules and monotonous everyday life contributes to creating his profound aversion to Catholic institutions. Luis Bunuel during his university period Finally […]
Georges Méliès: the inventor of fantastic and historical cinema
Georges Méliès is perhaps the most extraordinary and mythical character of the origins of cinema. It was he who invented the first tricks of the cinema such as the disappearances, the fades and the coloring of the film. From a certain point of view it could be said that the first use of montage is […]
Fritz Lang and his cinematic masterpieces to discover and rediscover
Fritz Lang had guessed it: cinema is a complex art that has enormous unexpressed potential. In just a century of life, what man was able to do with it was to reduce it to a freak commercial phenomenon. A circus animal locked in the cage to be released only when the paying audience has to […]
Kaurismäki: Rocky according to Aki and his irresistible shorts
Kaurismaki and his cinematic poetics There are those who discovered the movies of Aki Kaurismäki relatively recently. Perhaps with the very remarkable Miracle in Le Havre (2011) or with The other face of hope (2017). And that would already be fine, in a world that the magic of the big screen is gradually replacing the […]
John Cassavetes, the godfather of independent cinema
Cassavetes’ first film In 1968 John Cassavetes made the film Faces in his home and with his friends and collaborators, which had a huge impact on the development of independent cinema. Made on a budget of just $ 275,000, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. John Cassavetes proved that […]