Ellen Cheshire – författare

A comprehensive overview of  the director Jane Campion and her work.

Campion is one of the few women film-makers working today who has managed to create a unique body of work. A true independent film-maker, she has attracted many ‘A’ List Hollywood actors to appear in her films.

Who else but Campion could have convinced a tattooed Harvey Keitel to run buck-naked through the New Zealand landscape in The Piano, or for the multi award-winning Kate Winslet to pee down her legs in the middle of the desert in Holy Smoke?

Campion is also an outspoken champion in recent debates about the lack of women in senior creative positions within the film industry.

This book covers Jane Campion’s remarkable career from her Palme d’Or winning debut short film Peel to her recent return to television with the Top of the Lake series, reflecting on the influence of her study in anthropology as well as her formative years growing up in New Zealand.

Reviews

“Ellen Cheshire’s rich and thoughtful study accessibly and incisively gets us to the heart of why Jane Campion’s films connect with viewers around the world. This book is hugely enjoyable and insightful.”  -- James Clarke, Writer, Media Labs, what you need to know.

"I''ve been fascinated with Jane Campion''s career ever since I saw "The Piano" make its debut at the movie theater. Ellen Cheshire did a very good job in detailing the gifted Campion''s "brilliant career..."  ****-- Diane H, NetGalley

"The strength of the book for me is the critical analysis from early short films to box office successes, ranging from the actors involved and the awards gained. I particularly like the appraisal of mood, colour, camera angles and locations which brings the movies alive again for me. A bit like those special box sets and DVDs that carried extra edited bits and alternative scenes/endings." **** -- Richard L, Net Galley

About the author

Ellen Cheshire has a BA (Hons) in Film and English and a MA in Gothic Studies and has taught Film at Undergraduate and A Level.She has published books on Bio-Pics, Audrey Hepburn and The Coen Brothers and contributed chapters to books on James Bond, Charlie Chaplin, Global Film-making, Film Form, Fantasy Films and War Movies.

For Supernova Books, she has also written In the Scene: Ang Lee, and contributed to Silent Women; pioneers of Cinema eds. Melody Bridges and Cheryl Robson (voted best book on Silent Film 2016) and Counterculture UK; a celebration eds. Rebecca Gillieron and Cheryl Robson.

Ang Lee came to the fore in the 1990s as one of the ‘second wave’ of Taiwanese directors. After studying at New York University, Lee returned to Taiwan where over the next three consecutive years he directed three comedy-dramas focusing on aspects of the East vs. West culture and its impact on the family – Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman. Considering Lee’s background it is surprising that he should be approached to direct the most British of novels, Jane Austen’s Sense And Sensibility. It was a tremendous critical and commercial success. Since then Lee’s projects have been both eclectic and striking – he took on the American suburbs of the 1970s and the war-torn American South of the 1860s in The Ice Storm and Ride With The Devil. But it was his triumphant return to the East with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which has transformed him into an internationally successful director.

He followed this with his somewhat flawed foray into the Marvel Universe with Hulk. His heartbreaking adaptation of Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain brought him international critical and commercial success.  But forever the genre and language-hopping director, Lee’s next films were much smaller in scale and reach –  Lust, Caution (a Chinese erotic espionage thriller) and Taking Woodstock (American comedy-drama). His most recent film was an adaptation of Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi pushed the boundaries of CGI animation and showed how a director with great visual flair could enhance a film with 3D. His continual desire for embracing new technology divided critics and audiences for Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, an adaptation of Ben Fountain’s 2012 Iraq-war set novel, and The Gemini Man with Will Smith.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ellen Cheshire has a BA (Hons) in Film and English and a MA in Gothic Studies and has taught Film at Undergraduate and A Level. She has published books on Bio-Pics, Audrey Hepburn and The Coen Brothers and contributed chapters to books on James Bond, Charlie Chaplin, Global Film-making, Film Form, Fantasy Films and War Movies. She is also one of a team of four writers for the new A Level WJEC Film Text Book published in 2018. For us, she has written In the Scene: Jane Campion and  In the Scene: Ang Lee, and contributed to Silent Women: Pioneers of Cinema eds. Melody Bridges and Cheryl Robson (voted best book on Silent Film 2016) and Counterculture UK: a celebration eds. Rebecca Gillieron and Cheryl Robson.

With a foreword by Professor James Wicks

James Wicks, Ph.D. writes about pop culture. He is the author of two books. Transnational Representations: The State of Taiwan Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s (Hong Kong University Press, 2014), and An Annotated Bibliography of Taiwan Film Studies (Columbia University Press, 2016) with Jim Cheng and Sachie Noguchi.

He grew up in Taiwan, completed his dissertation on Chinese Cinema at the University of California, San Diego in 2010, and is currently a Professor of Literature and Film Studies at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California where he teaches World Cinema and Postcolonialism courses.