Joseph Mai – Författare

For well over a decade, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have produced highly original and ethically charged films that immerse their audiences in an intense and embodied viewing experience. Their work has consistently attracted international recognition, including the rare feat of two Palmes d'Or at Cannes.In this first book-length study of the Belgian brothers, Joseph Mai delivers sophisticated close analyses of their directorial style and explores the many philosophical issues dealt with in their films (especially the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas). Mai discusses the Dardennes' varied and searching career from its inception in the late 1970s, starting with the working-class political consciousness and lost utopias of their documentary period; passing through their transition toward fictional narrative, experimental techniques, and familial themes; and finishing with a series of in-depth and philosophically informed interpretations of the brothers' more recent work. In such highly influential films such as La promesse, Rosetta, The Son, and The Child, the brothers have recast filmmaking through what Mai calls a "sensuous realism"--realism capable of touching the audience with the most compelling problems and moral dilemmas of contemporary society. This volume also features an interview in which the Dardennes discuss their approach to film production and the direction of actors.

Intervening at the crossroads of philosophy, politics, and cinema, this book argues that the career of Robert Guédiguian, director of Marius et Jeannette (1997) and other popular auteurist films, can be read as an original and coherent project: to make a committed, historically-conscious cinema with friends, in a local space, and over a long period of time. Illustrated with comprehensive readings of all of Guédiguian's films.

Intervening at the crossroads of philosophy, politics, and cinema, this book argues that the career of Robert Guédiguian is the result of one of the most original and coherent projects in contemporary French cinema: to make a committed, historically-conscious cinema, in a local space, over a long period of time, but most especially with friends.The account starts with in-depth consideration of friendship and its relation to philosophy, politics, time, and space. The book chronologically traces this project as it begins in Guédiguian's hometown, the Communist-leaning Marseille. It further unfolds through the political transformations of the 1980s Left and the local activism and utopias of the 1990s, and spreads into Guédiguian's varied explorations of genre and register. Close analysis is accompanied with historical and social contextualization, but also with a consistent return to the underlying, radical and philosophically rich project.

Nominated for 2022 South Atlantic Modern Language Association Book awardBorn in 1964, Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh grew up in the midst of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal reign of terror, which claimed the lives of many of his relatives. After escaping to France, where he attended film school, he returned to his homeland in the late 1980s and began work on the documentaries and fiction films that have made him Cambodia’s most celebrated living director.The fourteen essays in The Cinema of Rithy Panh explore the filmmaker’s unique aesthetic sensibility, examining the dynamic and sensuous images through which he suggests that “everything has a soul.” They consider how Panh represents Cambodia’s traumatic past, combining forms of individual and collective remembrance, and the implications of this past for Cambodia’s transition into a global present. Covering documentary and feature films, including his literary adaptations of Marguerite Duras and Kenzaburō Ōe, they examine how Panh’s attention to local context leads to a deep understanding of such major themes in global cinema as justice, imperialism, diaspora, gender, and labor. Offering fresh takes on masterworks like The Missing Picture and S-21 while also shining a light on the director’s lesser-known films, The Cinema of Rithy Panh will give readers a new appreciation for the boundless creativity and ethical sensitivity of one of Southeast Asia’s cinematic visionaries.