Mavericks

Interviews with the World's Iconoclast Filmmakers

Gerald Peary

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9780813197944
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813197968
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Películas y vídeos

In the New Hollywood Era of the 1960s and 1970s, as weakening studio control granted directors more artistic freedom, the auteur theory, which regards the director as the primary artist among all those who contribute to filmmaking, gained traction. It was embraced by both the media and by directors themselves, who were glad to see their contribution so glorified. One positive was the discovery of filmmakers whose work was under the radar but virtually all the feted directors were white and overwhelmingly heterosexual—only in recent decades have the contributions of marginalized auteur filmmakers been recognized.
Mavericks: Interviews with the World's Iconoclast Filmmakers amplifies the voices of a wide-ranging group of groundbreaking filmmakers, including Samira Makhmalbaf, Roberta Findlay, Howard Alk, Ousmane Sembéne, and John Waters, whose identities, perspectives, and works are antithetical to typical Hollywood points of view. Author Gerald Peary, whose experience as a film studies professor, film critic, arts journalist, and director of documentaries culminates in a lifetime of film scholarship, presents a riveting collection of interviews with directors—including Black, queer, female, and non-Western filmmakers—whose unconventional work is marked by their unique artistic points of view and molded by their social and political consciousness. With contextualizing introductions and insightful questions, Peary reveals the brilliance of these maverick directors and offers readers a lens into the minds of these incredible and engaging artists.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Howard Alk: The Murder of Fred Hampton
• Ousmane Sembène
• An Interview with Marcel Ophuls
• Bernardo Bertolucci and 1900
• Pell Mel Brooks . . . and He Is Mild
• Interview with Hal Ashby regarding Coming Home
• Roberta Findlay: Woman in Porn
• Short Visits with Three European Masters
• Interview with Martin Ritt
• Two Interviews with Margarethe von Trotta
• Bill Forsyth: Speaking with Scotland’s Finest Filmmaker
• A Rare-and-Brief Glimpse of Director Akira Kurosawa
• Norman Mailer: Where Tough Guys Spend the Winter
• Volker Schlöndorff and Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale Depicts Futuristic Puritans in Harvard Square
• Three Short Encounters with Gus Van Sant
• Hybrid Identities: An Interview with Agnieszka Holland
• Errol Morris and Stephen Hawking: The Universe in a Mind
• Two Interviews with Gillo Pontecorvo
• Two Short Interviews with Liv Ullmann
• Two Interviews with Jim Jarmusch
• Interview with Frederick Wiseman
• A Talk with Benôit Jacquot
• Two Interviews with John Waters
• Set This House on Fire: William Styron and Charles Burnett
• Voices in the Middle East
• Index
• Series Page