Great Directors

"Great Directors", directed by Angela Ismailos, features conversations with ten of the world's greatest living directors: Bernardo Bertolucci, David Lynch, Liliana Cavani, Stephen Frears, Agnes Varda, Ken Loach, Todd Haynes, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater and John Sayles.

We get to meet some great talent here. Catherine Breillat may not be well known, but her films are an emotional experience. After seeing this, many people will likely try to track down her work.

We find that David Lynch's career was really launched by Mel Brooks. Making "Dune" was a "75% nightmare", which he attributes to not having the final cut. He reflectively sees the failure of "Dune" as a blessing, though, because he could only go up after that. And, with "Blue Velvet", he certainly did go up.

You can hear about Ken Loach's socialism and Todd Haynes' "new queer cinema"; Haynes sees Fassbinder as his "template", which is an interesting choice. Fassbinder himself seems to be loved by film geeks and forgotten by almost all others. We also see that Roger Corman protégé John Sayles works sometimes for money, sometimes for love...