To Each His Own Cinema

David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, comic book artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery, and... meticulous sound design. The surreal, and in many cases violent, elements to his films have earned them the reputation that they "disturb, offend or mystify" their audiences. Born to a middle class family in Missoula, Montana, Lynch spent his childhood traveling around the United States, before going on to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he first made the transition to producing short films. Deciding to devote himself more fully to this medium, he moved to Los Angeles, where he produced his first motion picture, the surrealist horror Eraserhead . After Eraserhead became a cult classic on the midnight movie circuit, Lynch was employed to direct The Elephant Man , from which he gained mainstream success.
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Elia Suleiman , is a Palestinian film director and actor. He is best known for the 2002 film Divine Intervention , a modern tragic comedy on living under occupation in Palestine which won the Jury Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. Elia Suleiman's cinematic style is often compared to that of... Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, for its poetic interplay between "burlesque and sobriety". Between 1982–1993, Suleiman lived in New York City, where he co-directed: Introduction to the End of an Argument and directed Homage by Assassination, that both won numerous awards. An experimental video film, co-directed by Jayce Salloum, Introduction to the End of an Argument critiqued the portrayal of Arabs in Western media and its effect on foreign policy by juxtaposing clips from Hollywood films, television broadcasts and cartoons with live scenes from the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Homage by Assassination is a "diary film" that critiques the 1991 Gulf War via the juxtaposition of multilayered personal anecdotes and identity.
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Walter Moreira Salles, Jr. is a Brazilian filmmaker and film producer of international prominence. Salles was born in Rio de Janeiro. He is the son of Elizinha Goncalves and Walter Moreira Salles, a Brazilian banker and ambassador, and the brother of João Moreira Salles, also a filmmaker.... Both, along with two other brothers, banker, Pedro Moreira Salles and eldest brother and publisher, Fernando Moreira Salles, were heirs to the bank Unibanco, one of the largest and richest in South America, which merged with Banco Itaú in 2009-10. Salles attended the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. Salles's first notable film was Terra Estrangeira , released in Brazil in 1995. Locally, it was widely acclaimed by film critics and a minor box-office hit, and it was selected by over 40 film festivals worldwide. In 1998 he released Central do Brasil to widespread international acclaim and two Academy Awards nominations, for Best Actress in a Leading Role and Best Foreign Language Film. In 2001, Abril Despedaçado , starring Rodrigo Santoro, was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Golden Globes.
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Giovanni "Nanni" Moretti is an Italian film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. In January 2012, he was announced as the President of the Jury at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Moretti was born in Bruneck, South Tyrol , in 1953 to parents who were teachers. His father was the late... epigraphist Luigi Moretti, an influential Greek teacher at Rome La Sapienza. While growing up he discovered his two passions, the cinema and water polo. Having finished his studies he pursued a career as a producer, and in 1973 directed his first two short films: Pate de bourgeois and La sconfitta . In 1976, his first feature film Io sono un autarchico was released. Subsequently in 1978, he produced the movie Ecce Bombo, which tells the story of a student having problems with his entourage. It was screened at the Cannes Festival. His film Sogni d'oro won the Silver Lion at the 38th Venice International Film Festival. His 1985 film La messa è finita won the Silver Bear - Special Jury Prize at the 36th Berlin International Film Festival.
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Raúl Ernesto Ruiz Pino was an award-winning experimental Chilean filmmaker, writer and teacher whose work is best known in France. He directed over 100 films. The son of a ship's captain and a schoolteacher in southern Chile, Raúl Ruiz abandoned his university studies in theology and law... to write 100 plays with the support of a Rockefeller Foundation grant. He went on to learn his craft working in Chilean and Mexican television and studying at film school in Argentina . Back in Chile, he made his feature debut Three Sad Tigers , sharing the Golden Leopard at the 1969 Locarno Film Festival. He was something of an outsider among the politically oriented filmmakers of his generation such as Miguel Littín and Patricio Guzmán, his work being far more ironic, surrealistic and experimental. In 1973, shortly after the military coup d'état led by the dictator Augusto Pinochet, Ruiz and his wife fled Chile and settled in Paris, France.
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Wong Kar-wai BBS is a Hong Kong Second Wave filmmaker, internationally renowned as an auteur for his visually unique, highly stylised, emotionally resonant work, including Days of Being Wild , Ashes of Time , Chungking Express , Fallen Angels , Happy Together and 2046 . His film In the Mood for... Love , starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, garnered widespread critical acclaim. Wong's films frequently feature protagonists who yearn for romance in the midst of a knowingly brief life and scenes that can often be described as sketchy, digressive, exhilarating, and containing vivid imagery. Wong was listed at number three on the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound Top Ten Directors list of modern times. Born in Shanghai, he moved to Hong Kong with his parents at the age of five. Coming from the Mainland and speaking only Mandarin and Shanghainese, he spent hours in cinemas with his mother. After graduating from Hong Kong Polytechnic College in graphic design in 1980, he enrolled in the Production Training Course organised by Hong Kong Television Broadcasts Limited and became a full-time television screenwriter.
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Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most celebrated "Second New Wave" film directors of Taiwanese Cinema, along with earlier contemporaries such as Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang. His films have been acclaimed worldwide and have won numerous film festival awards. Tsai was born in Malaysia of Chinese... ethnic background and spent his first 20 years of his life in Kuching, Sarawak, after which he moved to Taipei, Taiwan. This, he says, had "a huge impact on [his] mind and psyche," perhaps later mirrored in his films. "Even today," says Tsai, "I feel I belong neither to Taiwan nor to Malaysia. In a sense, I can go anywhere I want and fit in, but I never feel that sense of belonging." He graduated from the Drama and Cinema Department of the Chinese Culture University of Taiwan in 1982 and worked as a theatrical producer, screenwriter, and television director in Hong Kong.
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Gilles Jacob is a film director.

Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective – an avant-garde filmmaking movement – although his own films have taken a variety of approaches. His work has frequently divided the critics. Von Trier began making films... at the age of eleven. Raised by a communist mother and a socialist father in an austere environment, he converted at the age of 30 to the Catholic Church. Von Trier suffers periodically from depression, as well as various fears and phobias, including an intense fear of flying. As he himself said in an interview, "Basically, I'm afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking".. His first publicly released film was an experimental short called The Orchid Gardener and his first feature film came seven years later with The Element of Crime . Among many other prizes, awards and nominations, he is the recipient of the Palme d'Or, the Grand Prix, and the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Lars Trier was born in Kongens Lyngby, north of Copenhagen, the son of Inger Trier .
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Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American film director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director — for Good Will Hunting and Milk , both of which were also nominated for Best Picture — and won the Palme... d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his film Elephant . He lives in Portland, Oregon. His early career was devoted to directing television commercials in the Pacific Northwest. In his films, he has dealt with themes concerning homosexuality and other marginalized subcultures. His filmography as writer and director includes a 1994 adaptation of Tom Robbins' 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which features a diverse cast ; and My Own Private Idaho , also starring Reeves as well as River Phoenix. He wrote the screenplays for most of his early movies, and wrote one novel, Pink. A book of his photography has also been published, called 108 Portraits.
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Roman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers." Polanski's films have inspired diverse directors, including the Coen brothers, Atom Egoyan,... Darren Aronofsky, Park Chan-wook, Abel Ferrara, and Wes Craven. Born in Paris to Polish parents, he moved with his family back to Poland in 1937, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Holocaust and was educated in Poland and became a director of both art house and commercial films. Polanski's first feature-length film, Knife in the Water , made in Poland, was nominated for a United States Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film but was beaten by Federico Fellini's 8½. He has since received five more Oscar nominations, along with two Baftas, four Césars, a Golden Globe Award and the Palme d'Or of the Cannes Film Festival in France. In the United Kingdom he directed three films, beginning with Repulsion . In 1968 he moved to the United States, and cemented his status by directing the Oscar-winning horror film Rosemary's Baby .
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Theodoros "Theo" Angelopoulos , was a Greek filmmaker, screenwriter and film producer. This acclaimed and multi-awarded film director, who has dominated the Greek art film industry since 1975, and is considered one of the most influential and widely respected filmmakers in the world, started... making films in 1967. In the 1970s he made a series of political films about modern Greece. Angelopoulos, defined by Martin Scorsese as "a masterful filmmaker", has developed a unique cinematic vision, characterized by slightest movement, slightest change in distance, long takes, and complicated but carefully composed scenes, offering a hypnotic, sweeping, and profoundly emotional cinema. In 1998 his film, Eternity and a Day, went on to win the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 51st edition of the Cannes Film Festival, and his films have been shown at the most important film festivals around the world. Theodoros Angelopoulos was born in Athens on 17 April 1935.
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Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer. Since 1996, Wenders has been the president of the European Film Academy in Berlin. Wenders was born in Düsseldorf into a traditional Catholic family. His father, Heinrich Wenders, was a... surgeon. Use of the Dutch name, "Wim", a shortened version of the baptismal name "Wilhelm/Willem", reflected his mother's Dutch provenance, but the Dutch version was rejected by the civil registration authorities in 1945 as "unGerman". He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf. However, he dropped out of university studies and moved to Paris in October 1966 to become a painter. Wenders failed his entry test at France's national film school IDHEC , and instead became an engraver in the studio of Johnny Friedlander, an American artist, in Montparnasse. During this time, Wenders became fascinated with cinema, and saw up to five movies a day at the local movie theater.
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Kenneth "Ken" Loach is a Palme D'Or winning English film and television director. He is known for his naturalistic, social realist directing style and for his socialist beliefs, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as homelessness and labour rights . Loach was born in... Nuneaton, Warwickshire, the son of Vivien and John Loach. He attended King Edward VI Grammar School and following two years in the Royal Air Force read law at St Peter's College, Oxford. There he performed in the now well-established comedy group, the Oxford Revue. He initially worked as an actor in repertory theatre, but in the early 1960s moved into television direction and was credited in this role on early episodes of Z-Cars in 1964. In 1966, Loach made the influential docudrama Cathy Come Home portraying working class people affected by homelessness and unemployment, and presenting a powerful and influential critique of the workings of the Social Services.
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Claude Barruck Joseph Lelouch is a French film director, writer, cinematographer, actor and producer. Lelouch was born in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, the son of Charlotte and Simon Lelouch. His father was an Algerian Jew and his mother was a convert to Judaism. His father gave him a camera... to give him a fresh start after his failure in the baccalaureat. He started his career with reportage - one of the first to film daily life in the U.S.S.R., the camera hidden under his coat as he made his personal journey. He also filmed sporting events like the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Tour de France. His first full length film as director, Le Propre de l'homme, was decried by the critics - 'Claude Lelouch, remember this name well, because you will not hear it again' - Cahiers du cinéma said. La Femme Spectacle , following prostitutes, women shopping, going for nose-jobs, was censored for its misogynist tendency. Un homme et une femme changed his fortunes and was met with favour even by the Cahiers group.
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Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky is a Soviet-American and Russian film director, film producer and screenwriter. He is the son of Natalia Konchalovskaya and Sergey Mikhalkov, and brother to Nikita Mikhalkov who is also a well known Russian film director. In 1952, he graduated from the Central Music... School. In 1957, he graduated from Music College of the Moscow Conservatory. 1957-1959 studied piano at the Moscow State Conservatory. In 1965, he graduated in directing from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography where he studied under Mikhail Romm and made his debut film The First Teacher based on Chingiz Aitmatov's story of the same name. He gave the leading role of Altynai to young ballerina Natalia Arinbasarova, whom he later married. In 1972, he was awarded the State Prize of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic after the great success of the film End of the Ataman , for which he wrote the screenplay and which revolved around the NKVD's search for the White Army's field commander Dutov. In 1980, he received the title of National Artist of RSFSR.
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Takeshi Kitano is a Japanese filmmaker, comedian, singer, actor, film editor, presenter, screenwriter, author, poet, painter, and one-time video game designer who has received critical acclaim, both in his native Japan and abroad, for his highly idiosyncratic cinematic work. The famed Japanese... film critic Nagaharu Yodogawa once dubbed him "the true successor" to influential filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. With the exception of his works as a film director, he is known almost exclusively by the name Beat Takeshi . Since April 2005, he has been a professor at the Graduate School of Visual Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts. Kitano owns his own talent agency and production company, Office Kitano, which launched Tokyo Filmex in 2000. Some of Kitano's earlier films are dramas about Yakuza gangsters or the police. Described by critics as using an acting style that is highly deadpan or a camera style that approaches near-stasis, Kitano often uses long takes where little appears to be happening, or editing that cuts immediately to the aftermath of an event.
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Zhang Yimou is a Chinese film director, producer, writer and actor, and former cinematographer. He is counted amongst the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, having made his directorial debut in 1987 with Red Sorghum. Zhang has won numerous awards and recognitions, with Best Foreign Film... nominations for Ju Dou in 1990 and Raise the Red Lantern in 1991, Silver Lion and Golden Lion prizes at the Venice Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. In 1993, he was a member of the jury at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival. One of Zhang's recurrent themes is the resilience of Chinese people in the face of hardship and adversity, a theme which has been explored in such films as, for example, To Live and Not One Less . His films are particularly noted for their rich use of colour, as can be seen in some of his early films, like Raise the Red Lantern, and in his wuxia films like Hero and House of Flying Daggers. His most recent film is a historical drama war film called The Flowers of War. Zhang was born in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province.
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Jean-Pierre Dardenne is a film director, film producer, and screenwriter.

Luc Dardenne is a film director, film producer, and screenwriter.

David Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the... psychological is typically intertwined with the physical. In the first half of his career, he explored these themes mostly through horror and science fiction, although his work has since expanded beyond these genres. He has been called "the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world." Born in Toronto, Canada, Cronenberg was the son of Esther , a musician, and Milton Cronenberg, a writer and editor. His family has been described as "a nurturing middle class family." He began writing as a child and wrote constantly. He attended high school at Harbord Collegiate Institute. A keen interest in science, especially botany and lepidopterology, led him to enter the Honours Science program the University of Toronto in 1963, but he switched to Honors English Language and Literature later in his first year.
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Joel Coen is a film director, producer, actor, editor and screenwriter.

Ethan Coen is a film director, producer, editor and screenwriter.

Michael Cimino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and author. He is best known for directing, producing and co-writing the 1978 Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter and the infamous Heaven's Gate. His films are characterized by their striking visual style and controversial... subject matter. Michael Cimino was born in New York City on February 3, 1939. A third-generation Italian-American, Cimino grew up in Old Westbury, Long Island. He was regarded as a prodigy at the private schools his parents sent him to, but rebelled against his parents by consorting with lowlifes, getting into fights and coming home drunk. Of this time, Cimino described himself as "always hanging around with kids my parents didn't approve of. Those guys were so alive. When I was fifteen I spent three weeks driving all over Brooklyn with a guy who was following his girlfriend. He was convinced she was cheating on him, and he had a gun, he was going to kill her. There was such passion and intensity about their lives. When the rich kids got together, the most we ever did was cross against a red light." His father was a music publisher.
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Chen Kaige is a Chinese film director and a leading figure of the fifth generation of Chinese cinema. His films are known for their visual flair and epic storytelling. Chen Kaige was born in Beijing, China into a family of Fuzhou Changle origin, and grew up with fellow Fifth Generation alumnus... Tian Zhuangzhuang as a childhood friend. During the Cultural Revolution, Chen joined the Red Guards. His father, Chen Huai'ai was a well-known director in his own right. As a teenage member of the Red Guards, Chen, like many other youths, denounced his own father, a fateful decision he eventually learned to regret. Indeed, this period of his life continues to influence much of his work today, notably in the unblinking depictions of the Cultural Revolution in Farewell My Concubine, and in the father-son relationship in Together. With the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chen, in 1978 joined the Beijing Film Academy, where he graduated from in 1982 as part of the so-called Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers.
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Youssef Chahine was an Egyptian film director active in the Egyptian film industry since 1950. He was credited with launching the career of actor Omar Sharif. A critically acclaimed director frequently seen in film festivals during decades, Chahine also had his reach to wider international... filmgoers' audiences as one of the co-directors of 11'9"01 September 11. Chahine was born on 25 Jan. 1926 in Alexandria, Egypt to a Lebanese Catholic family . Although born a Christian, Youssef Chahine was not a believer in organised religion and it was stated that, if asked of his religion, he would reply: Egyptian. Fascinated by the performing arts from an early age, young Chahine began to create shows at home for his family. Chahine began his education at a Frères' school Collège Saint Marc. Growing up, he attended Alexandria's elite Victoria College. In 1946, Chahine convinced his parents to let him travel to Hollywood to study acting, where he attended the Pasadena Playhouse outside of Los Angeles, California. After returning to Egypt, he turned his attention to directing.
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Jane Campion is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and director from New Zealand. Campion is the second of four women ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. She also is the first female filmmaker in history to receive the Palme d'Or for direction. Campion was born in Wellington, New... Zealand, the daughter of Edith, an actress, and Richard Campion, a theater and opera director. She graduated with a degree in anthropology from Victoria University of Wellington in 1975. In 1976 she attended Chelsea Art School in London and travelled in Europe. She graduated with a painting major at the Sydney College of the Arts in Australia in 1979. She made her first short film, Tissues in 1981. In 1982 she began studying at the Australian Film and Television School where she made further short films. Campion started making films in the early 1980s at the Australian Film Television and Radio School. Her first short film, Peel won the Short Film Palme d'Or at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, and other awards followed for the shorts Passionless Moments , Girls Own Story and After Hours .
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Bille August is a Danish Academy Award winning film and television director. His film Pelle the Conqueror from 1987 won the Palme D'or, Academy Award and Golden Globe. He is one of the very few directors to win the Palme D'or twice, winning the prestigious award again in 1992 for The Best... Intentions, based on the autobiographical script by Ingmar Bergman. He was married to Swedish actress Pernilla August from 1991 to 1997. His son Anders August is a screenwriter. On 23 September 2011, Bille August announced that he has opened his studio in Hangzhou, China and taken a position as Tianpeng Media's Art Director, aiming to produce Chinese films for Tianpeng Media over the next few years. Tianpeng Media is a new media company established in 2010. The company so far has produced two films, The Women Knight of Mirror and The Years of Qi Xiao Fu , which will be released later this year. Bille is the first foreign director to be hired by the Chinese film company. Recently, August also accepted the invitation from the Hangzhou government to serve as a "culture consultant" for the city.
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Olivier Assayas is a French film director and screenwriter. He made his debut in 1986, after directing some short films and writing for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma. Assayas's father was French director/screenwriter Jacques Rémy . Assayas started his career in the... industry by helping him. He ghostwrote episodes for TV shows his father was working on when his health failed. Assayas's film Cold Water was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. His biggest hit to date has been Irma Vep, starring Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung, which manages to be a tribute both to French director Louis Feuillade and to Hong Kong cinema. While working at Cahiers du cinéma, Assayas wrote lovingly about European film directors he admires but also about Asian directors. One of his latest films is a documentary about Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien. He married Hong Kong movie actress Maggie Cheung in 1998. They divorced in 2001, but their relationship remained amicable, and in 2004 Cheung made her award-winning movie Clean with him. He married actress-director Mia Hansen-Løve.
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Aki Olavi Kaurismäki ; born 4 April 1957, Orimattila, Finland is a Finnish screenwriter and film director. After studying Media Studies at the University of Tampere, Aki Kaurismäki started his career as a co-director in the films of his elder brother Mika Kaurismäki. His debut as an... independent director was Crime and Punishment , Dostoyevsky's famous crime story set in modern-day Helsinki. He gained worldwide notice with his movie Leningrad Cowboys Go America. His style has been influenced by the French directors Jean-Pierre Melville and Robert Bresson, as he relies on low-key acting and simple cinematic storytelling to get his message across. Critics have also seen an influence from Rainer Werner Fassbinder but Kaurismäki - a keen film buff himself - has said that he somehow never got around to seeing any Fassbinder movies until quite recently. His movies have a unique downplayed humorous side that can also be seen in the films of Jim Jarmusch, who has a cameo in Kaurismäki's film Leningrad Cowboys Go America.
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Alejandro González Iñárritu is a Mexican film director. González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and by the Directors Guild of America for Best Director. He is also the first and only Mexican born director... to have won the Prix de la mise en scene or best director award at Cannes . His four feature films Amores perros , 21 Grams , Babel and Biutiful have gained critical acclaim worldwide including 12 Academy Award nominations. He was born in Mexico City to Hector González Gama and Luz María Iñárritu. He grew up in La Colonia Narvarte, a middle class neighborhood near downtown Mexico City. His father used to be a rich banker, but when Alejandro was five or six years old, he went bankrupt and lost everything. Alejandro says his father has been his inspiration because he took care of his family "with the virtue of a warrior". His father started a business by himself, buying fruits and vegetables in the Central de Abasto market in order to sell them to restaurants during the day.
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Hou Hsiao-Hsien is an award-winning film director and a leading figure of Taiwan's New Wave cinema movement. A Hakka, Hou Hsiao-Hsien was born in Mei County, Guangdong province in 1947. He and his family fled the Chinese Civil War to Taiwan the following year. Hou was educated at the National... Taiwan Academy of the Arts. Hou generally makes rigorously minimalist dramas dealing with the upheavals of the Taiwanese history of the past century by viewing its impacts on individuals or small groups of characters. A City of Sadness , for example, portrays a family caught in conflicts between the local Taiwanese and the newly arrived Chinese Nationalist government after World War II. It was groundbreaking for broaching this long-taboo subject and became a major success despite its seemingly uncommercial nature. His storytelling is elliptical and his style marked by extreme long takes with minimal camera movement but intricate choreography of actors and space within the frame.
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Atom Egoyan, OC is a critically acclaimed Canadian stage director and film director. Egoyan made his career breakthrough with Exotica . His most critically acclaimed film is The Sweet Hereafter , and his biggest commercial success is Chloe . Egoyan has been nominated for two Academy Awards - The... Sweet Hereafter for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. He also won several awards at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and Genie Awards. His work often explores themes of alienation and isolation, featuring characters whose interactions are mediated through technology, bureaucracy or other power structures. Egoyan's films often follow non-linear plot-structures, in which events are placed out of sequence in order to elicit specific emotional reactions from the audience by withholding key information. In 2008 Egoyan received the Dan David Prize for "Creative Rendering of the Past". Egoyan was born Atom Yeghoyan in Cairo, Egypt, the son of Shushan and Joseph Yeghoyan, artists who operated a furniture store.
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Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira, GCSE is a Portuguese film director born in Cedofeita, Porto. He began working on films in the late 1920s, but did not receive international recognition until the early 1970s. Since the late 1980s he has been one of the most prolific working film directors and... continues to make an average of one film per year past the age of 100. In March 2008 he was reported to be the oldest active film director in the world, and is possibly the second oldest film director ever after George Abbott. He is also the only filmmaker whose active career has spanned from the silent era to the digital age. Among his numerous awards are two Career Golden Lions from the Venice Film Festival. Manoel de Oliveira was born in Porto, Portugal, on December 11, 1908, to Francisco José de Oliveira and Cândida Ferreira Pinto. His family were wealthy industrialists and agricultural landowners. His father owned a dry-goods factory, produced the first electric light bulbs in Portugal and built an electric energy plant before he died in 1932.
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Amos Gitai , born 11 October 1950 in Haifa, Israel, is an acclaimed filmmaker in Israel and worldwide, with major retrospectives to his works at Centre Georges Pompidou, MoMA, Lincoln Center New-York, British Film Institute and others, with substantial body of work of more than 40 films, fiction... and documentaries which had been widely distributed. Between 1999 and 2011 seven of his films entered the Cannes Film Festival for the Golden Palm Award, as well as the Venice Film Festival for the Golden Lion award. Throughout the years Gitai collaborated with Juliette Binoche, Jeanne Moreau, Natalie Portman, Yael Abecassis, Samuel Fuller, Barbara Hendricks, Léa Seydoux, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Simon Stockhausen, Markus Stockhausen, Henri Alekan, Renato Berta, Eric Gautier and others. Gitai was born in 1950 in Haifa to Munio Weinraub and Efratia Margalit. His father was an architect of the pre-war Bauhaus movement in Germany. His parents changed the family name to Gitai. Amos holds a degree in architecture from the Technion in Haifa and a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Abbas Kiarostami is an internationally acclaimed Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer. An active filmmaker since 1970, Kiarostami has been involved in over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker... Trilogy , Taste of Cherry , and The Wind Will Carry Us . Kiarostami has worked extensively as a screenwriter, film editor, art director and producer and has designed credit titles and publicity material. He is also a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator, and graphic designer. He is part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that started in the late 1960s and includes pioneering directors such as Forough Farrokhzad, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Bahram Beizai, and Parviz Kimiavi. These filmmakers share many common techniques including the use of poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling dealing with political and philosophical issues.
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Raymond Depardon is a French photographer, photojournalist and documentary filmmaker. Depardon is for the most part a self-taught photographer, as he began taking pictures on his family's farm when he was 12. He apprenticed with a photographer-optician in Villefranche-sur-Saône before he... moved to Paris in 1958. He began his career as a photojournalist in the early 1960s. He travelled to conflict zones including Algeria, Vietnam, Biafra and Chad. In 1966, Depardon co-founded the photojournalism agency Gamma, and he became its director in 1974. In 1973 he became Gamma’s director. From 1975 to 1977 Depardon traveled in Chad and received a Pulitzer Prize in 1977. The next year he left Gamma to become a Magnum associate, then a full member in 1979. In the 1990s, Depardon went back to his parents’ farm to photograph rural landscapes in color, and then in 1996 published a black-and-white road journal, In Africa. Depardon is also the author of several documentary shorts and feature films. His approach as a director is influenced by cinéma vérité and direct cinema.
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