Paul Schrader Schrader's upbringing and critical writing[edit] Schrader was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son of Joan (née Fisher) and Charles A. Schrader, an executive.[1] Schrader's family practiced in the Calvinist Christian Reformed Church,[2][3] and his early life was based upon the religion's strict principles and parental education. He did not see a film until he was seventeen years old, and was able to sneak away from home. In an interview he stated that The Absent-Minded Professor was the first film he saw. In his own words, he was "very unimpressed" by it, while Wild in the Country, which he saw some time later, had quite some effect on him.[4] Schrader refers his intellectual rather than emotional approach towards movies and movie-making to his having no adolescent movie memories.[5] The September–October 2006 issue of Film Comment magazine published his essay Canon Fodder which attempted to establish criteria for judging film masterworks. Film career[edit] Theatre career[edit]
Jack Nicholson John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American actor, film director, producer, and writer. Throughout his career, Jack Nicholson has portrayed unique and challenging roles, many of which include dark portrayals of neurotic and psychopathic characters. Nicholson's 12 Oscar nominations make him the most nominated male actor in the history of the Academy Awards. Early life[edit] Nicholson was born on April 22, 1937 in Neptune City, New Jersey,[1] the son of a showgirl, June Frances Nicholson (stage name June Nilson).[2][3] June had married showman Donald Furcillo (stage name Donald Rose) six months earlier in Elkton, Maryland, on October 16, 1936.[4] Furcillo was already married. Nicholson was brought up believing that his maternal grandparents, John Joseph Nicholson (a department store window dresser in Manasquan, New Jersey) and Ethel May (née Rhoads, a hairdresser, beautician and amateur artist in Manasquan), were his parents. Career[edit] Early work[edit]
Otto Preminger Otto Ludwig Preminger (5 December 1905 – 23 April 1986) was an Austrian American theatre and film director. Early life[edit] My father believed that it was impossible to be too kind or too loving to a child. He never punished me. When there were problems he sat down and discussed them with me reasonably, as though I was an adult. After the assassination in 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, which led to the Great War, Russia entered the war on the Serbian side. After a year in Graz, the decisive public prosecutor was summoned to Vienna, where he was offered an eminent position, roughly equivalent to that of the United States Attorney General. Career[edit] Theater[edit] As the war came to an end, Markus formed his own law practice. Preminger explained to his father that a career in theater was not just a ploy to excuse himself from school. Hollywood[edit] Sam Spiegel accompanied Preminger from Vienna to Paris by train. Laura[edit]
Harvey Keitel Early life[edit] Keitel was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the son of Miriam (née Klein) and Harry Keitel, Jewish immigrants from Romania and Poland, respectively.[2] His parents owned and ran a luncheonette and his father also worked as a hat maker. Career[edit] Harvey Keitel in November 2009 Keitel studied under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg and at the HB Studio, eventually landing roles in some Off-Broadway productions.[3] During this time, Keitel auditioned for filmmaker Martin Scorsese and gained a starring role as "J.R Cast as Captain Willard in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Keitel was involved with the first week of principal photography in the Philippines. In 2002 at the 24th Moscow International Film Festival, Keitel was honored with the Stanislavsky Award for his outstanding achievement in the career of acting and devotion to the principles of Stanislavsky's school.[5] He also appeared in the Steinlager Pure commercials in New Zealand in 2007.
Christopher Nolan Christopher Jonathan James Nolan (/ˈnoʊlən/; born 30 July 1970)[1] is an British-American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He has created several of the most critically and commercially successful films of the early 21st century. His nine films have grossed over $4.2 billion worldwide and garnered a total of 26 Oscar nominations and seven awards. Early life[edit] Nolan was born in London. Nolan was educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College, an independent school in Hertford Heath, Hertfordshire, and later read English literature at University College London (UCL). During his college years, Nolan made two short films. Career[edit] 1990s[edit] Early work and Following[edit] 2000s[edit] Memento and Insomnia[edit] —Nolan on the jump from his first film to his second.[19] Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight[edit]
Steve McQueen (director) McQueen was born in London and is of Grenadian[9] descent.[10][11] He grew up in Hanwell, West London and went to Drayton Manor High School.[12][13] In a 2014 interview, McQueen stated that he had a very bad experience in school, where he had been placed into a class for students believed best suited "for manual labour, more plumbers and builders, stuff like that." Later, the new head of the school would admit that there had been "institutional" racism at the time. McQueen added that he was dyslexic and had to wear an eyepatch due to a lazy eye, and reflected this may be why he was "put to one side very quickly".[11] He was a keen football player, turning out for the St. Bear (1993) was McQueen's first major film, presented at the Royal College of Art in London. Five Easy Pieces (1995) is a short film by McQueen. Just Above My Head (1996) is a short film which shares close ties with McQueen's preceding film with the key theme of walking. Brockington, Horace.
Agnès Varda Agnès Varda (born 30 May 1928) is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School.[1] Her films, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style. Early life[edit] Varda was born Arlette Varda in Ixelles (Brussels), Belgium, the daughter of Christiane (née Pasquet) and Eugène Jean Varda, an engineer on May 30, 1928.[2] Her mother was French and her father came from a family of Greek refugees from Asia Minor. When she was a teenager, she escaped Belgium in 1940 and fled to Sète, France to live with the rest of her family. She studied art history and photography at the École des Beaux-Arts. Personal life[edit] While living in Paris, she met her husband, Jacques Demy. Varda was one of the five people to attend Jim Morrison's burial in 1971 in Paris at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Varda's handprints at Cannes Professional life[edit] Involvement in the French New Wave[edit] Style[edit]
David O. Russell Three of Russell's most recent films were critically acclaimed and commercial hits: The Fighter (2010), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), and American Hustle (2013). These films have earned Russell three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, as well as a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Silver Linings Playbook and a Best Original Screenplay nomination for American Hustle. Early life[edit] Russell was born in New York City to Maria (née Muzio) and Bernard (Markovski)[1][2][3] Russell. Russell received his A.B. degree from Amherst College, where he majored in English and Politics, in 1981.[4][19] He wrote his senior thesis on the United States intervention in Chile from 1963 to 1973.[20] Career[edit] Early career[edit] Russell directed a documentary about Panamanian immigrants in Boston,[23] which led to a job as a production assistant on a PBS series called Smithsonian World.[8] Spanking the Monkey[edit] Flirting with Disaster[edit] Three Kings[edit] I Heart Huckabees[edit]
Billy Wilder Billy Wilder (/ˈwaɪldər/; German: [ˈvɪldɐ]; June 22, 1906[1] – March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age. Wilder is one of only five people to have won Academy Awards as producer, director and screenwriter for the same film (The Apartment), and was the first person to accomplish this.[2] Life and career[edit] Austria and Germany[edit] Born Samuel Wilder to a Jewish family in Sucha Beskidzka, Austria-Hungary (it was the part of Poland that had been subjugated to the Austria-Hungary empire following the eighteenth-century partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and after the end of WWI Poland again) to Max and Eugenia (née Dittler) Wilder, he was nicknamed Billie by his mother (he changed that to "Billy" after arriving in America). Hollywood career[edit]
Jean-Pierre Melville Jean-Pierre Melville (born Jean-Pierre Grumbach; 20 October 1917 – 2 August 1973) was a French filmmaker. While with the French Resistance during World War II, he adopted the nom de guerre Melville as a tribute to his favorite American author, Herman Melville.[1] He kept it as his stage name once the war was over. Life and career[edit] Jean-Pierre Grumbach was born in 1917 in Paris, France, the son of Berthe and Jules Grumbach.[2] His family were Alsatian Jews. After the fall of France in 1940 during World War II, Grumbach entered the French Resistance to oppose the German Nazis who occupied the country. He adopted the nom de guerre Melville, after the American author Herman Melville, a favorite of his. When he returned from the war, he applied for a license to become an assistant director, but was refused. Although a friend of left-wing icons such as Yves Montand, Melville referred to himself as "an extreme individualist" and "a right-wing anarchist" in terms of politics.[3] As actor[edit]
Roman Polanski Roman Polanski (born Rajmund Roman Thierry Polański; 18 August 1933) is a Polish and, since 1976, naturalized-French[1] film director, producer, writer, and actor. Having made films in Poland, the United Kingdom, France and the United States, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."[2] Polanski's films have inspired diverse directors, including the Coen brothers,[3] Wes Anderson,[4] David Fincher,[5] Atom Egoyan,[6] Darren Aronofsky,[7] Park Chan-wook,[8] Sean Durkin,[9] Abel Ferrara,[10] and Wes Craven.[11] Early life World War II I had just been visiting my grandmother ... when I received a foretaste of things to come. As he roamed the countryside trying to survive in a Poland now occupied by German troops, he witnessed many horrors, such as being "forced to take part in a cruel and sadistic game in which German soldiers took shots at him for target practice After the war After the war he was reunited with his father, and moved back to Kraków. Film director 1960s
George A. Romero Life and career[edit] Romero was born in New York City borough of The Bronx, to a Cuban-born father of Spanish parentage and a Lithuanian American mother.[2] His father has been reported as born in A Coruña with his family coming from the Galician town of Neda,[3][4] although George A. Romero once described his father as of Castilian descent.[5] His father worked as a commercial artist.[6] Romero attended Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. "It was the filmmaking, the fantasy, the fact that it was a fantasy and it had a few frightening, sort of bizarre things in it. Between these two films, Romero shot Knightriders (1981), another festival favorite about a group of modern-day jousters who reenact tournaments on motorcycles, and the successful Creepshow (1982), written by Stephen King, an anthology of tongue-in-cheek tales modeled after 1950s horror comics. Romero, who lives in Toronto, filmed a fourth "Dead" movie in that city titled Land of the Dead. Personal life[edit] Legacy[edit]
Alan J. Pakula Career[edit] In 1971, Pakula released the first installment of what would informally come to be known as his "paranoia trilogy". Klute, the story of a relationship between a private eye (played by Donald Sutherland) and a call girl (played by Jane Fonda, who won an Oscar for her performance), was a commercial and critical success. Personal life[edit] Pakula was born in The Bronx, New York to parents of Polish Jewish descent, Jeanette (née Goldstein) and Paul Pakula.[3] He was educated at The Hill School, Pottstown, PA and Yale University, where he majored in drama. He has two stepchildren from his marriage with Hope Lange, Christopher and Patricia Murray and three stepchildren from his second marriage. Death[edit] Pakula died on November 19, 1998 in a freak car accident on the Long Island Expressway in Melville, New York. Filmography[edit] References[edit] External links[edit]