Steve Waters

A Life in 16 Films (eBook, PDF)

How Cinema Made a Playwright

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Steve Waters examines how the very idea of film has defined him as a playwright and a person in this book. Through the the lens of cinema, it provides a cultural and political snapshot of life in Britain from the 2nd part of the 20th century up to the present day.

The films spanning almost a century, starting with The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929) and moving most recently to Dark Waters (2019), each chapter examines aspects of Waters's journey from his working-class Midlands upbringing to working in professional theatre to living through the Covid epidemic, through the prism of a particular film.

From The Wizard of Oz to Code Unknown, from sci-fi to documentary, from queer cinema to world cinema, this honest, comic book offers a view of film as a way of thinking about how we live. In doing so, it illuminates culture and politics in the UK over half a century and provides an intimate insight into drama and writing.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK
• Seitenzahl: 144
• Erscheinungstermin: 3. Juni 2021
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781350205246
• Artikelnr.: 61618421

Autorenporträt

Steve Waters's stage plays include The Contingency Plan (2009), Temple (2015), Limehouse (2017); radio includes Miriam and Youssef (2020) for BBC World Service. He has taught at the University of Cambridge, University of Birmingham and currently is Professor of Scriptwriting at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of The Secret Life of Plays (2010), has edited the Contemporary Theatre Review (2013) and written a blog for the Guardian.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction - Dark Waters (2019, Todd Haynes) Watching film in an age of Covid The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming) Working-class cinema-going in the Midlands
children and adult film
the Western
film as an embodiment of maleness Logan's Run (1976, Michael Anderson) Rural England and the appeal of horror and sci-fi
rural v city
class conflict Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979, Werner Herzog) Grammar school in the 80s
uncinematic nature of provincial Britain
discovery of art and European film Solaris (1972, Andrei Tarkovsky) Coming of age during Thatcher and punk
film and cycling
the rise of Channel 4 as a vector for film
second cold war
Solaris v Apocalypse Now Shoah (1985, Claude Lanzmann) Kibbutz Dalia, Israel
Film and internationalism
film and the Holocaust
travels in the Middle East
confirmation bias Vagabond (1985, Agnès Varda) Film and intellectualism at Oxford University
feminist and queer film
making film Comrades (1986, Bill Douglas) Film, work and radical politics
Communist and the city of Bristol
theatre and radical film-making
John Akomfrah and Julian Isaac The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929, Arnold Fanck and GW Pabst) Becoming a teacher
film history and education
falling in love through film Reservoir Dogs (1992, Quentin Tarantino) Studying with playwrights Sarah Kane and David Edgar
Reservoir Dogs and Blasted
caught between film and theatre
influence of David Mamet, Quentin Tarantino and Sarah Kane Winter Light (1963, Ingmar Bergman) Film, marriage and faith
Bergman and Bresson
film as ritual
becoming a theatre director
becoming a playwright Code Unknown (2001, Michael Haneke) Film and London
residential playwright at Hampstead Theatre
writing and multi-culturalism
Haneke's pessimism versus 'Cool Britannia' The Wind Will Carry Us (2000, Abbas Kiarostami) After 9/11
film and the War on Terror
film and having children
writing World music
influence of Iranian film An Inconvenient Truth (2006, Davis Guggenheim) Film and ecology
climate change activism and writing The Contingency Plan
adapting theatre to film Hell or High Water (2016, David Mackenzie) Film and precarity
parents' death
illness
end of cinema
growth of populism Afterword - Girlhood (2019, Céline Sciamma) Watching films with my daughter Index