Böcker utgivna av Film Desk Books

"I'm woken by unbearable pain and since I can't sleep or pace back and forth, I relieve myself by taking this notebook and attempting to cry out my pain to the unknown friends who will read these lines. They exist. I know them without knowing them. I can just see them in the shadows." -Jean CocteauBeginning on August 26, 1945, the day before shooting began, until June 1, 1946, the day after the film was first screened, Jean Cocteau kept a diary of the making of his masterpiece Beauty and the Beast. Throughout he details every stage of production, as he faces and surmounts numerous obstacles including severe problems with his health, and ultimately the great pleasures of camaraderie with his remarkable collaborators: Jean Marais, Henri Alekan, and Christian Bérard, amongst others. New English translation by Nicholas Elliott. "I wonder if these hard days might be the sweetest of my life. Full of friendship, affectionate arguments, laughter, and control over fleeting time." -Jean Cocteau

Conversations with Kiarostami collects for the first time a far ranging series of interviews with the celebrated director Abbas Kiarostami by film critic, and Iranian cinema expert, Godfrey Cheshire. Conducted in the 1990s, these in-depth conversations offer a film-by-film account of Kiarostami's views of his artistic development from his first short "Bread and Alley" in 1970 to the 1999 feature The Wind Will Carry Us, covering his lesser known, and seldom written about, shorts from earlier in his career, along with the masterworks that made him world famous, such as the Koker Trilogy (Where Is the Friend's House?, And Life Goes On, Through the Olive Trees), Close-Up and Taste of Cherry. The book includes a Foreword by Ahmad Kiarostami, the director's son, as well as an introduction from Cheshire that contextualizes the interviews and discusses his relationship with the director.

Three dialogues between Marguerite Duras and Jean-Luc Godard from 1979, 1980 and 1987. Introduction, afterword and footnotes by Cyril Béghin. Translation by Nicholas Elliott. "The two demonstrate a profound shared passion, a way of literally being one with a medium and speaking about it with a dazzling lyricism interspersed with dryly ironic remarks, fueled by a conviction that inspires them to traverse history. Their point of intersection is obvious. Duras, a writer, is also a filmmaker, and Godard, a filmmaker, has maintained a distinctive relationship with literature, writing and speech."-Cyril Béghin

Richard C. Sarafian's Vanishing Point (20th Century Fox, 1971) is the ultimate analog car chase movie with that hard-to-pin-down something extra. Written by renowned Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante under a pseudonym (Guillermo Cain), it's nominally the saga of a speedaddled Vietnam vet existentially on the lam in a Dodge Challenger. It's also a modern Western, a dystopian allegory of our surveillance society, and a love letter to the muscle car, all rolled into one. No surprise it's become a cult classic, adored and paid homage to by Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Bruce Springsteen, Richard Prince, Alberto Moravia, Guns 'n' Roses, Primal Scream, Audioslave, and countless others. In the fifty-plus years since the film's release, the lore and legends around it have grown like Topsy. Now, Robert M. Rubin's Vanishing Point Forever brings together everything there is to know in one lavishly illustrated volume. A monumental treat for anyone who loves film culture, Vanishing Point Forever explores the movie's profound impact across popular media, the arts, and the car world in obsessive detail. Nearly 600 pages include a complete reproduction of the film's final shooting script, pages from Cabrera Infante's early drafts, his own location scouting photos (never seen before), and a gold mine of production and publicity stills, ephemera, excerpts, reflections and essays. Rubin details how the movie came to life - from stars Barry Newman, Cleavon Little, and Charlotte Rampling (so enigmatic she was cut from the main release); to the groundbreaking stunts coordinated by Hollywood legend Carey Loftin; to its unique, remarkable half-life. In the words of Sarafian, the film just "wouldn't die."Rubin's tribute also includes assembled insights, interviews and quotes from a broad range of essential voices, including Cabrera Infante, Prince, Moravia, J. Hoberman, cinematographer and director Janusz Kaminski, Raymond Chandler, Jean Baudrillard, Jack Kerouac, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Lucy Sante, race driver Sam Posey, and many more. Designed by COMA Amsterdam | New York, this is the latest graphic treat in a long collaboration with Rubin, including their most recent, the award-winning Richard Prince: Cowboy (Prestel, 2020).