Tilda Swinton

While attending a conference in Istanbul, Dr. Alithea Binnie happens to encounter a djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. This presents two problems: first, she doubts that he's real, and second, because she's a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong. The djinn pleads his case by telling her fantastical stories of his past. Eventually, she's beguiled and makes a wish that surprises...

A love letter to journalists set in an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional 20th-century French city that brings to life a collection of stories published in 'The French Dispatch.'

Derek Jarman's most profound reflection on art, sexuality and identity retells the life of the celebrated 17th-century painter through his brilliant, nearly blasphemous paintings and his flirtations with the underworld. CARAVAGGIO incorporates the painter's precise aesthetic into the movie's own visuals, while touching on all of Jarman's major concerns: history, homosexuality, violence and the relationship between painting and film. Featuring Tilda...

In this new restoration of the iconic New Queer Cinema classic, Derek Jarman offers a postmodern take on Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan drama. Pleasure-seeking King Edward II sets the stage for a palace revolt by taking as a lover the ambitious Piers Gaveston - who uses his favor in bed to wield political influence - sending the gay pair from the throne to a terminal torture dungeon. This landmark of gay cinema features an incredible performance...

01 OPENINGS: With examples from 1943 to 2013, from China to Iran, Australia to Finland, we look at how to open a film: from mysterious, direct, floating, foreboding to plunging straight in. All are instructive in how to create an immediate world. Learning from example. 02 TONE: What’s the tone of a film – not its story or theme, but what its world feels like? Back to Hollywood and director Dorothy Arzner with Merrily We Go to Hell and its glamorous...

35 LIFE INSIDE: Novels are great at describing thoughts, but how do films do so? In this chapter, we see how great directors from France, Ukraine, the UK, America, New Zealand and Algeria used time in their movies. 36 THE MEANING OF LIFE: In the last chapters of our story, we look at the biggest things in life. Here we see how great filmmakers across the world, and from many decades, try to getto the essence of life. 37 LOVE: Movies soar with love,...

12 ADULT/CHILD: The famous movie genres – war pictures, westerns, etc – are about adults, but in this chapter Jane Fonda narrates the story of 18 films about children in film, from Germany, Belgium, Mongolia, Sweden, Russia, Canada, Senegal, Argentina and Scotland. 13 ECONOMY: We’ve all seen overblown films, but what are the visual and story lessons we can learn from Claire Denis, Maria Louisa Memberg, Kinuyo Tanaka, Agnes Varda, Valeska Grisbach...

09 STAGING: Scene staging is an element of film form pointing clearly to cinema’s origin – theatre. Kinuyo Tanaka in The Moon Has Risen uses staging to shape the scene’s invisible geometry, accentuating the tension between characters. Maren Ade in Toni Erdmann stages the scene through depth, facilitating the tragicomic punchline. And in Maria Schrader’s Stefan Zweig: A Farewell to Europe, the criss-crossing complex staging in the final scene...

06 CONVERSATION: A basic human interaction – how to make it cinematic? Angela Schanelec directs us to focus on body language in Places in Cities, Cecile Tang uses the zoom as guide through the emotional shifts in The Arch, and Sofia Coppola in The Virgin Suicides shows us an unspoken conversation through division with songs and split screens telling a story of impossible longing. 07 FRAMING: Frames describe and paint the scenes. They can make sport...

29 TENSION: Thrillers, but much more. We look at gripping scenes in films as diverse as Joel DeMott’s documentary Demon Lover Diary, Kathryn Bigelow’s Blue Steel, Carol Morley’s Dreams of A Life, Mimi Leder’s Peacemaker, and Marleen Gorris’ remarkable A Question of Silence. 30 STASIS: Cinema is an action art, isn’t it? Or is it? Directors Angela Schanelec, Anouk Leopold, Kira Muratova, Chantal Akerman, Sharon Lockhart, and Pakistan’s...