Summary

Angela Ismailos’ Great Directors is a celebration of films and filmmaking starring ten of the worlds most acclaimed, provocative, and individualistic living directors. The documentary, which had its world premiere at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, is a deeply personal and intimate look at the art of cinema and the artists who create it, and features original, in-depth conversations with world-class filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci, David Lynch, Stephen Frears, Agnes Varda, Ken Loach, Liliana Cavani, Todd Haynes, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater, and John Sayles. These interviews more than just chronicle Ismailos’ encounters with ten remarkable men and women. Extensively illuminated by clips and historical archives from the subjects’ works, they also reveal the distinctive personalities who created the timeless images that have long inspired Ismailos—and all of us. Intercutting among the filmmakers in a freely associative way, Ismailos explores each director’s artistic evolution; the role of politics and history on their work; their feelings about the other great directors who inspired them (with Bertolucci paying homage to Pasolini, Breillat to Bergman, and Haynes to Fassbinder, etc.); and the agony and ecstasy of being an artist in a medium that is, paradoxically, also an industry.