An Ode to Greatest Directors

Share your favorite directors who have time and again enchanted you with their story-telling and imagination.

David Lean was born on March 25, 1908 in Croydon, England. He entered British films as a tea boy at Gaumont in 1927; later also served as a claperboy and messenger, and worked his way up to editor of newsreel footage in 1930 and of feature films in 1934.

He began his career as a director in 1942 with an excellent war film, In Which We Serve, which he co-directed with Noel Coward. The crowning achievement of this phase of Lean's career is the intimate romantic gem Brief Encounter, notable for its disciplined structure and the superlative acting of Tevor Howard and Celia Johnson. The next phase in Lean's work produced two extraordinary adaptations of Dickens novels, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. The opening sequence of the former contains a masterful example of cutting for suspense effect which is frequently shown in film schools.

Lean extracted excellent performances from John Mills and Brendy De Banzie in Hobson's Choice and a marvelous spinster characterization from Katherine Hepburn in Summer Madness/Summertime. He won the New York Film Critics directing award for the latter. With The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lean turned abruptly from intimate drama to the sumptuous superproduction with which he has since become identified. He won an Academy Award for the direction of this critical and popular blockbuster as well as another New York Film Critics Award. He received another Oscar in 1962 for Lawrence of Arabia.

He was in the midst of planning an epic production of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo when he died from cancer, aged 83.

Among David Lean's movies, I have watched The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago.

And among them, Doctor Zhivago touched me the most. There still are lot of criticism about his portrayal of Lara and Russia, but still what he imagined and showed was just splendid.

To begin with, these are some facts about the movie.

Approximately three years in production. Filming began on 28 December, 1964 and ended on 7 October, 1965. Filmed on location in Spain, Finland, and Canada. In Spain, Lean took over a whole Madrid studio and built the streets of Moscow on a ten-acre set in a suburb of Canillas. The winter sequences were filmed in Finland.

Academy Awards:
Best Screenplay
Best Color Art Direction
Best Color Photography
Best Color Costume Design
Best Music (Lara's Theme still haunts me!)

Golden Globes
Best Production-Drama
Best Director
Best Supporting Actor (Sharif)
Best Cinematography-Color


With large dark eyes, Omar Sharif portrays Yuri Zhivago with ease and lot of expression. To match him, Lara is portrayed by Julie Christie with poignant eyes. The movie begins with the touching scene of little Yuri witnessing the funeral of his mother...the scene captures the funeral procession across grand landscape...and magnificent perspectives. The whole movie holds you with the love of Yuri and Lara, where in spite of being so close, they still stay afar...touching their lives for some moments and then parting away.

I cannot say that he is my favorite director...but he came first to my mind then I was reading this topic... ...and he had a tough life...so I want to tell about him and his movies... I've seen all his movies and some of them many times...

Andrei Tarkovsky was a Russian movie and opera director, writer, and actor. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of the Soviet era in Russia and one of the greatest in the history of cinema.
Son of the prominent poet Arseniy Tarkovsky, was a product of the golden era of Soviet arts education. He received a classical education in Moscow, studying Music and Arabic, before training for over five years at the VGIK film school, studying directly under Mikhail Romm among others. He also worked as a geologist in Siberia. Although the Orthodox Christian symbolism of his films led to interference and occasional suppression of the finished product by the Soviet authorities, the Soviet Mosfilm studio system enabled him to make films that would not have been commercially viable in the West. However, Tarkovsky's principal complaint about his treatment by the authorities was that he had many more ideas in him than he was not allowed to bring to the screen, and in 1984, after shooting Nostalghia in Italy, he decided not to return to Russia. He made only one more film, The Sacrifice, a European co-production filmed in Sweden, before dying of cancer in the suburb of Paris at the early age of 54.

He shot to international attention with his first feature, Ivanovo detstvo (IVAN'S CHILDHOOD) (1962), which won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival.

IVAN'S CHILDHOOD is a moving drama set in World War Two, on the frontline of the battle between the German and Russian armies - a wasteland of birch forests, snow and swamps. Ivan is a small boy who works for the Russian army as a runner and a scout, and develops his own interpretation of the war and his own emotional commitments. Visually, the film is as extraordinary as anything Tarkovsky ever directed.

This resulted in high expectations for his second feature Andrei Rublyov (1969), which was banned by the Soviet authorities until 1971. It was shown at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival at 4 o'clock in the morning on the last day, in order to prevent it winning a prize - but it won one nonetheless, and was eventually distributed abroad partly to enable the authorities to save face.

Andreiv Rublev charts the life of the great icon painter through a turbulent period of 15th Century Russian history, a period marked by endless fighting between rival Princes and by Tatar invasions.

Solyaris (1972), had an easier ride, being acclaimed by many in the West as the Soviet answer to Kubrick's '2001' (though Tarkovsky himself was never too fond of it).

But he ran into official trouble again with Zerkalo (1975), a dense, personal web of autobiographical memories with a radically innovative plot structure. Stalker (1979) had to be completely reshot on a dramatically reduced budget after an accident in the laboratory destroyed the first version, and after Nostalghia (1983), shot in Italy (with official approval), Tarkovsky defected to the West. His last film, Offret (1986) was shot in Sweden with many of Ingmar Bergman's regular collaborators, and won an almost unprecedented four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. He died of cancer at the end of the year.
A want to talk more about his movies starting from Zerkalo later...

and where is Mira NAir?

you can tell us about her if u feel like...

MG_ wrote:

and where is Mira NAir?

You should write about her!

Mira Nair was born in Rourkela,[1] Orissa, where her Punjabi father (Nayyar)she spells her surname Nair(having his roots in Amritsar, Punjab) was employed. She was the youngest of three children from a middle-class family. Her father was a civil servant and her mother a social worker. Mira did her early schooling at Catholic schools, including Tara Hall in Shimla. She studied sociology in Delhi University, where she became involved in political street theater and performed for three years in an amateur drama company. She left for the US at age 19 with a scholarship at Harvard, where she met her first husband Mitch Epstein, as well as Sooni Taraporevala.

At the beginning of her career as a film artist, Nair directed four documentaries. India Cabaret, a film about the lives of strippers in a Bombay nightclub, won an award at the American Film Festival in 1986.

Salaam Bombay! (1988), with a screenplay by Sooni Taraporevala, was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film, and won many other awards. It is today considered a groundbreaking film classic, and is standard fare for film students.

The 1991 film Mississippi Masala starred Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury that profiled a family of displaced Ugandan-Indians living and working in Mississippi. The screenplay was again by Sooni Taraporevala.

She was also the director of the movie Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, a provocative movie set in 12th century India. My Own Country starring Naveen Andrews, was produced for HBO films, adapted from the novel by Abraham Verghese by Sooni Taraporevala.

Nair's most popular film to date, Monsoon Wedding (2001), about a chaotic Punjabi Indian wedding with a screenplay by Sabrina Dhawan, was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice film festival.

Her 2004 version of Thackeray's novel, Vanity Fair, starred Reese Witherspoon.

Her latest film, The Namesake, premiered in the fall of 2006 at Dartmouth College where Nair was presented with the Dartmouth Film Award. Another premiere was held in fall 2006 with the Indo-American Cultural Council in New York. The Namesake, adapted by Sooni Taraporevala from the novel by Pulitzer prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, was released in March of 2007.

Her latest project is Maisha, a film lab to help East Africans and South Asians learn to make films. Maisha is headquartered in Nair's adopted home of Kampala, Uganda.

Nair is also working on the big-budget Johnny Depp-starrer Shantaram in India, the U.K. and possibly Australia. The movie has been delayed due to the Writers Guild of America strike.

She is also credited with directing a film in pre-production New York, I Love You, a romantic-drama anthology of love stories set in New York. Her future film Impressionist is a coming-of-age story set in the Raj of the 1920's.

Nair lives near Columbia University in New York City where she is an adjunct professor in the Film Division of the School of Arts and where her husband, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, also teaches ([2]).

Nair will be honoured with the "Pride of India" award at the 9th Bollywood Film Awards later this year for her contributions to the film industry. [3]

Nair has been an enthusiastic yoga practitioner for decades; when making a film, she has the cast and crew start the day with a yoga session.[2]

She has done a 12 minute movie on AIDS awareness called Migration.

Nair has one son, Zohran Mamdani, born in 1991, currently attending The Bronx High School of Science.

from Wiki

MG_ wrote:

Mira Nair was born in Rourkela,[1] Orissa

On other saits they say Bhubaneshwar, Orissa, India, 15 October 1957.
But doesn't matter, I don't know where it was...

MG_ wrote:

At the beginning of her career as a film artist, Nair directed four documentaries.

And one for TV. They were:
1979 Jama Masjid Street Journal (doc)
1982 So Far from India (doc)
1984 Women and Development (doc)
1985 India Cabaret (for TV) (doc)
1987 Children of a Desired Sex (for TV ) (doc)

MG_ wrote:

Salaam Bombay! (1988), with a screenplay by Sooni Taraporevala, was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film, and won many other awards. It is today considered a groundbreaking film classic, and is standard fare for film students.

MG_ wrote:

The 1991 film Mississippi Masala

On the set of Mississippi Masala

Mira and son, Zohran