Notes on the Cinematographer

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Robert Bresson

Green Integer Books, Copenhagen, 1997, 1975, English

Nonfiction, Film and Theater

ISBN: 9781557133656

From the Publisher. Robert Bresson's Notes on the Cinematographer consists of working memos that the great French director made for his own use. In all of them, Bresson reflects with a craftsman's insight on techniques and their philosophical and aesthetic implications. Not surprisingly, these acute reflections will not only sharpen a filmmaker's sensibility but that of any artist in any medium. Bresson makes some quite radical distinctions between what he terms "cinematography" and something quite different: "cinema"—which is for him nothing but an attempt to photograph theater and use it for the screen.

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Neil Denari

On Neil Denari’s Book List

This is the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus of cinema. (The Tractatus refers to Wittgenstein’s text of the same title—another book that has been influential for me but did not make my uppermost list.) If there is one book I always travel with, this is it.

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