Wednesday, 7/13-8/10/2022, 6:00pm-8:00pm, online

The Art of the Director: Ten Directors in Five Weeks

Instructor Mick LaSalle, SF Chronicle Film Critic

In their reviews, most film critics write a lot about script and performance, but when it comes to direction, they usually write one of two things: "The movie was directed at a good pace," or "The direction was sluggish." The reason? Most critics, like most of the public, have no idea what directors do or how they do it. A film’s tone, its look and its performances have all to do with the director’s choices, which is why the signature of some directors is so unmistakable that one need only watch a few moments of a movie to know who made it.

 

San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle is your guide on a 5-week exploration of the film director's art. Through clips and feature films, acknowledged masters and other more controversial figures will be studied. Films by Clint Eastwood, Jackie Chan, Jerry Lewis, Julie Delpy, Eddie Murphy, Agnes Jaoui, Sylvester Stallone, Laurence Olivier, Brigitte Rouan and Barry Jenkins will be analyzed, with an eye toward discovering how directors achieve their effects and convey meaning and what constitutes great direction.

Workshops are taught online through Zoom and Canvas. Students will need a computer or smart phone with webcam and microphone, internet and web streaming capacity, and the Zoom application installed to their device.

Instructor Bio: Mick LaSalle is the film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, where he has worked since 1985. He is the author of two books on pre-censorship Hollywood, "Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood" and "Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man." Both were books of the month on Turner Classic Movies and "Complicated Women" formed the basis of a TCM documentary in 2003, narrated by Jane Fonda. He has written introductions for a number of books, including Peter Cowie's "Joan Crawford: The Enduring Star" (2009). He was a panelist at the Berlin Film Festival and has served as a panelist for eight of the last ten years at the Venice Film Festival. His latest book, a study of women in French cinema, is "The Beauty of the Real: What Hollywood Can Learn from Contemporary French Actresses."