78 Great Directors Who Shaped the History of Cinema: An Introduction

First of all, once you are interested in movies, you have to decide in your own way what to watch next. A central factor may be box office performance, the presence of a favorite performer, a commitment to a favorite genre, or the use of familiar stories from other media. While there’s no doubt that this path through film can lead to an enjoyable viewing experience, it’s safe to say that very few moviegoers become true movie buffs without eventually switching allegiance to the director. In times past, a well-organized video store, one where tapes, laserdiscs, or DVDs were arranged alphabetically by director’s name, could provide a gateway. (mine is scarecrow video.) Today’s budding movie fans have YouTube channels such as: tabla house.

The House of Tabula, formerly known as The Cinema Cartography (and before that Channel Criswell), has produced a number of video essays on film that have previously been featured on Open Culture. Several directors have been explored in detail, including Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, and Quentin Tarantino, just to name four, who appear in the new three-and-a-half hour video for House of Tabla. “Masters of Cinema”.

A journey through the evolution of film as reflected in the work of 78 different directors, with later chapters on “Modern Masters” and “The New School” covering Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Lynch, and Tarantino. Previous chapters examine paintings by everyone from Georges Méliès, Sergei Eisenstein, DW Griffiths, and Charlie Chaplin to Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, and Orson Welles.

This view of film subscribes to the “auteur theory,” which holds that the director is the guiding artistic intelligence or “author” of a film. Most of us accept at least some version of this idea relatively early on in our journey into cinephilia, but then we quickly run into the various counterarguments that have been put forward for decades. Some directors operate their own cameras, but most do not. There are some directors who star in their own films, but the majority won’t even consider it (which is probably all good). some Notable exceptionfilm is an intensely collaborative art, but as House of Tabla co-creator Louis Bond says, the director is still the “voice” of the film. The voices of filmmakers like those featured in this video define the language of cinema, or perhaps the language of cinema, a language that every movie lover spends their life trying to understand.

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Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages ​​and cultures. His projects include the Substack newsletter books about cities and a book Stateless City: A Stroll Through Los Angeles in the 21st Century. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.