Michael Haneke: Interviews - Paperback

by Roy Grundmann (Editor), Fatima Naqvi (Editor), Colin Root (Editor)

Spanning five decades and twenty-four films, director Michael Haneke's career is one of the most significant in the history of European art cinema. However, critical reception has long lagged behind his output. By the time Haneke (b. 1942) emerged into the international spotlight as a cinematic visionary with the 1989 Cannes premiere of The Seventh Continent, he had worked in filmmaking for two decades, producing seven feature-length films.

As many of his films aired solely on Austrian and German television, they remained unknown to audiences outside the German-speaking world until 2007, when the first comprehensive Haneke retrospective took place in the United States.

Michael Haneke: Interviews presents some of Haneke's most profound interviews to English speakers. The volume features seventeen articles, fourteen of which have been translated into English for the first time, and all of which provide a detailed, eloquent commentary on his films and worldview. This book represents the most extensive collection to date of interviews with the filmmaker, spanning his entire oeuvre--from his earliest television films to his so-called "Glaciation Trilogy" of the 1990s, from the notorious dark satire Funny Games to its similarly notorious 2007 Hollywood remake, and from his French films of the 2000s to his Oscar-winning drama, Amour, and his most recent feature, Happy End.

Author Biography

Roy Grundmann is associate professor of film studies at Boston University. He is author of Andy Warhol's "Blow Job"; editor of A Companion to Michael Haneke and Werner Schroeter; and coeditor of the four-volume Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film. Fatima Naqvi is professor of German and film studies at Yale University. She has published How We Learn Where We Live: Thomas Bernhard, Architecture, and Bildung; Deceptive Familiarity: Films by Michael Haneke (in German); and The Literary and Cultural Rhetoric of Victimhood: Western Europe, 1970-2005. Colin Root is associate professor of fine arts and humanities at Southern New Hampshire University. He is author of Paul Thomas Anderson: From "Hard Eight" to "Punch-Drunk Love."