A chronological overview of one of modern cinema’s most celebrated directors, featuring interviews with Jane Campion herself.
Awarded Best Cinema Album by the French Syndicate of Film Critics
Jane Campion on Jane Campion offers a unique perspective on the creative process of one of cinema’s greatest contemporary film directors. Through a series of interviews beginning in the early days of Campion’s career and conducted by award-winning cinema historian Michel Ciment, each chapter contains the study of a film, starting with the short films that Campion made during her studies at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, then moving through the Academy Award–winning The Piano, The Portrait of a Lady, Holy Smoke, In the Cut, Bright Star, the TV series Top of the Lake, and ending with the Academy Award–winning The Power of the Dog.
Organized chronologically, film by film, the interviews are illustrated with film stills and photographs taken on set, as well as with annotated scripts, storyboards, and personal documents lent by Campion. The book also reproduces three short stories and a text about the poet John Keats written by the director, along with actress Holly Hunter’s “Scattered Memories” of their collaborations on The Piano and Top of the Lake. A detailed bibliography and filmography of the filmmaker complete this volume, which contains more than 300 color and black-and-white illustrations.
Includes Color and Black-and-White Images
Michel Ciment, a member of the editorial board and coordinator of the French film magazine Positif, has been a contributor to the French radio program Le Masque et la Plume (France Inter) since 1970 and produced Projection privée for the radio station France Culture for more than 25 years. Senior lecturer emeritus in American civilization at Paris Diderot University (Paris 7), he is also the author of more than 25 books about cinema, including Kubrick, Kazan on Kazan, Conversations with Losey, Film World: Interviews with Cinema’s Leading Directors, and Boorman (British Film Institute Prize). He has been on approximately 30 juries, including those at Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Locarno. He is the coauthor of three filmed portraits—on Elia Kazan, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and Billy Wilder—and is an honorary president of the International Federation of Film Critics. In 2022, Ciment was honored with the Cinema History Book Award for Jane Campion on Jane Campion at the Festival international du film d’histoire (International History Film Festival). He lives in Paris.
