Louise O’Konor: Viking Eggeling, 1880-1925: Artist and Film-maker: Life and Work (1971)

Louise O’Konor’s book is the first biography of Viking Eggeling, a Swedish avant-garde artist and filmmaker connected to dada, constructivism and abstract art and one of the pioneers of absolute film and visual music. The book is a result of 12 years of research in public and private archives in Europe and in the USA, and is a significant contribution to the history of dada and early abstract, animated film.

Translated by Catherine G. Sundström and Anne Bibby
Publisher Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm, 1971
299 pages
via DiVA Academic Archive

PDF (165 MB, updated on 2013-12-8)
Watch Eggeling’s Diagonale Symphonie (1924) on UbuWeb

Luis Buñuel: My Last Breath (1982-) [Spanish/English]

A provocative memoir from Luis Buñuel, the Academy Award winning creator of some of modern cinema’s most important films, from Un Chien Andalou to The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

Luis Buñuel’s films have the power to shock, inspire, and reinvent our world. Now, in a memoir that carries all the surrealism and subversion of his cinema, Buñuel turns his artistic gaze inward. In swift and generous prose, Buñuel traces the surprising contours of his life, from the Good Friday drumbeats of his childhood to the dreams that inspired his most famous films to his turbulent friendships with Federico García Lorca and Salvador Dalí. His personal narratives also encompass the pressing political issues of his time, many of which still haunt us today—the specter of fascism, the culture wars, the nuclear bomb. Filled with film trivia, framed by Buñuel’s intellect and wit, this is essential reading for fans of cinema and for anyone who has ever wanted to see the world through a surrealist’s eyes.

Originally published in French as Mon dernier soupir, Editions Robert Laffont, 1982

English edition
Translated by Abigail Israel
This translation first published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1983
Publisher Fontana Paperbacks, a division of Collins Publishing Group, London, 1985
266 pages

Mi último suspiro (Spanish, trans. Ana M. de la Fuente, 1982)
My Last Breath (English, trans. Abigail Israel, 1985)

Ronald Hayman: Fassbinder: Film Maker (1984)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was simultaneously a maker of films and a man who ‘played with people’: the forty-three films he directed before his early death at the age of thirty-seven in 1982 were products of a convoluted game of emotions between him and a close-knit group of versatile actors. He wielded astonishing power over his artists, but though he was an oppressor, he made passionate cinematic statements about liberty in such productions as The Marriage of Maria Braun, Despair and Veronika Voss.

The films could not have been what they were if Fassbinder had not been what he was – the product of a lonely childchood, moody, impatient, jealous, vengeful, a drug addict, generous, brutal, and most vicious of all towards himself.

Aided by film stills and photographs from the private collections of those who knew him most intimately, Ronald Hayman presents a fascinating insight into the relationship between this obsessional, explosive personality and the unique films he created.

Publisher Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1984
ISBN 297784471
164 pages

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