Duane Hopkins | |
|---|---|
 Hopkins at the BFI London Film Festival in 2014 | |
| Born | 22 July 1973 Cheltenham, England |
| Occupation | Film director, screenwriter, artist |
| Years active | 2001 – present |
Duane Hopkins (born 22 July 1973) is an English film director and artist, best known for directing the independent film Better Things (2008).
Hopkins' first short film, Field, made in 2001, premiered at Cannes Film Festival as part of International Critics' Week. A dark, unblinking tale of rural adolescence, Field went on to win a host of prizes at festivals internationally. Hopkins followed Field in 2003 with his second short film Love Me Or Leave Me Alone, made as part of Film 4 and UK Film Council's Cinema Extreme scheme for new British filmmaking talent. Love Me Or Leave Me Alone, 'a study in the articulations and limitations of first love', premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival where it won Best British Short Film. Like Field it was highly successful; together the two films gathered over 30 international awards. [1]
Hopkins then wrote and directed his debut feature film Better Things . Shot on location in the West Midlands of England, Better Things premiered at International Critics' Week in Cannes 2008, where it was nominated for the Camera D'Or. [2] A multi-narrative tale of love, yearning and loss amongst the young and old of a small town in rural England, Better Things was widely praised by critics as a film that was both radical and nuanced. It was often noted for its use of cinematic technique and narrative approach to connect themes such as romantic need, the roots of drug addiction, and existential notions of anxiety, purposefully against a contemporary, epic rural backdrop. Variety stated: "Duane Hopkins follows his prize-winning shorts with visually distinctive first feature Better Things. Beautifully shot with cast of eye-catching non-pros… gives a special twist to UK tradition of social realism by juxtaposing the natural and the constructed." [3] The Guardian wrote that Better Things "has a bold and brilliant insight at its heart" [4] while The Independent argued that "Hopkins is a director with an introspective subtlety uncommon in UK filmmaking", [5] and in choosing 'Better Things as its Film of the Month, Sight and Sound wrote "Hopkins' film depicts, or rather creates, a piece of British social landscape that we have never quite seen before". [6] Le Monde made Better Things its film of the week, comparing Hopkins' work to "the abstract violence of Alan Clarke, and the lyrical harshness of Bill Douglas...Hopkins clearly has a lot in common with such directors: he uses a harsh metaphysical darkness and an acute sense of formal composition.". [7]
Hopkins has been described as being at the centre of an emergent 'British New Wave' alongside directors like Steve McQueen, with Better Things distinguished "by its technical and stylistic approaches to typical problems of British realism". [8] His film work has been noted for its precise compositions and technical rigour, and for its poetic cinematic rendering of realist subject matter, characters and environments.
Hopkins also works in the fields of photography and moving image art. His first solo gallery exhibition Sunday, a collection of single and multi-channel moving image installations, opened at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in March 2009. [9] Sunday deals with contemporary British youth and the relationships between identity, psychology and environment. The format of the individual pieces within the Sunday collection is that of multiple images knitted together to form multi-screen scenes, each working in different ways with atmosphere and narrative. The impression formed is suggestive of a social-realist fairy tale – the subtle interaction of realist, surreal and romantic tropes. With Sunday Hopkins was said to have "created an experience that is entirely separate from the conventions of sitting in a cinema. He generates a portrait of youth that has a matter of fact, harsh reality to it and a psychological intensity that is unnerving. [10] " Sunday was also exhibited at galleries in Liverpool [11] and Yokohama [12] in 2009.
Hopkins produces the work of other filmmakers through Third, a company co-founded with producer Samm Haillay. With Third Hopkins has produced Daniel Elliott's Venice-winning short film The Making of Parts and Berlinale-winning Jade. [13] In 2010 he co-produced the feature film debut of the artist Gillian Wearing, titled Self Made. [14]
Theodoros "Theo" Angelopoulos was a Greek filmmaker, screenwriter and film producer. He dominated the Greek art film industry from 1975 on, and Angelopoulos was one of the most influential and widely respected filmmakers in the world. He started making films in 1967. In the 1970s he made a series of political films about modern Greece.
François Ozon is a French film director and screenwriter.
Tsai Ming-liang is a Malaysian filmmaker based in Taiwan. Tsai has written and directed 11 feature films and directed many short films and television films. He is one of the most celebrated "Second New Wave" film directors of Taiwanese cinema. His films have been acclaimed worldwide and have won numerous awards at festivals. In 1994, Tsai won the Golden Lion at the 51st Venice International Film Festival for the film Vive L'Amour. He has been called an auteur.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a Thai independent film director, screenwriter, and film producer. Working outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system, Apichatpong has directed several features and dozens of short films. Friends and fans sometimes refer to him as "Joe".
Mrinal Sen was an Indian film director of Bengali heritage and a nominated Member of the Indian parliament. Along with Satyajit Ray,he is considered to be one of the greatest Indian filmmakers of all time.Sen directed films primarily in Bengali and Hindi. Along with contemporaries Ritwik Ghatak, Tapan Sinha and Satyajit Ray, he pioneered the New Wave cinema in India. He has received multiple awards, including 18 National Film Awards. The Government of India has awarded him the Padma Bhushan, and the Government of France has awarded him the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, while Russian Government awarded him Order of Friendship. Sen was also awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award. He was the only Indian filmmaker along with Satyajit Ray whose films have been awarded at the big three film festivals namely the Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival. Sen was a self described "private Marxist".
The UK Film Council (UKFC) was a non-departmental public body set up in 2000 to develop and promote the film industry in the UK. It was constituted as a private company limited by guarantee, owned by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and governed by a board of 15 directors. It was funded from various sources including The National Lottery. John Woodward was the Chief Executive Officer of the UKFC. On 26 July 2010, the government announced that the council would be abolished; Although one of the parties elected into that government had, for some months, promised a bonfire of the Quangos, Woodward said that the decision had been taken with "no notice and no consultation". UKFC closed on 31 March 2011, with many of its functions passing to the British Film Institute.
Kira Georgievna Muratova was a Ukrainian award-winning film director, screenwriter and actress of Romanian/Jewish descent, known for her unusual directorial style. Muratova's films underwent a great deal of censorship in the Soviet Union, yet still Muratova managed to emerge as one of the leading figures in contemporary Russian cinema and was able to build a very successful film career from 1960s onwards. Muratova, along with Nikita Mikhalkov, Vadim Abdrashitov, Aleksandr Sokurov, Aleksei German, and Aleksei Balabanov are considered arguably Russia's lead filmmakers who weathered the collapse of the USSR yet managed to productively continue their filmmaking work from the early 1990s onward.
Carlos Reygadas Castillo is a Mexican filmmaker. Influenced by existentialist art and philosophy, Reygadas' movies feature spiritual journeys into the inner worlds of his main characters, through which themes of love, suffering, death, and life's meaning are explored.
Cinema Extreme was a major UK short film funding awards scheme, created in 2002. The scheme was funded by the UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund and Film4 and managed by The Bureau with the aim "to seek out and develop filmmakers with a distinctive directorial voice and cinematic flair". The fund was awarded on an annual basis, offering funding to a slate of around four short films.
Karim Aïnouz is a Brazilian film director and visual artist.
The Romanian New Wave is a genre of realist and often minimalist films made in Romania since the mid-aughts, starting with two award-winning shorts by two Romanian directors, namely Cristi Puiu's Cigarettes and Coffee, which won the Short Film Golden Bear at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival, and Cătălin Mitulescu's Trafic, which won the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival later that same year.
Ian Cottage is a British film director and writer.
Call Me Madam is a 1953 American Technicolor musical film directed by Walter Lang, with songs by Irving Berlin, based on the 1950 stage musical of the same name.
Georgi Djulgerov is a Bulgarian film director, screenwriter, producer, and professor at the Krastyo Sarafov National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts. Born in Burgas, Bulgaria, on 30 September 1943. He lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Mia Hansen-Løve is a French film director, screenwriter, and former actress. She has won several accolades for her work. Her first feature film, All Is Forgiven, won the Louis Delluc Prize for Best First Film in 2007 along with Céline Sciamma's Water Lilies. Hansen-Løve's film Father of My Children won the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. In 2014, Hansen-Løve was awarded the status of Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2016, she won the Silver Bear for Best Director for her film Things to Come at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival, as well as becoming a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Better Things is a 2008 film written and directed by Duane Hopkins. Set in present-day rural England, the film presents a multi-narrative tale following the young and old on their journeys of withdrawal and commitment to each other.
Steven Markovitz is a South African film and television producer. He has produced, co-produced and executive-produced features, documentaries and short films. Steven has been producing and distributing for over 20 years. Since 2007, he has worked all over Africa producing documentary series' and fiction. He is a member of AMPAS, co-founder of Electric South & Encounters Documentary Festival and the founder of the African Screen Network.
Aoife McArdle is an Irish director, writer, and cinematographer working in film and television.
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo is a Chilean filmmaker.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
| Art research institutes | |
| Biographical dictionaries | |
| Other | |
