“Our aim has been to publish conceptually ambitious, risk-taking work that challenges familiar models for understanding film authorship.”–Justus Nieland, CFD series editor

Since the publication of an illuminating cross-cultural dialogue on the legendary Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami in 2003, the University of Illinois Press has published 50 engaging titles in the Contemporary Film Directors series. These concise, theoretically and historically sophisticated volumes provide intriguing commentaries on films by living directors from around the world.

Jennifer Fay and Justus Nieland have served as the CFD editors for the last five years and continue to welcome proposals. Justus writes with excitement about recent acquisitions in the series:

“New work in the series considers Wes Anderson as a consummate collector, Jan Švankmajer as a poet of thingly vitality, Kelly Reichardt as a chronicler of everyday emergencies, and the sheer bigness of Michael Bay as an outsized roadmap to the populist politics of the present. Forthcoming work also includes the first study of Lana and Lily Wachoski as trans filmmakers.”

“The authors’ striking insights illuminate the filmmaker’s style and her importance not only in contemporary art and indie cinema spheres but for American cinema more broadly.”—Elena Gorfinkel, coeditor of Taking Place: Location and the Moving Image

Announcing a New Film Series with the Art Theater

To commemorate 15 years of Contemporary Film Directors publications, we are launching a new film series in partnership with the Art Theater, a nonprofit cinema in downtown Champaign, Illinois. The first event highlighted a recent title in the series, Kelly Reichardt (2017), with a screening of the director’s humble, heartrending third feature, Wendy & Lucy. Authors Katherine Fusco and Nicole Seymour joined the audience via Skype for a special Q&A after the film.

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