The shortlist for this year's and/or book awards celebrating the best books about the moving image has just been announced. Leading the pack is Nick Dawson's Being Hal Ashby: The Life Of A Hollywood Rebel, which follows the filmmaker's legendary career through the ups and downs of losing his father, struggling with drug addiction, and creating much-loved films like Being There and Harold And Maude.
Also in the running are Robert Robertson's Eisenstein On The Audiovisual, which explores the fusion of music, image and sound through the work of the Russian master; and Michael Haneke's Cinema, by Southampton academic Catherine Wheatley. Toby Talbot's The New Yorker Theater explores the history of the great Manhattan cinema and boasts a forward by Martin Scorsese, while Jennifer M. Barker's The Tactile Eye brings together film theory and phenomenology.
"The books that impressed us above all were the ones that inspired a deeper love of film," said Francine Stock, chair of the judging panel. "The shortlisted authors each combined passion and original research in a format that suited their subject. Whether it was intimate memoir, biography, history, critique or a call for a radical new understanding of the way we experience cinema, these books were both focused and involving."
The winners of this year's prize will be announced at the BFI Southbank on Thursday the 29th of April.
