Filmmakers interviewed: Tomas Alfredson, Ozcan Alper, Olivier Assayas, Serge Bozon, Catherine Breillat, Andrew Bujalski, Charles Burnett, Pedro Costa, Constantino Costa-Gravas, Claire Denis, Sergei Dvortsevoy, Jihan El-Tahri, Matteo Garrone, Bette Gordon, Eric Guirado, Lance Hammer, Mia Hansen-Love, Mary Harron, Scott Hicks, Courtney Hunt, Agnáes Jaoui, Kyoshi Kurosawa, Pablo Larrain, Anne Le Ny, Lucrecia Martel, Brillante Mendoza, Teona Strugar Mitevska, Gerardo Naranjo, Lucia Puenzo, Paul Schrader, Celine Sciamma, Shamim Sarif, Jerzy Skolimowski, Jean-Marie Táeno, Ivo Trajkov, Melvin Van Peebles, Gary Winick, Jia Zhangke.

Includes filmography.

Introduction -- Cinematography -- Cinema and sound -- Working with actors -- Cinematic rhythm and structure -- The process : pre-production, production, and post-production -- The business : financing, distribution, and exhibition -- Cinema, art, and reality -- The viewer -- Cinema and society.

In Cinema Today, Elena Oumano has ingeniously crafted a conversation from her personal and individual interviews with a distinguished group of international cinema legends. She follows a lively symposium-in-print format, with the filmmakers' words and thoughts grouped together under various key cinema topics. Collectively these artists reflect on and explore issues and concerns of modern filmmaking, from the practical to the aesthetic, including the process, cinematic rhythm and structure, and the many aspects of the media: business, the viewer, and cinema's place in society.