The Cinema of Healing

Even during the worst of times, directors all around the globe found ways of coping with crisis by holding a mirror to society—for good and bad.

Directors Damien Chazelle, Jon M. Chu, Bill Condon, Dexter Fletcher, Adam Shankman, Barbra Streisand and Julie Taymor tackle the genre's suspension of disbelief in varying ways, making the internal external and lifting our spirits in the process

For directors of fact-based dramas, fighting the good fight means knowing when to fortify the storytelling and when to pull their punches.

Far beyond the promo reels once popularized by MTV, the most penetrating documentaries underscore psychological insight and socio-political context.

Michael Mann, Gina Prince-Bythewood and Ang Lee expound on their opening sequences for The Last of the Mohicans, Love & Basketball and Sense and Sensibility.

Francis Ford Coppola's controversial, Prohibition Era mashup of entertainers and gangsters achieves the balance between two sets of characters that the filmmaker originally intended.

According to directors Mira Nair, Milos Forman and Jim Sheridan, all of whom were interviewed for the DGA's Visual History program, landing the right actor is key to getting the best performance.

Feature and television directors talk about needle drops as character-builders and scene-setters.

Directors Patty Jenkins, Colin Trevorrow and Rupert Wyatt each navigated the leap from intimate to VFX-heavy productions in their own way.

As recent films by Spike Lee, Barry Jenkins and George Tillman Jr. have shown us, the fissures of the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s continue to spread, providing dramatic fuel for their unique visions.

In uncertain times, directors Fede Alvarez, Ana Lily Amirpour, Susanne Bier, James DeMonaco, David Gordon Green, John Krasinski, Andy Muschietti, Jordan Peele and James Wan update and elevate a time-tested genre with works that invite audiences to confront their fears.

Directors Nicole Holofcener, Gillian Robespierre, Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton discuss how intimate family dramas about dysfunctional families continue to assert their place at the big-screen table.

As we approach the late filmmaker's 90th birthday, directors Jonathan Glazer, Nicholas Winding Refn and others wax poetic on why the legendary perfectionist behind 2001 and Barry Lyndon still matters

Through their work with actors, directors Ulu Grosbard, Jerry Schatzberg and Michael Ritchie raised the bar on realism during Hollywood's '70s renaissance.

Edgar Wright directs an action-movie musical fueled by his love of heist movies and crime thrillers.

Christopher Nolan mixes formalism and spontaneity to create a 'you are there' experience with Dunkirk.

Directors such as Bill Condon, Jon Favreau and Kenneth Branagh breathe live-action life into animated Disney classics.

Logan director James Mangold explains how to reinvigorate the superhero genre.

In magnifying their subjects, filmmakers also hold up a mirror to society.

So your independent movie was a hit. What comes next? For some, it’s a leap to studio filmmaking. Here’s how four directors moved up, and what they found once they got there.

The numbers are appalling. In 2013, only nine percent of DGA features released in theaters were directed by women. To inspire, encourage, and hopefully promote change, we interviewed some of those who succeeded in getting their films made. Here are their stories.

James B. Harris produced three films with his friend Stanley Kubrick. In this interview, he offers a rare glimpse of life on the set with Kubrick— not as a legend but a working director.

Alan J. Pakula talks about directing All the Presidents Men, adapted from a 1976 story in the DGA's Action magazine.

American movies have been portraying politicians on screen since the populist heroes of John Ford and Frank Capra. But it wasn’t until the advent of TV that filmmakers learned to capture the drama of the game.

Independent directors have helped create an industry and a staggering range of films over the last 30 years.

With sexy urban stories not seen before on American screens, blaxploitation pictures wowed a new audience in the ’70s. Behind the flashy clothes and cool music, directors helped create the genre’s unmistakable style.

Following the lead of the French New Wave, a restless generation of directors took Hollywood by storm in the late ’60s and ’70s, reflecting the climate of the country.

Film noir thrived in the dark of postwar America. But from the first flashing neon to the last crazy camera angle it was a director’s medium.

In an excerpt from a 1971 story in the DGA's Action magazine, John Ford and cast and crew reminisce about the making of Stagecoach.

Working with temperamental, high-profile stars is never easy for a director, but Frank Sinatra took it to a new level. The war stories are legendary. Here are some of the best.

With the decline of investigative journalism on TV and in newspapers, social activist documentarians are filling the holes. It's not always glamorous but getting the story has its own rewards.

Judd Apatow and a group of like-minded directors have created a run of raunchy films that have turned R-rated comedies into big business.

For 47 years and 22 films, James Bond has escaped countless close calls thanks to the deft hand of its directors. We caught up with the eight surviving filmmakers to find out how they've kept 007 alive all these years.

Directors of action films create some of the most spectacular-and innovative-footage on screen. All it takes is preparation, imagination and nerves of steel.

Thirty-five years after it was made, The French Connection still features the mother-of-all-chase-scenes. The director takes us back and explains how it all came together.

In 1969, the cast and crew of Citizen Kane were interviewed for the DGA's Action magazine about their experience working with the iconoclastic Orson Welles on his masterpiece.

Details DGA member Richard Schickel's efforts to assemble a complete version of director Sam Fuller's The Big Red One.

The origin of the one director to a film policy.

Movies trade in primal emotions, and fear is right at the top of the list. While critics downplay horror films as guilty pleasures, their popularity is so enduring they literally reach back to the dawn of cinema.

Geographical stand-ins, doublings, have a winning way about them even when they get all dressed up with nowhere to go.

The following is an excerpt from a speech Wim Wenders presented at this year's PHOTO L.A.

When is a visual effect not a visual effect? The answer is simple: When the audience doesn't notice it.

From classics like Cabaret to recent successes such as Chicago and Moulin Rouge, musicals are a recurring theme in American moviemaking history.

In the March-April 1973 Action magazine, Clint Eastwood wrote about helming films in the 1970s.

Few locations can impact the look and feel of an indie film like shooting inside a prison. The process, and the product, often changes lives — filmmakers, actors, and audiences alike leave the experience transformed and affected.

Jerry London, Daniel Petrie and Gary Ross are three uncompromising filmmakers who, as someone once described, "know history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood."

Lately, Hollywood is throwing around the word epic. Lots of movies are coming out with the word attached. Thank Heaven there are people working to sell movies, so that we who love to make them can have better tools and bigger audiences.

The business of trying to make people laugh, whether the medium be theatrical film, television sitcom or TV commercial, is surely no joke. It makes undergoing root canal work seem positively light and breezy by comparison.

In Chaplin's last film, A Countess From Hong Kong, he plays a steward in a scene which borders on self-effacement. Entering a room with his tray of drinks, he seems to stumble, but recovers with a grace that is charming to watch.

A look at Chris Rock's first time in the director's chair.

There's commitment, and then there's real commitment. Ron Maxwell became so deeply involved in researching and realizing two authentically precise Civil War movies that they may end up as the legacy of his filmmaking life.

Various colleges, universities, institutes, centers, museums, academies, and libraries in the U.S. house important materials of from historic directors that can be viewed on the premises.

Harry Potter is one of the most successful series of books in recent memory. Taking those tales from printed word to motion picture screen was a formidable undertaking for director Chris Columbus.