Film, Profile

Profile: Donnie Yen

The martial arts expert on playing Bruce Lee's mentor

Name Donnie Yen Born 27 July 1963, Canton, China Background Born to a newspaper editor and a martial arts master, Yen began practising tai chi and wushu at the age of four. At 16 he was sent to the Beijing Wushu Academy, where he studied under…

Profile: Ramin Bahrani

The film-making son of Iranian immigrants

Name Ramin Bahrani Born 20 March 1975, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Background The son of Iranian immigrants to America, Bahrani grew up in North Carolina and studied film at Columbia University in New York, where he made several short films.

White Lightnin' or just white trash?

The creators of the controversial revenge tale explain all

Watching White Lightnin’ you wonder where its makers came up with the idea for their gloriously demented film. At once a biopic about a hillbilly dancer and a tale of revenge that plays like a seventies American horror movie, it’s the story of Jesco…

Agnès Varda

The considerable career of the ‘grandmother’ of Le Nouvelle Vague

There are rumours that Agnès Varda’s 2008 cinematic autobiography The Beaches of Agnès is her last film. For any octogenarian filmmaker, this might seem like the logical conclusion to a prolific career, but Varda is no ordinary artist. When she…

Sweden's No Mind Festival - Three Miles North of Molkom

It’s 5pm on a Monday afternoon and I’m crying. I’m sat on the grass mat floor of a big tent and I’m weeping on the shoulder of Carine, a beautiful Swedish lady I have known for only a few days. She’s crying too and our waterborne grief and guilt is…

Profile: John Krasinski from Away We Go

Name John Krasinski Born 20 October 1979, Newton, Massachusetts Background After a series of bit parts in films and TV shows, Krasinski landed a key role in the American version of The Office alongside Steve Carrell, and has been a US…

Profile: Katie Jarvis of Fish Tank

Name Katie Jarvis Born 22 June 1991, Dagenham, Essex Background You won’t recognise the star of Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, but you won’t soon forget her. Cast with no acting experience after being spotted arguing with her boyfriend at…

Profile: RJ Cutler

All you need to know about the director of The September Issue.

Name RJ Cutler Born 1962, USA Background Cutler graduated from Harvard in 1983. He has a producing credit on The War Room (1993), a landmark documentary that follows Clinton’s 1992 US presidential campaign through his notorious spin doctors James…

Nagisa Oshima retrospective at Edinburgh Filmhouse

The Pensive Provocateur

A complex figure making sense of a complex, still defeated post-war Japanese society, Nagisa Oshima’s career coincided with the French Nouvelle Vague, and he has proved over the years as provocative a filmmaker as any that came out of France at the end…

Profile: Jean-François Richet

The French film-maker behind Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One

Name Jean-François Richet Born 2 July, 1966, Paris Background Having grown up in the satellite town of Meaux, east of Paris, Jean-François Richet made his feature debut in 1995 with the Cesar-nominated Inner City (Etat des lieux). He went on to…

Profile: Aly Michalka

Bandslam

Name Aly Michalka Born 1989 Torrance, California Background Having already had top 20 singles in the UK and UK with her sister Amanda as AJ and Aly, and opened for Hannah Montana/Miles Cyrus, rising star Michalka has got the right qualifications…

Profile: Gianni Di Gregorio

Name Gianni Di Gregorio Born 1949, Rome Background Having grown up in the Trastevere district of Rome, di Gregorio studied acting and directing in the Italian capital, before becoming a screenwriter. From 1996 he began collaborating with the…

Profile - Stuart Staples (Tindersticks)

Born Stuart Ashton Staples, 14 November 1965. Background Staples is the lead singer of Tindersticks, an originally Nottingham-based band formed in late 1991. Initially called Asphalt Ribbons, the band changed their name after Staples found a box of…

Crying with Laughter

The hot ticket among the Scottish films screening at the 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival is Justin Molotnikov’s Crying with Laughter, a thriller starring Scotland’s Stephen McCole. Familiar from roles in Wes Anderson’s high school comedy…

Profile - Jamie Johnson

Name Jamie J Johnson Born 14 September 1976, Hammersmith, London Background The son of a painter, Johnson initially followed in his father’s footsteps before deciding that moving pictures were more to his liking, and started creating flick…

Shifty - High times

‘I said God damn, God damn the pusher man.’ From Easy Rider’s doomed wild hogs to Denzel Washington’s Harlem kingpin in American Gangster, I’ve enjoyed every moment I’ve spent with cinema’s dealers and peddlers. I’ve laughed my socks off with Cheech and…

First Word: Chris Addison

First record you ever bought ‘You Can Call Me Al’, Paul Simon. Fall at my feet, ye tastemakers. Last time you were chatted up My wife was very complimentary when asking me to put the kettle on the other day. Is that the sort of thing? First…

Profile - Riz Ahmed

Born 1 December 1982 Background London Riz Ahmed graduated from Oxford with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics before training as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He came to prominence playing Shafiq Rasul, a member…

Larry Charles: Beyond Belief

‘The controversy of people standing in front of a theatre with placards means nothing to me,’ announces Larry Charles. The Borat director and US comedy colossus, famed for his creative input into genre-redefining TV shows Seinfeld and Curb Your…

Profile: Pablo Larrain

Name Pablo Larrain Born 19 August 1976, Santiago, Chile Background Pablo Larrain studied film at the UNIACC university in Chile. After working as an assistant director on several films, he started to direct commercials. His debut film Fuga…

Profile - Natalie Press

Name Natalie Press Born 15 August, 1980, London Background Just three years after the elfin actress made her professional debut in television soap Holby City she hit the big time with Pawel Pawlikowski’s rapturously received 2004 film My Summer…

Profile: Guy Pearce

Name: Guy Pearce Born: 1967, Ely, Cambridgeshire, UK. Background: Raised in Australia, Pearce came through the Ramsay Street acting school on long-running soap Neighbours before The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desertpropelled him towards…

Emily Blunt - Yo majesty!

When people got an eyeful of Emily Blunt’s striking good looks and acting ability in My Summer of Love, winner of the Best New British Feature award following its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2004, the general consensus…

Profile - Laurent Cantet

Name Laurent Cantet Born 5 June, 1961, Melle, France Background A graduate of La Femis film school in Paris, Cantet made his impressive feature debut in 1999 with Human Resources, which used a mainly non-professional cast and married the…