Michael Powell: International Perspectives on an English Film-maker

The films of Michael Powell (1905-1990) and Emeric Pressburger (1902-1988) , among them I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) , A Matter of Life and Death (1947) , and The Red Shoes (1948) , are landmarks in British cinema, standing apart from the realist and comic mainstream with a highly stylized aesthetic and themes of romantic longing and spiritual crisis. Film lovers and filmmakers alike revere Powell and Pressburger; Martin Scorsese has called them " the most successful experimental filmmakers in the world. " In this first-ever collection of essays on Michael Powell, an international group of critics and scholars map out his filmmaking skills, provide new readings of individual films, and analyze recurrent techniques and themes, relating the latter to contemporary debates about gender, sexuality, nationality, and cinematic spectacle.

Ian Christie is the author of Arrows of Desire: the Films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (1985, 1994) and has written and edited four other books about their work. He has organised many retrospectives and played a part in the films' restoration. He is currently Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a regular broadcaster. Andrew Moor is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Wales in Bangor. He is author of Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces (2005) and contributed essays on Powell and Pressburger to a range of other publications.