Recommended Directors

Actually, this should be titled 'Directors who provide you with something different' (in no particular order):

Aki Kaurismaki: Where do you start? at first look there's nothing to his films, deadpan x 1000, nothing flashy, simple stories of losers and underdogs...and yet they gradually seep into your consciousness and you start to get them, the Finnish humour and I guess the truth behind the everyday emotions. Highly recommended:

La Vie De Boheme (shot in Black & White and strangely enough in French by an all Finnish cast. Classic stuff).

Calamari Union (B&W. A group of men, all called Frank, bar one, try to travel to a mythical part of the city. Not all of them make it. As mad as a box of spiders ;)



Wim Wenders: shouldn't need any introduction really:

I'd recommend The American Friend, Wings of Desire and (rather obviously) Paris, Texas



Werner Herzog: Watch everything you can by this director, even at his worst he says more about the Human condition (the Ecstatic Truth!) than Hollywood will in a 100 years:

Werner on Languages:



Rainer Werner Fassbinder: little to add really, just try some of his work. However I'd especially like to recommend the massive Berlin Alexanderplatz (although I can't stand the last hour or so...I like to pretend it didn't happen), but the rest of the huge running time more than makes up for. It can be watched on several different levels; Franz Biberkopf as a metaphor for Germany, sleep-walking into Nazi rule, the goodness in it exploited by others, giving way to madness and horror. However you look at it, it's just a brilliant film and shouldn't be missed.