What Is Cinema?

Using the words and ideas of great filmmakers, from archival interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson to new interviews with Mike Leigh, David Lynch, and Jonas Mekas, Oscar-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman shows what these filmmakers and others do that can't be expressed in words - but only in cinema.

Thank you for talking with David Lynch, who says "it can be like a dream" when watching cinema. In a way, this is sort of the point. It is trying to bring us in, get an emotional response, tell a story... make the false true and the fake real. If you can make fantasy a reality, you have succeeded.

There seems to be a growing number of "documentaries" that just show film clips and talk over them. Most are garbage. This one is okay. Not great, but okay. There are enough moments of directors talking about the films that influenced them to really be helpful, and enough footage from lesser-known films to really spark someone to add to their watch-list.