My Favorite Film Directors

The undisputed king of storytelling. Nearly every one of his film was a massively influential breakthrough of some kind from the debut to the swan song. Someone once asked master animator and famous teacher Richard Williams what films they should study if they wanted to get into animation, the man answered "Kurosawa".

Favorite films: Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), High and Low (1963), Rashomon (1950)

Kenji Mizoguchi was the grandmaster of old-school Japanese cinema. During his time Japanese filmmakers were moving away from the Silent era and Eisenstein school of doing things: while Ozy simplified his style as much as possible to avoid any tricky cuts to his films, Mizoguchi invented his own style of long shots with minimal cuts. This is where his trademark style came from. Mizoguchi himself had a rough life and every surviving fil of his depicts a tragedy and pain, usually the characters are women and children, that is the most vulnerable. At the later stage of his life Mizoguchi found divine inspiration and converted to Buddhism.

Favorite films: Oharu, Sansho the Bailiff, Women of the Night, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, Ugetsu

If Japanese masters ought to be more simple and modest, then Mikhail Kalatozov was the exact opposite: his style was bombastic and in your face from the very first films he made, and only got more energetic over the years. It was during the later stage of his career when he joined forces with the legendary cinematographer Sergey Urusevsky where his vision truly rose to the next level. His films are sometimes described "acrobatic" because of their incredible visual dynamicism.

Favorite films: I Am Cuba, The Cranes Are Flying, Nail in the Boot

Vlacil has sometimes been described as a hybrid of Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman, his style involves a stylized use of heavy symbolism, aesthetics and allegorical elements. Frantisek Vlácil was known for his struggle with alcoholism, which affected his career over the years and nearly killed him.

Favorite films: Marketa Lazarova (1967), Valley of the Bees (1968), The White Dove (1960)

Juraj Herz was like Tim Burton of Czechoslovakia with his love of poetic gothic horror, dark sense of humor and eroticism.

Favorite films: The Cremator (1969), Beauty and the Beast (1978)