Michael Winterbottom: Interviews

Prolific British director Michael Winterbottom (b. 1961) might be hard to pin down and even harder to categorize. Over sixteen years, he has created feature films as disparate and stylistically diverse as Welcome to Sarajevo, 24 Hour Party People, In This World, Butterfly Kiss, and The Killer Inside Me. But in this collection, the first English-language volume to gather international profiles and substantive interviews with the Blackburn native, Winterbottom reveals how working with small crews, available light, handheld digital cameras, radio mics, and minuscule budgets allows him fewer constraints than most filmmakers, and the ability to capture the specificity of the locations where he shoots.

In Michael Winterbottom: Interviews he emerges as an industrious filmmaker committed to a stripped-down approach whose concern with outsiders and docu-realist authenticity have remained constant throughout his career.

Collecting pieces from news periodicals as well as scholarly journals, including previously unpublished interviews and the first-ever translation of a lengthy, illuminating exchange with the French editors of Positif, this volume spans the full breadth of Winterbottom’s notably eclectic feature-film career.

Damon Smith is an award-winning filmmaker and story consultant based in New York City. His writing has appeared in Reverse Shot, the Boston Globe, Time Out New York, and Cinema Scope.