Tim Cawkwell's Cinema

. . . to the homepage for Tim Cawkwell, freelance writer on film and former film-maker. This website is a platform for my writing on film, whether in the form of blog-type entries or essays. I have published a number of books (e.g. co-editor of ‘World Encyclopaedia of Film’ 1972, ‘The Filmgoer’s Guide to God’ 2004, ‘Film Past Film Future’ 2011) and have launched (February 2013) my own imprint, Sforzinda Books, as a vehicle for these and other of my own books to be available in digital form. The website for this is www.cawkwellbooks.co.uk.

NEW (11 MARCH 2013): INTERVIEW WITH FILM-MAKER NICK COLLINS

CLICK HERE FOR MY BLOG

I am also interested in music, poetry (and literature in general), painting, sculpture, history, religion and philosophy. While there is value in studying film purely for its own sake, there is merit too in linking it closely to its historical and cultural context.

My emblem (on the right) needs explaining. The phrase ‘caméra-stylo’ was coined in 1948 by the French director Alexandre Astruc to describe a cinema which was ‘just as flexible and subtle as written language’. Thirty years later I liked to use the phrase to describe the technique I used in my film-making days of drawing directly on the film strip using a calligraphic pen (long ago it would have been a goose feather cut to make a quill). Now, over 60 years on from 1948 I like it as a way of describing the art of writing about the cinema, and created this emblem to visualise the idea.

I was born in 1948 and live in Norwich in the UK.