Tim Cawkwell's Cinema

Sforzinda Books is the title of the publishing imprint I use as a vehicle to promote my own writing, principally on the cinema but also more widely. I hope in time to expand the number of titles available considerably.

For more details on each title, including the ‘Look Inside’ facility, go to:

http://bit.ly/CawkwellKindleStore.

BOOKS AND ESSAYS PUBLISHED (April 2020)

A Tivoli Companion: history and gardens

An essay about the Italian hill-town of Tivoli near Rome, famous for its gardens and with three millennia of history. The perfect tourist guide. Well illustrated.

Published 2015: 44 pages, 42 photographs, cost £5.35 digital, £8.50 paperback.

The New Filmgoer's Guide to God

A probing account of how film has dealt with Christian themes in the twentieth century, both doubts and certainties. Five great film-makers take centre stage: Bresson, Dreyer, Rossellini, Tarkovsky, Kieslowski, and the book considers a wide range of films from the past 100 years. Illustrated.

Published 2014 by Matador: 178 pages, cost £2.99 digital, £10.50 paperback.

Film Past Film Future: an enquiry into cinema and the imagination

What is the cinematic imagination?  Is it the spectator using his or her imagination in a creative manner to absorb the images presented?  Or is it the spectator spellbound before the film-maker’s imagination spilled out on the screen?  In the first, the imagination is firmly in the minds of the spectators; in the second, in the mind of the filmmaker. ‘Film Past, Film Future’ ranges widely over the history of the cinema in all its forms to show how film-makers have exploited both their own imagination and that of the spectator to create compelling films, narrative and non-narrative. Includes an extended consideration of cinema and the Holocaust.

Originally published digitally. A revised paperback version replaced the digital one in 2020 and costs £11.90 on Amazon (search 'Cawkwell Film Past Film Future). 220 pages.

Temenos 2012: being the strange account of an uncommon journey to discover the elixir of film

An account of the showing of Eniaios VII, VIII and IX by Gregory Markopoulos under the stars in Arcadia, Greece in July 2012. Including an account by Robert Beavers of the Eniaios project.

Published 2012: ca 9,000 words long, cost 99p digital

Between Wee Free and Wi Fi: Scotland and the UK belong surely?

A plea for the continued unity of the United Kingdom on geographical, historical and cultural grounds.

Published 2013, digital only: ca 4,000 words long, cost 99p

From Neuralgistan to the Elated Kingdom: a personal journey inside Sicily

This essay describes my 2012 encounter with Sicily – its treasures (Monreale, Segesta, Palermo among them) and its scars (the mafia presence, its sloth) – and brings them together with my experience of ‘giant-cell arteritis’, which is inflammation of the arteries in the head. It draws on Sicilian history in all its richness, on Di Lampedusa’s novel ‘The Leopard’, on films, on the intriguing distinction between shame and guilt cultures, on the attractions of islands, and on the cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas, especially the last five, as a travel narrative from suffering to release.

Published 2013: ca 12,000 words long, cost £1.08 digital

Belaboured, Bats Broken, Britain Shaken: a personal account of the 2017 General Election

Published 2017: ca 8,000 words long, cost £2.25 digital, £5.75 paperback