What is Cinema?
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman’s documentary What Is Cinema? tackles the question of its title through over 100 clips and new interviews with Mike Leigh, Jonas Mekas, Yvonne Rainer, David Lynch, video artist Bill Viola, Robert Altman, Kelly Reichardt, Costa-Gavras, Ken Jacobs, Michael Moore, critic J. Hoberman, and others, and with archival interviews from Robert Bresson, Alfred Hitchcock, Chantal Akerman, Akira Kurosawa, Abbas Kiarostami, and more. The film also includes commissioned sequences from experimental artists Lewis Klahr and Phil Solomon.\r\n\r\nWhat Is Cinema? not only asks a poignant question, but chronicles the best of filmmaking today and proposes where cinema will go, and should go, in the future.
'What Is Cinema?' is a compelling, enriching look at visionaries old and new, who continue to forge fascinating new paths in a medium that shows no signs of stagnating. Indeed, 'What Is Cinema?' isn't really about where film has been, but where it goes next.
Indiewire
15 Documentaries To Watch Out For This Year — Cinephiles rejoice, this one's for you.
Commentary from filmmakers and programmers offers insight, but the real treat here is the juxtaposition of clips: a hall-of-mirrors tour that is a cinephile’s nocturnal emission.
| Name | Role |
| Abbas Kiarostami | Cast Member |
| Charles S. Cohen | Producer |
| David Lynch | Cast Member |
| Chuck Workman | Director |
| Alfred Hitchcock | Cast Member |
| Mike Leigh | Cast Member |
| Jonas Mekas | Cast Member |
| Michael Moore | Cast Member |
| Kelly Reichardt | Cast Member |
| Chantal Akerman | Cast Member |
| Akira Kurosawa | Cast Member |
| Robert Altman | Cast Member |
| Robert Bresson | Cast Member |
