Refocus: The films of Richard Linklater
Edited with Kim Wilkins. EUP, 2022
Richard Linklater is a popular American filmmaker who is widely celebrated for the breadth of his oeuvre. Over the past three decades, Linklater has directed more than twenty features, ranging from non-linear independent films to Hollywood genre entertainment. Despite the popularity of Linklater's rich and varied body of work and perhaps also because of this generic diversity he remains under-represented in critical and scholarly fora.ReFocus: The Films of Richard Linklater addresses this oversight, bringing together twelve original essays attending to Linklater as a filmmaker whose work engages with contemporary debates in American politics, gender, youth, and activism as well as significant concepts in film studies, including time and duration, rhythm, and movement. Together these essays form a dialogue on Linklater's ongoing role in contemporary American popular culture, and the impact his work has on discussions within (and beyond) film studies.
“Rather than trying to fit Linklater’s filmmaking and its shifts between scales of production and variances in narrative, style and theme into a singular auteurist vision, this collection skillfully promotes the value of approaching artistic achievement from different perspectives. What emerges is a critically rich exploration of resemblance and relationality.”
“Linklater has quietly developed into one of his generation’s most celebrated directors, and this excellent collection helps to explain why. Fittingly conceptually heterogeneous, its chapters offer innumerable fresh dialogues with key philosophical, aesthetic, and sociopolitical dimensions of the filmmaker’s most fêted and lesser-known work. A rich and rewarding text.”