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Topic: Mike Leigh

	Mike Leigh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Mike Leigh (born February 20, 1943) is an award winning British film and theatre director.
		The evident anger inherent in Leigh's material, in some ways typical of the Thatcher years, fittingly seemed to soften after her departure from the political scene.
		Leigh uses lengthy improvisations developed over a period of weeks to build characters and storylines for his films.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Mike_Leigh (920 words)

	BBC NEWS \| In Depth \| Newsmakers \| Mike Leigh: Britain's Bergman
		Mike Leigh's acutely-observed vignettes on British life - usually featuring the poor, the dispossessed and the downright odd - have captured the essence of their times, whether they be the aspirational 70s, the socially-divisive 80s or the neurotic 90s.
		Mike Leigh was born in Salford, Lancashire in 1943.
		Leigh's domain is the seedy bed-sit, the run-down council estate, where stilted conversation, casual violence and loveless sex are the norm.
	news.bbc.co.uk /1/hi/in_depth/uk/2000/newsmakers/2340531.stm (873 words)

	Using Mike Leigh's Techniques (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
		Leigh commences his projects without a script and each actor draws up a comprehensive list of people of the same sex and of a similar age (within three years) that they have known or met, excluding relatives.
		Leigh then decides which parts of the improvisation are valid and should enter the character’s ‘new history’, thus becoming part of the unfolding narrative or back-story.
		Leigh thus seeks a subtle and intimate expression of the character's emotional ‘truth’, removing the actor’s recourse to vocal interaction and facial or (full-) body language, which can sometimes act as a defence or obstacle to ‘honest’ emotional interaction within conventional verbal improvisation.
	www.smmp.salford.ac.uk /research/performance/bib/leightech.html (844 words)

	Mike Leigh
		Mike Leigh uses a narrative approach to filmmaking, concentrating on exhaustive improvisational character development, rather than symbolic imagery.
		As a result, there are some aspects of the dialogue that are left open-ended and unresolved: the identity of Hortense's father, the conversation between Hortense and Yolanda about a relationship between their parents, Roxanne's past problems (that led her to the streets).
		In a sense, Leigh is very similar to Maurice: he chronicles the visual imagery of his subjects in a manner that reflects them honestly, but with compassion.
	www.filmref.com /directors/dirpages/leigh.html (679 words)

	Mike Leigh
		References to the period and locale of any given Leigh film are extremely rare, leaving one with the sense of floating in a peculiar no-time, no-place, which just doesn't gel with the actual experience of watching a Mike Leigh movie.
		One of Mike Leigh's strengths as a filmmaker is his ability to straddle the particular and the universal, and by doing so elicit those half-funny, half-painful moments of recognition: those flashes of "I know a person just like that".
		Multivalence is the highest term of approbation Carney ascribes to the work of Mike Leigh: multivalence in the sense of the respectful portrayal of a group of characters, one point of view or "correct position" rarely privileged over another.
	www.latrobe.edu.au /screeningthepast/reviews/rev0703/mgbr15.html (681 words)

	Mike Leigh
		From 1973 to 1984, Leigh directed a series of memorable films for the BBC which pursued and renewed the social realist movement born at the beginning of the 1960s.
		In 1988, Leigh returned to the cinema to formulate accusations against the damage done by Margaret Thatcher's economic model.
		After Life is Sweet (1991), Leigh directed Naked in 1993, a film noir colored by a grating despair which brings to the fore the "old" class struggle, buried during the prosperous years.
	www.pardo.ch /1997/filmprg/r016.html (285 words)

	Salon: Mike Leigh
		IKE LEIGH used to be one of a kind, famous for creating movies through an unusual process that involves extensive rehearsals and improvisations with his actors, a process that begins weeks before anyone picks up a camera.
		Leigh's movies have a startling richness, the product of a ruthless eye working in concert with an expansive heart, an all-too-rare combination of biting satire and deep humanism.
		Leigh's artistic success has spawned some imitators, and he's not the only director trying to capture the texture of everyday life.
	www.salon.com /weekly/interview960916.html (591 words)

	Guardian Unlimited Film \| Features \| Profile: Mike Leigh
		Leigh's work has frequently been attacked for everything from its methodology to its gloomy content to its depiction of women: it is "about as political as a mugging," fumed Julie Burchill about 1993's Naked.
		Leigh is combative in defence of his work, and enraged by accusations that he is condescending towards the working classes, or in the case of Naked, aggressively sexist: "The serious, mature feminist position has no problems with the film at all," he claims.
		Mike Leigh was born on February 20 1943, the son of Abe Leigh, a doctor who ran a surgery in Salford, near Manchester.
	film.guardian.co.uk /features/featurepages/0,4120,814793,00.html (3020 words)

	Britmovie \| Mike Leigh Biography
		Critics and discerning audiences have flocked to Leigh's work almost since its inception, although the critic who wrote in the 1980s that 'in any other country apart front England, he would be an internationally established film-maker' was probably not only underestimating the Brits, but over-stating the international case.
		Although Naked (1993), a depressing, minimalist drama, is Leigh at his most resistible, he atoned with Secrets and Lies (1996), a study of secret shames unnecessarily withheld from nearest and dearest, with some excellent scenes that stick in the memory.
		Leigh was nominated for an Oscar and, in his typical Eeyore fashion, managed to give the impression that he considered himself-unlucky not to win.
	www.britmovie.co.uk /directors/m_leigh/biog.html (327 words)

	MIKE LEIGH: Secrets and Lies - the iMAGAZINE (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
		Mike Leigh thinks that British journalists "are bastards who only want to put the boot in", and ironically Mike Leigh may just be right when it comes to his native and territorial England.
		Mike Leigh's underlying mood has the sniff and promise of impending boredom and impatience should the journalist not live up to expectations.
		This is Leigh as the voice of the underdog and it is aimed, in his words, at all of those faceless people in their ivory towers who observe life at a safe distance, entombed and isolated from the world with their security systems and upper class boundaries.
	www.thei.aust.com /isite/cellleigh.html (2499 words)

	BBC - BBC Four - Audio Interviews - Mike Leigh
		The fact that his films are instantly recognisable is due not least to Leigh's unique working methods, which do not rely on a written script but involve endless improvisation with a carefully prepared cast before any shooting begins.
		Leigh was born in the industrial town of Salford, Lancashire, in 1943.
		In his recent venture, Topsy Turvey (1999), Leigh makes an uncharacteristic excursion from his usual stamping ground into Victorian London, describing the lives of the comic opera masters, W S Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, and the making of their The Mikado in 1885.
	www.bbc.co.uk /bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/leighm2.shtml (499 words)

	Independent Online Edition > News (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
		Mike Bradwell, now director of the Bush Theatre, was one of Mike Leigh's earliest collaborators.
		When Leigh feels the character he wants is emerging, he introduces his creation to one of the other members of the cast, manufacturing the drama by issuing simple commands: "Character A meets Character B in the pub" or "C sleeps with Character D".
		Leigh was born in an overwhelmingly working-class area of Manchester, the son of a doctor of Russian-Jewish descent.
	enjoyment.independent.co.uk /theatre/news/article307844.ece (1647 words)

	Seven Questions For Mike Leigh
		Mike Leigh, the British director whose new film "Secrets and Lies" won the Palme d'or at Cannes, took some time to answer some questions from indieWIRE and an online audience during the New York Film Festival-- "Secrets and Lies" was the opening night film for the event.
		Leigh: So far as the adoption aspect of it was concerned, there are people close to me who have (had) adoption-related experiences.
		Leigh: I have already finished my next movie, apart from the fact that I cannot think of a title for it, but it is edited and ready, nearly.
	www.indiewire.com /people/int_leigh_mike_960927.html (674 words)

	Combustible Celluloid - Interview with Mike Leigh
		Mike Leigh is a smallish, wispy sort of man. But after only a few moments, you know who is in control of the room.
		Leigh explains why he decided to take on the movie, which tells the story of composers Gilbert and Sullivan as they grapple with a potential break-up and the creation of their Japanese-influenced opera The Mikado.
		Leigh himself sees both the pros and the cons; "the problem with my projects, is that it's all up and running.
	www.combustiblecelluloid.com /intleigh.shtml (1134 words)

	Accidental Origins - Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies. By Sarah Kerr
		Mike Leigh, the tragicomic English director whose last film, Naked, won him belated fame in America, has a working method so unique it's easy just to ponder that and forget about the films themselves.
		Leigh sits them on the same side of the table, facing the camera, so we can follow the tense see-saw between small talk and hysteria.
		Leigh is like a teen-age genius with a few bad habits and a gift for seeing things the rest of us never will, which may be why the funniest moments in Secrets and Lies turn out to have nothing to do with the story.
	www.slate.com /id/3198 (1180 words)

	Mike Leigh
		British filmmaker Mike Leigh began his career in the 1970s as a playwright and theater director.
		As Leigh speaks in these interviews, he reveals what is unique in his work, particularly that his films do not begin with a script.
		Leigh is asked to discuss politics, social attitudes, and religion--all of which give his films a unique signature.
	www.upress.state.ms.us /books/l/mike_leigh_interv.html (386 words)

	Mike Leigh, Topsy-Turvy and the Excavation of Memory
		But Leigh's production process of organic development, in which the director generates the script with actors in a lengthy series of detailed improvisation sessions, which are them formalized into a final script, is obviously inimical to Hollywood's script- and star-driven cinema, a cinematic template that the industry has no interest in abandoning.
		Leigh's inherent socialism is everywhere apparent in the film, yet he seems equally sympathetic to all of his characters, whether at the top of the pecking order, or merely members of the chorus.
		Leigh's Vera Drake follows in the path of Topsy-Turvy in the fact that it, too, is a period piece, and it may be that, as Leigh has become comfortable with his work as a filmmaker, he feels drawn to re-present the past in light of present social expectations, rather than living exclusively in the present.
	www.sensesofcinema.com /contents/05/37/topsy_turvy.html (2949 words)

	Guardian Unlimited \| Arts news \| Mike Leigh's latest is a sellout - but no one knows what it's about
		Leigh, who is perhaps best known for his play Abigail's Party and last year's film Vera Drake, about an abortionist in the 1950s, had been planning to write a play for the National Theatre for the past four years.
		Leigh also apparently ran into difficulties after the film was nominated for the best original screenplay at this year's Oscars.
		"Mike Leigh requested an off-site rehearsal run as he likes to work one-on-one with his actors on their characters and backstories," said the spokeswoman.
	www.guardian.co.uk /arts/news/story/0,11711,1555134,00.html (875 words)

	Mike Leigh/All or Nothing Interview by Paul Fischer in Los Angeles.
		Leigh was back in 1999 with Topsy-Turvy, a biographical comedy about famed 19th-century opera composers Gilbert and Sullivan.
		Leigh's latest film, All or Nothing, which opened selectively prior to its upcoming wider release, is a melancholy look at the day-to-day lives of a dysfunctional lower-middle class British family called the Bassetts.
		Mike Leigh: Well, things will be different, but I think it would be quite wrong for anyone to imagine that the working classes have a monopoly on emotions.
	www.filmmonthly.com /Profiles/Articles/MLeigh/MLeigh.html (2237 words)

	FILMMAKER MAGAZINE \| Fall 2004: Midwife Crisis
		Mike Leigh, the master of sly social satire with ensemble casts takes a different tack in Vera Drake by staging a loving portrait of a woman arrested for abortion in 1950.
		Leigh: I have never directly been involved in abortion, in the sense that I have never caused a pregnancy that needed to be terminated.
		Leigh: Yes, my father was a doctor and my mother was a midwife, and I would have loved to have talked to my father when I was making the film last year.
	www.filmmakermagazine.com /fall2004/features/midwife_crisis.php (1750 words)

	Guardian Unlimited \| Arts news \| Mike Leigh's mystery play delayed
		Leigh "has not fully completed the process of creating the new work" and this week asked for "an extra couple of days", according to a spokeswoman.
		Leigh famously works without a script, evolving his plays or films through improvisation with actors over an intense period of research and rehearsals.
		Hytner approached Leigh to create a play for the National in 2001, shortly after he was appointed to run the theatre, and has announced a "new play by Mike Leigh" every year since.
	www.guardian.co.uk /arts/news/story/0,11711,1564857,00.html?gusrc=rss (572 words)

	united MANCHESTER present MIKE LEIGH
		Mike directed both 'Four Days In July' (1984) and 'The Short And Curlies' ('87) for television whilst also enjoying success with his plays 'Smelling A Rat' ('88) and 'Greek Tragedy' ('89), however it was on a larger scale that Mike needed to express his talent.
		Mike's unique way of working with his actors is famed throughout the cinema world.
		Whilst his films are not to everyone's tastes, Mike Leigh's films have been hailed as a kind of "neo-Marxist Dickens", chronicling the ups and downs of British working-class life.
	www.prideofmanchester.com /movies/MikeLeigh.htm (1760 words)

	Vera Drake (Mike Leigh): Imelda Staunton Philip Davis (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
		Director Mike Leigh’s touches are found everywhere in Vera Drake, from the drab working-class social setting to the somewhat bizarre characters that inhabit that milieu (at least in Leigh’s oeuvre).
		Mike Leigh, upon receiving the Golden Lion for Vera Drake at the Venice Film Festival.
		Leigh added that his father, a general practitioner, performed euthanasia on terminally ill patients, a practice that even today would have landed him in jail.
	www.altfg.com /Reviews/Veradrake.htm (2121 words)

	EJP \| News \| UK \| Mike Leigh casts Jewish family
		Leighâs main plot in the play revolves around the familyâs reaction to finding their son become observant and donning a kippah (skullcap).
		This is the first time in more than 10 years that Mike Leigh has written a play for the theatre.
		Leigh is more famous for his direction in films like Oscar nominated âDrakeâ and âSecrets and Liesââ.
	www.ejpress.org /article/news/uk/3054 (450 words)

	Mike Leigh
		Mike Leigh is a British filmmaker who eschews traditional screenplays.
		Only the accents, often cockney-loaded, keep Leigh from being as appreciated in America as he is in England.
		Leigh first attended theater school in hopes of an acting career, but when teachers deemed his talents insufficient, he switched to art school, then film school, deciding he would direct.
	www.nndb.com /people/220/000059043 (524 words)

	Mike Leigh -- Britannica Student Encyclopedia
		Leigh was born on Feb. 20, 1943, in Salford, England.
		Mike Leigh's Vera Drake, a 1950s story of a good woman whose samaritan assistance with abortions brings disaster on her family, won the Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival.
		English essayist, critic, journalist, and poet Leigh Hunt was an editor of influential journals in an age when the periodical was at the height of its power.
	www.britannica.com /ebi/article-9312141?tocId=9312141&query=vivien (710 words)

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