2021 Gift Guide

The cast and crew of Martin Scorsese's The Irishman. (Photo by Kathrine Narducci.)

Still on the search for holiday gifts? Our first-ever Notebook Gift Guide has got you covered with our pick of everything from coffee table books and career surveys to movie merch and prints. 

BOOKS AND MAGAZINES

• A number of books by filmmakers themselves, some new and some republished in beautiful new editions, offer an eye-opening perspective into the medium. This year marked the 50th anniversary of Jerry Lewis’ The Total Film-Maker, his classic 1971 book about the entire production process, from “script to post-production.” The book is based on over 480 hours of a lecture series delivered at USC Film School, and the newly released 50th anniversary edition also includes “all-new, never-before-seen photos of Jerry on set.” 

• Marguerite Duras’ newly translated The Darkroom contains the script for her 1977 experimental film Le camion (The Truck), a dialogue between Duras and Michelle Porte, four “manifesto-like” theoretical propositions, and introduction by the late philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. The book, as David Stromberg writes for the Los Angeles Review of Books, “sets out to undermine our commitment to any overarching ideology by reminding us, again and again, that we are people moving in a world where other people are also moving.” 

Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time in Hollywood: A Novel. 

• Once Upon A Time in Hollywood: A Novel is Quentin Tarantino’s pulpy novelization of the eponymous 2019 film as well as his first novel. The book expands upon the backstory and eventful lives of the film’s characters, from Cliff Booth and Rick Dalton to Bruce Lee and the Manson Family, and features these characters’ commentary and criticism of the films of their time. 
• James Ivory’s memoir Solid Ivory delivers on the promise of its epic title. As Alexandra Jacobs of the New York Times writes, the book is wonderfully frank about sex and movies—including his romantic and professional partnership with producer Ismail Merchant—and everything in between. 

Memoria, from Fireflies Press. 

• For other books about cinema, there are a number of rich deep dives published by Fireflies Press. A documentation of the “genesis and creation” of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria gathers notes, diary entries, emails, and photographs pertaining to the Colombia-set film that invite us into the filmmaker’s creative process. For the Decadent Editions series, ten critics take on ten different films from each year of the 2000s, including Nick Pinkerton on Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) and Melissa Anderson on David Lynch’s Inland Empire (2006). 
• Srikanth Srinivasan of The Seventh Art has written the first-ever book-length appraisal of Indian experimental filmmaker Amit Dutta, Modernism by Other Means: The Films of Amit Dutta. Framing Dutta as an authentically modernist filmmaker, Srinivasan challenges the reader to reconsider “what being modern in art means.” 

1970—2018 Interviews with Med Hondo, from Archive Books.

• A three-volume publication that focuses on the career and films of Med Hondo can be found at Archive Books: 1970—2018 Interviews with Med Hondo and On the Run, Perspectives on the Cinema of Med Hondo are invaluable English language texts from and about the Mauritanian filmmaker that confirm his position of importance in cinema history. The third volume, Das Kino von Med Hondo, is a digital-only book that features 22 essays and interviews about Hondo in French and German.
• Also at Archive Books, editors Ann Adachi-Tasch, Go Hirasawa, and Julian Ross have compiled translations of key Japanese texts about the artistic practice of “expanded cinema,” in a book entitled Japanese Expanded Cinema and Intermedia: Critical Texts of the 1960s. 
• The Red Years of Cahiers du cinéma (1968-1973) by Daniel Fairfax is an exciting historical investigation of the changes undergone by French film journal Cahiers du cinéma following the uprising of May 1968 (namely a shift into Marxist and psychoanalytic theory), and the long-lasting impact of these developments on film studies today. 
• Film Desk’s shop has a great selection of books, including some that are available in their first editions. We’re most excited by their restored and revised edition of programmer and critic Amos Vogel’s seminal 1974 book Film As a Subversive Art. Per Screen Slate, the book catalogs more than 500 films, and “serves as a treatise on the revolutionary potential of cinema: its ability to change consciousness, reflect the human condition, and subvert the status quo.” 

Spike Lee's SPIKE.

• For those looking for books with dazzling photographs and illustrations, Spike Lee’s monograph SPIKE contains hundreds of photographs by Spike’s brother and still photographer David Lee from the sets of films like Malcolm X (1992) and Da 5 Bloods (2020), Nike commercials with Michael Jordan, and music videos with Prince and Michael Jackson.
• Published by the Fondation Cartier, David Lynch, Digital Nudes is a collection of 125 digital photographs by the filmmaker of bodies draped in elegant shadows. This is a follow-up to Lynch’s 2017 book Nudes, which displayed his use of analog photography. 
• Following his books on the Coen brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson, critic Adam Nayman has written another career-spanning survey, this time on David Fincher. Evoking the filmmaker’s interest in paranoia and procedure, the design of David Fincher: Mind Games “[shifts] to echo case files within a larger psychological profile.” 

Michael Snow's Cover to Cover. 

• Once out of print, Michael Snow’s art book Cover to Cover is a “quasi-movie” (the artist’s own words) that is composed of photographs ordered in narrative sequence. Sometimes inverted, reversed, or pivoted, the frames produce a disorienting and maze-like experience of simultaneity. 
• Printed Matter’s Arthur Jafa: MAGNUMB is an overview of filmmaker and artist Arthur Jafa’s best-known works, including his 2016 film Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death. Accompanying the photographs and stills are essays by scholars on Jafa’s investigation of Black American culture and “the central conundrum of black being.” 
• Hollywood Chinese: The Chinese in American Feature Films by Arthur Dong is a coffee table book that doubles as a historical archive of Chinese-American cinema history, with over 500 “vintage photographs, movie posters, lobby cards and assorted ephemera [that] show the myths, misconceptions, and memorable moments of the Chinese in film.” These materials are contextualized by interviews with figures like Wayne Wang and Ang Lee, and production histories from early Hollywood. 

Another Gaze. 

• Feminist film journal Another Gaze is continuing to keep print alive with their visually striking issues of incisive feminist film criticism, usually about filmmakers on the margins or against the current of the mainstream. Issues 01 to 05, and a tote bag, can be bought here.
• Though cinematographer Roger Deakins usually films in color, his first monograph Byways captures his love for black-and-white landscape photography. The book features previously unpublished photographs taken from 1971 to the present, taken across the globe.

Shawscope Volume One, from Arrow Video. 

DVDS AND STREAMING

• Arrow Video’s Shawscope Volume One is a limited edition box set of 12 action films from the iconic studio that includes restorations of beloved classics like The Boxer From Shantung, Five Shaolin Masters, and Dirty Ho. 
• The Ken Jacobs Collection from Kino Lorber contains 13 of the prolific filmmaker’s works in Blu-ray, and contributions by film critics J. Hoberman and Tom Gunning. 

​​

LA Plays Itself: The Fred Halsted Collection. 

• From the boutique distributor Altered Innocence, LA Plays Itself: The Fred Halsted Collection is “the first-ever uncut disc release” of several restored films by pioneering gay filmmaker Fred Halsted. A video essay by critic Caden Mark Gardner and video interview with ​​Halsted Plays Himself author William E. Jones accompany the films. 
• Hosted by Sentient.Art.Film, the online screening series My Sight is Lined With Visions: 1990s Asian American Film & Video is available for rent. This package makes several hard-to-find and important titles of Asian-American cinema, from documentaries like Kelly Loves Tony (1998) and experimental features like Fresh Kill (1994) available at an affordable price. 

Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films box set, from the Criterion Collection.

• Criterion’s well-designed and densely packed collector’s sets, Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films and Once Upon a Time in China: The Complete Films, would make a fantastic addition to any movie collection. 
• For gift-givers in the UK, the BFI shop is selling a 2-disc Blu-ray edition of Dennis Hopper’s punk cult classic Out of the Blue, which was very recently restored in 4K following a crowdfunding campaign. The 2-disc edition includes audio commentary by Hopper, interviews with cast and crew, and a video essay on the film’s star, Linda Manz. 

MUSIC

Thief: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack LP, from Mondo.

• From Mondo, a gorgeous colored vinyl (in a package designed by Jay Shaw) for Tangerine Dream's synth soundtrack to Michael Mann's 1980 debut film, the crime thriller Thief. 
• The newly mastered boxset Peter Tscherkassky, All the Soundtracks (2005–2021) comes with all of Dirk Schaefer's soundtracks for the films of Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky, from Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine in 2005 to the his newest film, 2021's Train Agai. 
• Luboš Fišer’s soundtrack for Jaromil Jireš' surrealist Czechoslovak New Wave film, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970), is now available in a limited ten-year anniversary vinyl from Salvation. 
• The first-ever issue of composer Carman Moore’s Personal Problems soundtrack is available for purchase from Film Desk Books, and it comes with liner notes by Moore and Ishmael Reed (who collaborated with director Bill Gunn on the film). Side B of the record features improvisations by Moore on the themes from the score, recorded in 2019. 

Godzilla: The Showa Era Soundtracks, 1954-1975, from Waxwork Records.

• Made in collaboration with Toho, Waxwork Records’ collector’s box set Godzilla: The Showa Era Soundtracks, 1954-1975 is an appropriately massive collection of all fifteen Godzilla film soundtracks with remastered audio and new artwork by Robert Sammelin. 
• Brain Eno’s recently released compilation album Film Music 1976 - 2020 is the first ever collection of Eno’s film and television music, an oeuvre that includes tracks from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Beyond The Clouds (1995) and David Lynch’s Dune (1984). 

POSTERS, CATALOGS, AND PRINTS

Husbands Japanese chirashi.  

• Posteritati has an exciting range of global movie posters to peruse through. We recommend the Inland Empire Polish commercial poster, the Husbands Japanese chirashi, and of course, that Parallel Mothers poster, but it’d be a great idea to spend a few hours getting lost in their massive selection, and maybe pick up a Posterati One Sheet T-shirt as you check out. 
• Bookended by a foreword from Henry Louis Gates, Jr and an afterword by Spike Lee, Separate Cinema: The First 100 Years of Black Poster Art charts the history of Black film poster art with materials gathered from the Separate Cinema Archive, known as the “most extensive private holdings of African-American film memorabilia in the world.” 
• Founded by Carolyn Funk and Gina Telaroli, production company Duelle Films has made a collection of lush and meticulously layered prints from the recent exhibition, The Dark World, available for purchase online. 

Moving Pictures: The Complete Film Posters of Hans Hillmann. 

• For the first time, all of legendary German designer Hans Hillmann’s film posters can be seen in the book Moving Pictures: The Complete Film Posters of Hans Hillmann. With up to 300 illustrations, the book also includes several of Hillmann’s sketches, drafts, and interviews. 
• Known for its own collection of wacky and inventive merch, film studio A24’s book For Promotional Use Only: A Catalogue of Hollywood Movie Swag and Promo Merch from 1975-2005 is a catalog of “artifacts of Hollywood marketing excess and ingenuity.” The book features a foreword by Roger Corman, an essay by Lindsay Zoladz, and an oral history by Caroline Golum. 

The Happy Together bath towel. 

APPAREL, HOME GOODS

• The Wong Kar Wai collection at BLK2 Distribution immortalizes the WKW cinematic universe with Happy Together bath towels, a Chungking Express pineapple keychain, a Fallen Angels phone case, and plenty of tote bags.  
• Illustrator Paul Rogers’ Name That Movie puzzle book contains 100 references to classic films in the form of simple line drawings. To win the game, guess the movie!  
• From Deeper Movies, photographs of various Blockbuster locations to decorate the home with nostalgia. 

​​

My Neighbor Totoro cat bus necklace. 

• The Hayao Miyazaki collection at the Academy Museum features items inspired by the characters and worlds of Miyazaki’s films. These are limited edition items that Studio Ghibli made in collaboration with the museum, from side chairs and necklaces to sleeping bags and stickers. 
• Two extra special shirts to set you apart: the Emmanuelle Tee by L'école des Femmes pays tribute to the iconic erotic film franchise, and Terminal Classic’s Maya Deren shirt celebrates the trailblazing avant-garde filmmaker.