Parky at the Pictures (Phoenix Screen Arts Festival Special)

The theatrical selection includes the National Theatre's acclaimed production of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, with Zoë Wanamaker as Ranyevskaya, and the Globe Theatre's takes on Shakespeare's Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The latter trio forms part of a special strand devoted to Sir John Falstaff that is completed by Orson Welles's exceptional 1966 Bardic palimpsest, Chimes at Midnight.

Welles first played Falstaff in a school production and his fascination with the incorrigible rogue inspired the bold attempt to meld eight Shakespearean plays into the stage epic Five Kings, which bankrupted the Mercury Theatre in 1939. Twenty-one years later, Welles opened in Belfast with the equally ambitious Chimes at Midnight, which combined elements from Richard II, both parts of Henry IV, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor with extracts from Holinshed's Chronicle to create a lament for the passing of Merrie England.

However, this study of maverick potential being crushed by Machiavellian pragmatism was very much about Welles himself, who clearly equated the Lancastrian monarchy with the Hollywood studio system that had cast him adrift. Moreover, it's possible to draw comparisons between Welles's final triumph and his first, as the disappointment and dejection that Falstaff feels in his old age recalls that of Charles Foster Kane after the failure of his bid to mentor Susan Alexander.

What's even more apparent is that, despite his customary battles with budgets and schedules, Welles had lost none of his vitality, either as an actor or director. Having burst through the screen as the reckless roister-doister, his display of quiet dejection as Hal severs his ties is deeply touching, while the use of a moving, deep-focussed camera around the Spanish sets and locations is sublime. What's more, the depiction of the confusion and carnality of combat in the Battle of Shrewsbury sequence (which took three weeks to edit) ranks alongside anything achieved by Eisenstein or Kurosawa.

Yet, there are flaws here. The soundtrack is often indistinct and the poor synchronisation is as distracting as the stylistic clashes between the meticulously mannered John Gielgud (as Henry IV), the laconic Keith Baxter (as Hal), the fulsome Margaret Rutherford (as Mistress Quickly) and the anachronistically modern Jeanne Moreau (as Doll Tearsheet). But nothing detracts from the melancholic majesty of this maligned masterpiece.

Also on offer is a handsome restoration of Truck Branns's 1966 record of Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn's historic performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake at the Vienna State Opera House; Brian Large's The Three Tenors (1990), which captures the majesty of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and José Carreras singing together at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome in July 1990; René Féret's Mozart's Sister, which stars Marie Féret as Nannerl, Marc Barbé as her father Léopold and David Moreau as her brother Wolfgang; a 2-D screening of Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams; and a special showing of the CGI documentary Flying Monsters, which will conclude with a live satellite Q&A with Sir David Attenborough.

Art naturally plays a key part in the programme, with stylish studies of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Rembrandt Van Rijn showing alongside a mesmerising tribute to one of the world's most fascinating museums.

Pieter Bruegel painted `The Way to Calvary' in 1564, as Spanish troops sought to impose the Counter Reformation upon his Flanders homeland. It was a work of religious allegory and political subversion. Yet it also lamented the human propensity for turning away from suffering, as few of the 500+ characters in the scene even notice the sacrifice being made by the figure struggling beneath the weight of a heavy wooden crucifix. The Polish director Lech Majewski examines how Bruegel came to create the picture and explains some of its symbolism in The Mill & the Cross, a technically innovative speculation that makes inspired use of the landscape in which the artist worked, blue-screen recreations and a vast backdrop painted by Majewski himself.

As dawn breaks over a village dominated by a windmill on a peripheral promontory, a young man climbs a gigantic wooden staircase and steps out onto the decking to untether the sails. Inside the tower, the empyral miller (Marian Makula) watches the cumbersome mechanism begin to turn his grindstone and seems satisfied that he will be able to keep everyone fed for another day. Meanwhile, Bruegel (Rutger Hauer) and his wife Marijken (Joanna Litwin) rise and while he prepares for a day's sketching, she tries to maintain a semblance of control over their brood of noisy children.

Elsewhere, banker and art collector Nicholas Jonghelinck (Michael York) and his wife Saskja (Dorota Lis) awaken in their opulent residence on the main thoroughfare and he watches people going about their business, as mounted Spanish troops trot past in their red uniforms. They are searching for heretics and capture a peasant (Mateusz Machnik) who is carrying a calf in a basket with his wife (Sylwia Szczerba). The soldiers subject him to a pitiless kicking before lashing him to a cartwheel and parading through the streets as a warning to his neighbours. As his terrified spouse watches on, the occupiers fix the wheel to a pole and haul it upright so that the crows can peck at the dead man's eyes.

Mary (Charlotte Rampling) closes her door in dismay, while Nicholas complains about the thugs doing the bidding of the King of Spain. He goes to see Bruegel, who explains that he intends hiding the Christ in his painting by focusing on Simon of Cyrene being coerced into carrying the cross, as he is keen to show how life goes on in the midst of momentous events. However, he positions the Virgin in the foreground to emphasise her pain at seeing her son being so monstrously mistreated and Majewski uses Mary's interior monologue on witnessing the persecution of her own son to reinforce the link between the New Testament story and contemporary atrocities.

As Bruegel theorises about the miller being God the Father producing the Bread of Life, his children tuck into a loaf at the table before making such nuisances of themselves that Marijken has to chase them outside. Their innocent antics are contrasted, however, with the lowering of the peasant's now-mutilated corpse and Bruegel informs Nicholas that he has included the breaking wheel in the picture to stress the idea of the circle of life and the inevitability of death. In showing a woman being buried alive, Majewski also warms to this notion of existence being nasty, brutish and short and uses the barbarism of the imperial troops and the compassionless Inquisition clerics to counter the simple pleasures afforded by music, dance and games.

As her son (Bartosz Capowicz) is scourged and forced to walk with his burden behind a tumbrel carrying two thieves taken from the gaol, Mary deplores the fact that just hours ago the crowd was cheering every utterance he made in the cathedral square. Nicholas similarly berates the authorities for failing to realise that he was speaking metaphorically about reform not revolution when he promised to tear down the edifice and rebuild it within three days. Despairing at the cruelty of the soldiers and the fickleness of his compatriots, Nicholas asks Bruegel if there is anything he can do to halt the procession and capture it so that the people could learn from their folly - and he raises a hand at the same time that the miller stops the sails.

Although a couple of horses move slightly, the tableau miraculously freezes and the camera scales the rough rock of the butte to the windmill platform, where the miller surveys the scene with a heavy heart. However, the sails soon start to turn again and the Via Crucis plays out in its inevitable manner. The crowds soon drift away, though, leaving Mary to cradle her son in a classic Pietà pose before following him to his burial cave.

As darkness falls, the man who has betrayed the deceased tosses away his pieces of silver on the cathedral floor and hangs himself before a ferocious storm erupts over the village and flashes of lightning illuminate the locals behaving as though nothing untoward has happened in their midst. But a truer sense of calm descends next morning, as Nicholas wanders through the streets, Bruegel leafs through his sketches and the people begin dancing to a tune played by a trio of musicians. Life must, indeed, go on and Majewski reaffirms this by pulling the camera back from a close-up of the painted Mary to show the picture hanging in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Despite the presence of Rutger Hauer, Michael York and Charlotte Rampling, the undoubted star of this remarkable feature is Lech Majewski. In addition to co-scripting with source book author Michael Francis Gibson and sharing photographic duties with Adam Sikora, he also supervised production designers Katarzyna Sobañska and Marcel Slawiñski, costumier Dorota Roqueplo and the team behind the visual effects to capture the look and spirit of Bruegel's sublime canvas. Moreover, he succeeds in bringing a static image to vibrant life while disclosing the historical and aesthetic factors that shaped its creation.

Closer in aspect and mood to Eric Rohmer's The Lady and the Duke (2001) than Peter Webber's Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003), this is a masterclass in marrying the traditional plastic arts with cutting-edge technology. The performances also seem to mix styles, with the English-speaking stars `behaving' like the characters in a Carl Theodor Dreyer or Robert Bresson film, while the remaining cast (who speak in untranslated Flemish or Spanish) exhibit a documentary-like naturalism that Roberto Rossellini pioneered for the period reconstructions that dominated his later career. The effect is disorientating and exhilarating and, if the dramatic content is occasionally ungainly, the mise-en-scène is imaginative, beautiful and never anything less than entrancing.

Peter Greenaway is one of this country's few genuinely inspired cinematic innovators and Nightwatching (2007) represents a palpable return to form for a master imagist-cum-provocateur, whose recent work hasn't always reached his loyal audience. Some have snipingly dismissed this as a Da Vinci Code for snobs. But in seeking to expose the hidden meanings in the 1642 canvas `The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch' - which is commonly known as `The Night Watch' - Greenaway doesn't just revel in conspiracy theories and subversive deconstruction. Instead, he presents a fascinating disquitation on the commercial and creative pressures placed upon a successful artist, an informed insight into contemporary techniques and a vivid account of everyday life in the bustling household of Rembrandt Van Rijn.

With his wife Saskia (Eva Birthistle) about to give birth, Rembrandt (Martin Freeman) accepts a commission to paint the Amsterdam Civic Guard, headed by Captain Frans Banning Cocq (Adrian Lukis). However, when one of the company, Piers Hasselburg (Andrzej Seweryn), is killed in a musket accident, Rembrandt begins digging into the private lives of his august subjects and discovers that many have dark secrets he cannot resist incorporating in the portrait. His ire particularly falls upon Banning Cocq, as he betrays his homosexual lust for co-conspirator Willem van Ruytenburgh (Adam Kotz) and the Guard's involvement in a child prostitution racket at the local orphanage.

However, the artist has problems of his own, as Saskia dies soon after producing their son Titus and he loses the will to paint. Moreover, he is torn between the affections of two of his female servants, sensuous wet nurse Geertje (Jodhi May) and demure maid Hendrickje (Emily Holmes), and disturbed by the desperate pleadings of Marieke (Natalie Press), a melancholic waif who pours out her woes as Rembrandt sits on his roof watching the night. But, by picture's end, he succeeds in both finding love and shaming his powerful adversaries, while retaining his reputation and alighting upon a new style.

As ever with Greenaway, this is a visual delight. Reinier van Brummelen's cinematography and Maarten Piersma's production design are exceptional, enabling Greenaway to fashion tableaux vivants that are as cinematic as they're theatrical and which evoke the artist's work, while also thrumming with life. Choreographed to Wlodzimierz Pawlik's Nyman-like score, the action draws the eye to all corners of the screen, as though to confirm the contention that posing a painting was tantamount to directing a moving image.

Martin Freeman takes a while to settle into his role, but the script plays to the strengths displayed in The Office and one quickly forgets Charles Laughton's titanic performance in Alexander Korda's 1936 biopic, Rembrandt, and Klaus Maria Brandauer's spirited turn in Charles Matton's 1999 drama of the same name. However, the use of a cosmopolitan cast to satisfy the terms of the quintipartite co-production proves less felicitous, as the erudite dialogue is often weighed down by the heavy accents of several secondary characters. Nevertheless, this compels as much as it captivates, particularly in the reveal sequence, in which Freeman presents his evidence like a whodunit detective damning a suspect.

Flitting through 33 rooms, occupied by over 2000 costumed characters, Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark (2002) is a moving tableau chronicling both momentous events and intimate incidents from Russian history - from the pomp of Peter and Catherine The Great, to the fall of the Tsars and the revolution.

It's not often that an arthouse film finds its way into the Guinness Book of Records. But in completing this sublime mastepiece of form and content in a single 96-minute take, Sokurov easily surpassed the 35 minutes it took Viva and Louis Waldon to make love in Andy Warhol's Blue Movie.

He cheated, of course, as Tilman Büttner's high-definition digital video camera wasn't hindered by the need to change reels every 10 minutes. But what was more important than the longevity of the take was the balletic ingenuity of the Steadicam movements, the sumptuous recreation of Russia's imperial and Soviet yesteryears, and the majestic use of the Hermitage Museum that once housed the Romanov dynasty.

Whether pursuing royals, eavesdropping on courtiers or perusing priceless paintings, this truly was poetry in motion. Yet Sukurov could speak only of his disappointment at not being allowed to use the 4000 extras he had originally envisaged and his submission to the producers' insistence that his direct soundtrack was dubbed in a German studio. He even accused Büttner of making mistakes during the course of the two kilometres he walked during the shoot because he was essentially a technician and not an artist.

Yet, to less demanding eyes, the `philharmonic cinematography' required to capture the endless stream of overlapping, flashbacking vignettes was not only intricately ingenious, but also evocative, exhilarating, mesmeric and deeply moving.

However, there were critics who, while applauding the logistical and choreographic precision involved, accused Sukurov of conducting a self-indulgent experiment that constantly kept the viewer at a distance from even the pivotal characters inhabiting what was essentially a pageant. It was also claimed that he had trivialised the theory of mise-en-scène espoused by André Bazin and employed in the pursuit of truth by such mentors as Robert Flaherty, Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingmar Bergman.

But such rigid academicism was as petty as Sokurov's own criticism of Büttner. Whatever its intellectual, dramatic or technical shortcomings, this was an exceptional cinematic achievement and, sometimes, that should simply be enough.

Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann's Dancing Dreams also overcomes its shortcomings to be of enormous value, as it proved to be the last study of choreographer Pina Bausch at work before she succumbed to cancer just five days after the 68 year-old was diagnosed in June 2009. Coming so soon after Wim Wenders's Pina, this may seem like an opportunistic release. But the pictures complement each other perfectly, with the often chaotic workshops that Bausch supervised prior to a Wuppertal youth company's production of Kontakthof contrasting with the more polished performances presented in Wenders's heartfelt 3-D tribute.

The auditions and rehearsals were largely conducted by Bénédicte Billet and Josephine Ann Endicott, who had danced in the original Tanztheater production in 1978. But Bausch made regular visits to the theatre and her insight and enthusiasm came to inspire the 40-odd kids from the town in Germany's industrial Ruhr heartland, the majority of whom had never danced before.

Aged 14-18 and from a range of ethnic backgrounds, the likes of Kim Christin Lörken, Rosario Tavano, Maria Färber, Ramona Rexfort, Jonas Quatour, Lennard Pfennig, Alexandros Sarakasidis, Anastasia Friesen and Jaqueline Palilla initially struggle to take the project seriously and find jettisoning self-consciousness extraordinarily difficult. But, as blonde Joy Wonnenberg and Bosnian gypsy Safet Mistel emerge as the most natural (if not always the most reliable) talents, the rest get swept along by the encouragement of their tutors and the excitement of playing to a live audience.

The transformation is remarkable, as the awkward stomping of the early sessions becomes confident strutting, as the teenagers take their places in a dance hall and begin eyeing each other up before enacting a series of courtship rituals that emphasise the deceptiveness of display, the fear of rejection, the perils of peer pressure and the fleetingness of pleasure. But while Bausch's choreography is mesmerising and her interventions often prove decisive, this is much more about the dedication and trust that Endicott and Billiet invest in the unknowns and their determination to show to themselves (and, in some cases, doubting family members) that they can amount to something in a society that often dwells on the negative aspects of youth.

Filmed over a year, the mix of talking-head and gyrating body is as nimble as Hoffmann's camerawork. Moreover, he and Linsel are sensitive to the cast's physical and emotional maturation and, while they stress the `journey' aspect of the creative process, they never present it in the mawkish manner of a talent-based reality TV show. Consequently, it's fascinating to see how the gauche wannabes learn to control and project their movements and expressions and learn much about themselves in the process.

Anne Bass clearly intended to show something similar in Dancing Across Borders, a profile of Sokvannara Sar, the Cambodian ballet dancer she discovered as a 16 year-old performing in the ancient temple at Angkor Wat. However, while this is an undoubtedly affectionate record of a young man's remarkable progress in an entirely alien environment, it also strikes a rather resistible note of self-congratulation and too often betrays Bass's inexperience as a film-maker.

The tone is set in the patronising opening montage that uses shots of paddyfields and local landmarks to presage Bass's first meeting with `Sy' in 2000 and her conviction that she could exploit her status as a socialite and position on the board of the New York City Ballet to get him an audition for the company school. In fact, Sy failed to impress and Bass had to put him through three years of coaching with the formidable Olga Kostritzky and footage of their sessions forms the core of the documentary.

However, Bass also packs in an inordinate number of talking heads, who extol Sy's virtues and take up time that could have more profitably been used to show the lad in action. Dancers Peter Boal, Jock Soto and Benjamin Millepied make useful contributions about Sy's talent and his ability to learn with enviable speed. Similarly, it's instructive to hear uncomprehending mother Kimheang Chunn hoping that her son settles in a far off land and make the most of his opportunity, while father Sithan Sar laments that he didn't devote himself to a more seemly occupation like engineering. But the insights of Khmer dance teachers Madame Boran Kim and Keo Sa Roeum, former Cambodian Ambassador to the United States Roland Eng and the respective founders of the AMRITA Performing Arts initiative and the Nginn Karet Foundation, Fred Frumberg and Ravynn Karet-Coxon, seem to have been included out of courtesy to people who helped support Sy and get the film made.

Sar returned to Phnom Penh in January 2006 and the clips of his performance of the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, Le Corsaire and Square Dance are neatly linked to shots of him returning to his old Khmer dance school and how his trip caught the public imagination. The segment on his participation in the Varna International Ballet Competition - when he danced Giselle and La Sylphide in the preliminary round and Le Corsaire and Coppelia in the semi-final - is also more compelling. But the most memorable sequences reveal his difficulty in dancing with a partner and showcase how far he came in such a short time, with the exhilarating comic athleticism of his turn as the harlequin in La Sonnambula being matched by his sensitivity in interpreting Philip Glass's On the Other Side.

Yet, for all the focus on dance, this is as much an study in assimilation, as Sar comes to terms with a strange language, life in an intimidating city and a completely new form of dance. The fact that he beat odds that Peter Boal estimates to be 1000-1 speaks volumes for his courage and tenacity. But the real drama in this glorified home movie lies in his gradual appreciation of and growing love for ballet.

Faith in a protégé also proves key to Mrs Carey's Concert. Forget Mr Holland's Opus (1995) and Music of the Heart (1999), as Bob Connolly and Sophie Raymond have produced the ultimate study of a music teacher at work in this engaging documentary. As the Director of Music at the exclusive MLC School in Burwood, Karen Carey is responsible for selecting and rehearsing the students who will perform at the biennial classical concert held in the Sydney Opera House. However, she has a hard act to follow, as Doretta Balkizas's rendition of the Brahms Violin Concerto at the 2007 event was unprecedentedly spectacular and no one appears to have a fraction of her talent.

The Australian-born daughter of parents from mainland China, Emily Sun has potential. But she not only lacks confidence, but also conviction and Carey has to battle to persuade her that she is better off concentrating on the Bruch Violin Concerto than rebelling against a system that could be the making of her. Singer Iris Shi is even more recalcitrant and her surly asides lead to her being ejected from one class.

However, the careful nurturing of Carey, deputy Kimbali Harding, head of strings Louise Keller and violin tutor Lynn Byun gradually has its effect on Emily. Moreover, Amelia Noble, Aurora Henrich, Kristy Nguyen, Renata Robinson, Lucy Cormack, Liane Papantoniou and Gillian Madden variously warm to the task of performing a Brahms sextet and a Ravel quartet, while in-house composer Damian Barbeler guides Hannah Buckley (violin) and Susie Kwon (viola) through his own piece, `Star Crossed', which has been designed to exploit the Opera House's distinctive acoustics.

Counting down to the big day, the co-directors make the most of the race against time scenario. But such is the aura of calm and command surrounding Mrs Carey that the triumphant finale is never really in doubt. However, this sense of faux drama clearly impacts upon the musicians, who rise to the challenges that Carey keeps throwing at them with admirable aplomb.

The concert itself has a professional splendour that ensures a rousing finale. But the Connolly and Raymond (who respectively handle the camera and the sound) never lose sight of the hard work required for such perfection and they deserve considerable praise for whittling down the 263 hours of footage recorded over 18 months of unobtrusive observation into such an inspirational and entertaining story.

Finally, the focus turns on cinema itself with profiles of two very different film-makers. One was much vaunted for his introduction of Method acting into American movies before he alienated many admirers by co-operating with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, while the other was an exploitation merchant who never spent more than he needed to in producing pictures that helped Hollywood find the juvenile audience that has been its bedrock since the dawn of the blockbuster era. Fittingly, each documentary adopts a tone suited to its subject, with Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones's A Letter to Elia being a personal plea for audiences to give Elia Kazan another chance by forgetting his politics and concentrating on his art and Alex Stapleton's Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel being a joyous celebration of a Roger Corman's undisputed reign as the King of the Bs.

Following in the wake of A Personal Journey Through American Movies (1995) and My Voyage to Italy (1999), A Letter to Elia testifies to Scorsese's abiding passion for the moving image and his enviable ability to be touched by what he sees. Thus, this is as much about how films like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), On the Waterfront (1954) and East of Eden (1955) impacted upon a sensitive young man enduring his own trials and uncertainties in a tough New York neighbourhood. Indeed, this study works best when Scorsese discusses scenes that chimed in with his own experience, as - no matter how eloquent Scorsese is in Kazan's defence - it is still difficult to warm to a man who named eight former colleagues at the Group Theater as Communists and effectively ruined their careers.

Scorsese presented Kazan with his honorary Oscar in 1999 because he was able to see past the perceived treachery and wanted to thank him for directing such landmark pictures as Gentleman's Agreement (1947), which exposed the existence of anti-Semitism in postwar America; A Face in the Crowd (1957), which considered the influence on society of television and celebrity; and America, America (1963), which used his uncle's experiences as an Anatolian Greek immigrant to examine his own relationship with his adopted homeland. But it's the clips from On the Waterfront, East of Eden and the lesser-known Wild River (1960) and America, America that prove most revealing about both Kazan and the young Scorsese.

Running just an hour, the film necessarily skims Kazan's acting stint and makes barely passing reference to such significant achievements as Pinky (1949), which confronted American attitudes to race; A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), which confirmed Marlon Brando's elevation to screen stardom; Baby Doll (1956), which caused a furore with its depiction of sexual precocity; and The Last Tycoon (1974), which made an underratedly fine job of adapting F. Scott Fitzgerald's roman à cléf about wunderkind producer Irving G. Thalberg. One can only presume rights issues forced Scorsese and Jones to neglect these pictures, but they might have plugged some of the gaps with more Elias Koteas-read extracts from Kazan's autobiography or the seemingly excellent footage of the ageing, but still pugnacious director reflecting on his career.

Nevertheless, Scorsese avoids clichéd digressions on the Method and the Actors Studio and emphasises instead Kazan's insistence on shooting on locations in an authentic visual style that often melded neo-realism and film noir. Moreover, he also declines to pry into his private life and, thus, ensures this is more a cineastic essay than a formulaic biodoc.

Kazan clearly helped establish the likes of Brando, James Dean, Eva Marie Saint, Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood. But a veritable who's who of American screen talent is indebted to Roger Corman, who gave them their big breaks during his time at American International Pictures, New World Pictures and Concorde. He also acted as US distributor for such arthouse masters as Akira Kurosawa, François Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini.Unsurprisingly, therefore, the audience was far more enthusiastic when Corman was presented with his Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 2009 and this sense of gratitude and affection informs every frame of Corman's World.

Corman's career can be summed up in the title of his autobiography, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime. In fact, to date, he has produced (in various capacities) some 340 features since 1954, as well as directing 54. He has even started making web series, but Alex Stapleton's engaging homage concentrates on his heyday, when he could churn out a genre picture within 10 days and for under $100,000. Adept at Westerns, gangster movies, sci-fi and teen dramas, Corman's forte was horror, with his 1960s string of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations - mostly starring Vincent Price: The Fall of the House of Usher (1960); The Pit and the Pendulum (1961); The Premature Burial; Tales of Terror (both 1962); The Raven; The Haunted Palace (both 1963); The Masque of Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1965) - being perfectly positioned between Grand Guignol and high camp In addition to directing such exploitation classics as Teenage Caveman (1958), A Bucket of Blood (1959), The Wasp Woman (1960), The St Valentine's Day Massacre (1967) and Bloody Mama (1970), Corman also gave such important directors as Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, John Sayles, Jonathan Demme and Ron Howard their start and all but Coppola and Cameron are here to sing his praises. As, indeed, are Jack Nicholson (whose tearful fondness is charming to behold), Peter Fonda, David Carradine, William Shatner, Robert De Niro, Eli Roth, Pam Grier, Paul W.S. Anderson, Bruce Dern, Joe Dante, Mary Woronov, Irvin Kershner, Dick Miller, Gale Anne Hurd, Jim Wynorski, Penelope Spheeris, Allan Arkush, Jonathan Haze, the late Polly Platt and screenwriter Frances Doel.

However, the Stanford and Oxford-educated Corman is also a shrewd judge of his contribution to American film and, along with his brother Gene, he provides some of documentary's most telling moments. His recollections of loathing the strictures of life in the US Navy during the Second World War are particularly revealing, as they reveal him to be a natural born rebel and this refusal to conform led him to challenge the racial prejudice that was rife in the Deep South when he adapted Charles Beaumont's novel The Intruder (1962), cast some genuine Hell's Angels in The Wild Angels (1966), experiment with LSD before shooting The Trip (1967) and make his wife Julie his producing partner on Boxcar Bertha (1972).

No one has a bad word to say about the gentleman maverick, who is shown unassumingly bringing his decades of experience to bear on Kevin O'Neill's creature feature, Dinoshark (2010). Moreover, he also evidently enjoys seizing the opportunity to claim his long overdue credit for improving the 1950 Gregory Peck vehicle The Gunfighter when he was a script reader at 20th Century-Fox and he is also quick to acknowledge his own indebtedness to AIP chiefs Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson, who allowed him to direct such Bs as Monster From the Ocean Floor (1954) and The Fast and the Furious (1955) for the nascent grindhouse and drive-in markets.

Packing in clips from the Corman oeuvre (and let's not forget that there are plenty of misfires in there, too), this is both hugely entertaining and highly instructive about the way in which the Hollywood studios operated in the last days of the factory system and how the conglomerates that acquired them do business today. But, most endearingly, it's also a worthy tribute to an elegant and eloquent man who was never afraid of slipping political subtexts into pictures designed to shock, titillate and amuse.