Poetic Cinema and the Spirit of the Gift in the Films of Pabst, Parajanov, Kubrick and Ruiz explores the poetic thinking of these master filmmakers, expressed in several of their key films. It examines theoretical ideas, including Maori anthropology of the gift and Sufi philosophy of the image, to conceive film as abundant gift. Elaborating on how this gift may be received, this book imagines film as our indispensable mentor - a wild mentor who teaches us how to think with moving images by learning to perceive evanescent forms that simply appear and disappear.

Laleen Jayamanne taught Cinema Studies in the Department of Art History and Film Studies, University of Sydney for over two decades and prior to that, for ten or so years elsewhere in Australia. She works within a Bergsonian and Deleuzean tradition of film theory and criticism attuned to audio-visual duration, with an abiding fascination with both good and bad acting in the histories of cinema. She directed A Song of Ceylon (16mm. film, 1986). Her publications include Kiss Me Deadly: Feminism and Cinema for the Moment (as editor, 1995), The Filmmaker and the Prostitute: Dennis O'Rourke's The Good Woman of Bangkok (as co-editor, 1997) and Towards Cinema and its Double: Cross-Cultural Mimesis (2001). Her most recent book is on the avant-garde Indian director entitled The Epic Cinema of Kumar Shahani (2015).

Foreword: In Memory of Thomas Elsaesser
Introduction: Spirit of the Gift-Cinematic Reciprocity
Ch 1. A Gift Economy: GW Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929)
Ch 2. Fabric of Thought: Sergei Parajanov's The Colour of Pomegrantes (1968), Ashik Kerib (1988)
Ch 3. Nicole Kidman in Blue Light: Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Ch 4. Ornamentation and Pathology: Raul Ruiz' Klimt (2006)
Afterword: Poetics of Film Pedagogy
Bibliography
Filmography
Index