My Love Affair with Movies - by Anita Weinreb Katz (Paperback)

About the Book

Sensitive, rich and deep commentaries on films-- for professionals, teachers and students, and, ordinary people . . . a multitude of feelings and thoughts

Book Synopsis

Films have a lot of layers. When you dig deeper, you can understand more of what the people who create the film intend to convey. With this book, Anita is giving people a crash course. The movie is not finished just because you leave the theater. You are still thinking about it, and there are always new references and things to discover. The dots are there, you just have to connect them."

Banksy, (artist)

From the Preface by the author:

Every Saturday during my teens, I went to the movies by myself where I was transported into another world.

While walking home, I was immersed in the movie I had just seen, often identifying with one of the characters. I continued to remain in the world of the movie for many hours, during supper, and until I went to sleep.

It is not surprising that my interest in movies foretold my chosen profession as a psychoanalyst. I observe and listen to people and try to understand them on a deeper level. Understanding people, their motivations, dilemmas, hopes, desires, and fears, are so often the subject of the movies that intrigue me. The difference is in my role as psychotherapist I will have an impact on the course of their life.

The movies I've chosen to include in this book have enlightened, impressed, moved and entertained me. Some of them are disturbing but deal with important issues of being human. I have tried to represent the totality of the human experience.

Writing this book has been a journey much like working with someone in psychotherapy. The exceptional power of movies has helped me to go deeper into understanding the human condition.

I share my journey in writing this book with all who are interested in understanding what movies mean to them.

Review Quotes

"The lines of contrast between a book and a film are distinct. While books are an intimate and private indulgence performed in the brightness of light, films are a voyeuristic experience shared in the dark, often with others-even strangers. Where they are similar is that both are built on ideas and words seeking to describe the human experience. Both forms of expression are at their best when we as their creators stimulate analysis and discussion in others. Dr. Katz's new book is a marriage of true minds between these two art forms. She dives deep into several seminal films and, in so doing, amplifies the work of a few key cinematic masters. From Cassavetes to Mendes, and from Malle to Lee, Dr. Katz sheds light on these iconic filmmakers, offering a companion piece that is as evocative in its playlist as it is in analysis. She proves both movies and books are best enjoyed from the couch"

Jeff Oppenheim, Producer, Director, "Real Fake: The Art, Life and Crimes of Elmyr de Hory."

Anita's sensitive, rich and deep commentaries can be enjoyed, not only by professionals, but by teachers and students, and, above all, by ordinary people who would like to enter into the psychic complexity of other worlds grasping "its multitude of feelings and thoughts-crying, laughing, celebrating, mourning, losing, finding."

Franco Borgogno, Training & Supervising Psychoanalyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society, Past Full Professor in Clinical Psychology (Turin University), 2010 Sigourney Award Recipient. His most recent book is "One Life Heals Another: Beginnings, Maturity, and Outcomes of a Vocation" published by IPBooks.