Since 1957, when he released The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, Ingmar Bergman has been one of the leading figures in international cinema. In a career that spanned 60 years, he wrote, produced, and directed 50 films that defined how we see ourselves and how we interact with the people we love, in films like Persona, Scenes from a Marriage, and Fanny and Alexander.

Mexican film director Alejandro Gonzá lez Iñá rritu, along with top photographers Mary Ellen Mark, Patrick Bard, Graciela Iturbide, and Miguel Rio Branco, bring together their highly perceptive visions on cultural diversity in a book that combines seductive images and firsthand remarks on the unique experience of shooting Babel. Winner of the Best Director prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, the film is the third in the director's trilogy started by Amores Perros and 21 Grams. Shot in Morocco, Tijuana, and Tokyo, and involving a multilingual cast lead by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcí a Bernal, and Koji Yakusho, as well non-professional actors from the three countries portrayed, Babel continues the director's quest to explore the effects of loss and grief, and seeks to relate the modern implications of ancient myth on the origins of human inability to successfully communicate. This book is a visual recollection of the parallel stories and real-life characters that revolved around the making of Babel, and the unexpected ways in which fiction and reality collide. Photographs both from the set and the surrounding disparate landscapes are paired with the director's personal commentary on the larger-than-life film shoot. Introduced with essays by novelist and poet Eliseo Alberto and Gonzalez Iñá rritu, as well as an interview with the director by Rodrigo Garcí a, the result is an engaging book that both complements Babel's powerful statement on the barrier of language, and reveals the fascinating reality of the people and places that inspired the film. The director: Born in Mexico City in 1963, Alejandro Gonzá lez Iñá rritu studied filmmaking and theater and composed music for Mexican features before directing and producing his debut feature film, Amores Perros (2000), which was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film and received over 53 awards from all over the world, including BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Edinburgh, San Sebastian, and Toronto. Iñá rritu's follow-up film, 21 Grams (2003), which he directed, co-wrote, and produced, starred Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, and Naomi Watts. Both Del Toro and Watts received Oscar nominations for their roles in the film and Penn won the Jury Prize for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. Babel, which will be released worldwide in November 2006, garnered the Best Director Prize at the 59 th Cannes Film Festival. Iñá rritu lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

Researched, photographed, and compiled over 20 years, Peter Beard's End of the Game tells the tale of the enterprisers, explorers, missionaries, and big-game hunters whose quests for adventure and «progress» were to change the face of Africa in the 20 th century. This landmark volume is assembled from hundreds of historical photographs and writings, starting with the building of the Mombasa Railroad («The Lunatic Line») and the opening-up of darkest Africa. The stories behind the heroic figures in Beard's work — Theodore Roosevelt, Frederick Courtney Selous, Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), Denys Finch-Hatton (the romantic hero of Out of Africa), Philip Percival, J.A. Hunter, Ernest Hemingway, and J.H. Patterson (who became famous as the relentless hunter of the «Man-Eating Lions of Tsavo») — are all contextualized by Beard's own photographs of the enormous region. Shot in the 1960 s and '70 s in the Tsavo lowlands during the elephant-habitat crisis and then in Uganda parks, Beard's studies of elephant and hippo population dynamics document the inevitable overpopulation and starvation of tens of thousands of elephants and rhinos.

From The 400 Blows to Jules and Jim to The Last Metro, (1932–1984) practically defined the French cinema of his era and was one of the founders of the New Wave which took the industry by storm in the late 1950 s. His endlessly touching and romantic films-always tinged by a touch of reflective sadness-made him one of France`s favorite and most successful directors. This book traces Truffaut`s career and includes rare images drawn from his archives

Director of nearly 150 feature films and winner of six Oscars, John Ford (1895–1973) was the quintessential American filmmaker. Ford produced an unparalleled body of work that includes such classics as The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, The Quiet Man, and The Searchers. In response to critics and fans who praised his work as having a powerful, singular vision, Ford was known for making statements such as «It\\\'s no use talking to me about art, I make pictures to pay the rent»; though such assertions betrayed his genuine love of filmmaking, which he called «the only thing I really like to do.» Author Scott Eyman calls Ford «America`s Homer»-a fitting title for the filmmaker who helped frame the American.

He's the most self-invented man in movies, this side of Charlie Chaplin. Like Chaplin, Cary Grant grew up poor, trained as an acrobat, and brims with confidence, romance, and a spirit of merry larceny-he just has a better tailor. His impeccable timing and light, cat burglar's touch at stealing women's hearts were perfect for the jaunty heroics and romantic farce of such classic films as An Affair to Remember, Notorious, His Girl Friday, North By Northwest, Bringing Up Baby, and To Catch a Thief. In the end, the role became the man-he had ceased to play «Cary Grant» and simply was Cary Grant. One could wish no man any greater happiness than that.

Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp is the supreme icon of motion pictures-still recognized and loved throughout the world, more than 90 years since he first burst on the screen. The shabby little figure-with derby hat, too-tight jacket, oversized boots and pants, dandified bow tie, and swagger cane-seemed to symbolize the hopes and fears, defeats and optimism of all humanity. Chaplin's own biography was a rags-to-riches story that saw the product of a destitute childhood in Victorian London become one of Hollywood's first millionaires and the owner of his own studio before he was 30. His supreme gift was to transform his experience and knowledge of the human lot into comedy, for which his invention and skill have never been surpassed.

From birth, Katharine Hepburn seemed destined to become a symbol of the modern woman on stage, on screen, and in the world. Fiercely competitive, private, and independent, Hepburn was one part Olympic athlete Babe Didrikson, one part Amelia Earhart, and two parts Greta Garbo. Although often paired with the greatest actors in Hollywood-Humphrey Bogart (The African Queen); Cary Grant (Bringing Up Baby), James Stewart (The Philadelphia Story), and Spencer Tracy (Adam`s Rib, Woman of the Year)-Hepburn was able to carry her own films like Summertime, Little Women, and Sylvia Scarlett over a stage and screen career that spanned eight decades. Her home was never in Hollywood (where she won four Oscars) or New York but in Connecticut, where she died lamenting «I could have accomplished three times as much. I haven't realized my full potential.