Peter Cowie's new memoir Flashbacks: A Passion for Film features Louise Brooks

Every Louise Brooks fan should know the name of Peter Cowie. He is a highly regarded film critic, film historian, publisher, and biographer, a longtime friend of Louise Brooks, and, he is the author of the gorgeous 2006 pictorial, Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever. It is a book that belongs on the shelf of every Brooks' fan. Find out more about Cowie's new book HERE.

Cowie has just published a memoir which I am excited to get my hands on. It is titled, Flashbacks: A Passion for Film, and it has just been released. (I just ordered a copy, as September 1st is its publication date.)

The publisher description reads, "In Flashbacks, Peter Cowie tells his story with the same clarity, curiosity and quiet authority that have made him one of cinema's most respected chroniclers. From his postwar childhood in the English countryside to decades spent in screening rooms, studios and film festivals around the world, Cowie reflects on a life shaped by cinema, and a career that has shaped how cinema is remembered, written about and understood. Along the way, he draws vivid portraits of the filmmakers and actors who left their mark on his life and work, including Ingmar Bergman, Alain Resnais, Orson Welles, Francis Ford Coppola, Louise Brooks, and a host of others. Flashbacks doubles as cultural history and personal meditation, on how a passion became a vocation - Sight and Sound declared that Cowie's Tantivy Press, which he acquired from his parents in 1963, "put film publishing on the map" - and fueled a lifelong conversation with the moving image. From the moment Bergman's The Seventh Seal first seized his imagination as a teenager, in 1959, Peter Cowie has been a significant force behind the way we watch and think about film."

And here is something about the author: "Peter Cowie lives in Switzerland. He is the author of more than 30 books on film, including Ingmar Bergman: A Critical Biography (1982), Coppola (1989); The Godfather Book (1997), Revolution! The Explosion of World Cinema in the Sixties (2004), Louise Brooks - Lulu Forever (2006) and God and The Devil: The Life and Work of Ingmar Bergman (2023). At the Tantivy Press from 1963 to 1981 he commissioned and published more than 70 books on film and film-making. From 1993 to 2000, he was International Publishing Director for Variety. For the Criterion Collection, he has contributed audio commentaries and essays for more than 40 releases. He has been a consultant to Dolby Laboratories and on the Main Competition jury at the Berlin Festival, the Caméra d'Or jury at the Cannes Festival, and the Opera Prima jury at the Venice Festival."

Peter Cowie's Flashbacks: A Passion for Film is 332 pages and is published by Sticking Place Books. More info HERE.

I hope to blog more about this book in the coming months. Stay tuned.

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