Masters of cinema: Lynn Ramsey

This course is a showcase of her films, including the three acclaimed shorts that inaugurated her career. Trained as a photographer and cinematographer, Lynne Ramsay’s films all have embedded in them a determination to let the images do all the talking. There’s often an air of magical realism about her work, as strange images puncture sombre tales of people dealing with the aftermath of death. Ramsay folds poetry and fantasy into even the most meagre of circumstances. Despite the majority of her films being adapted from novels or short stories, the feelings of her characters are rarely conveyed through dialogue. Instead, the editing and the camerawork infer everything.

Influences: Bill Douglas as a Scottish antecedent, the influence of classics such as John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence; the impact of “those films that sear images into your brain: Blue Velvet, Repulsion, Persona, Nicolas Roeg, Fassbinder. A good filmmaker can be a bit like a psychologist.”

You Were Never Really Here: shares recognisable DNA with such dirty thrillers as Taxi Driver and Death Wish. Ramsay’s location manager somehow scoped out parts of New York City that seem largely unchanged since the 1970s.

Early short films: Having studied photography at Edinburgh’s Napier College and cinematography at the National Film and Television School, she won the Prix de Jury in 1996 for her short graduation film, Smalls and Death, and again in 1998 for her third short, Gasman.

First feature film: Ratcatcher premiered in Un Certain Regard (2000) winning Special Mention.

We Need to Talk about Kevin was the only British film nominated for the Palme d’Or in official competition in 2011.

Adaptation: Ramsay’s feature films – Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin and You Were Never Really Here – are based on books; but they’re not the usual straightforward filmic translation - she writes her own scripts, is involved in every detail, from casting to location to costume.