Regarded as one of Britain's most imaginative and technically brilliant film directors, John Boorman works in such diverse genres as supernatural horror, social comedy, science fiction, action-adventure, and the thriller. Often his films examine the interplay of social myth and individual instinct. "My films are nearly always involved with an individual contending with society in some way. Society seems to be a hostile thing. And also there's the relationship between the individual and nature, natural forces. For me, the world, the planet, is a very dangerous place to be. We're lulled into a sense of security by our daily lives, but we are hurtling through space at a tremendous speed on a very unstable piece of ground."¹

January 18, 1933. "I was born at No. 50 Rosehill Avenue, Carshalton [England], a monotonous street of those semidetached suburban houses of which four million were built between the wars."²

"I grew up surrounded...