Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor, who is among the most important contributions to world cinema in the twentieth century. Kubrick was legendary for his artistic independence and his disdain for studio interference, all with the rare advantage of having financial support from major studios. Kubrick’s private estate in the United Kingdom included editing and sound facilities, and he was famous for creating his own shooting locations instead of traveling to them. He was indifferent to what the public thought of his image, hated any form of publicity and rarely was photographed or interviewed. Kubrick’s films covered a variety of different genres including war, crime, literary adaptations, black comedies, horror, epics, and science fiction. His films, typically adaptations of novels or short stories, are noted for their dazzling and unique cinematography, attention to detail in the service of realism, and the evocative use of music. Kubrick was also noted for being a demanding perfectionist, using painstaking care with scene staging, camera-work and coordinating extremely closely both with his actors and his behind-scenes collaborators. Starting out as a photographer in New York City, Kubrick taught himself all aspects of film production, photography and directing after graduating from high school. Kubrick brought that same approach to his first two features, which he financed himself on a shoestring budget: Fear and Desire (1953) and Killer’s Kiss (1955). But it wasn’t until Kubrick’s crime noir The Killing (1956) and his anti-war classic Paths of Glory (1958) that Kubrick would begin to emerge as a distinctive talent. Kubrick was brought on as director of Spartacus (1960), Kubrick’s only blockbuster, and a film Kubrick later said he disliked. Kubrick moved to the United Kingdom in 1961, partly to isolate himself from Hollywood interference, and in 1962 made Lolita. But it was his satirical black comedy Dr. Strangelove (1963) that Kubrick had his greatest early hit. Starring Peter Sellers in three different roles, the film treated nuclear war as a political joke. Many of Kubrick’s later films broke new ground in cinematography and innovative special effects, most famously his science fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). In A Clockwork Orange (1971) Kubrick created a fearsome vision of the near future which was so disturbing that the movie was banned in Britain for 27 years. For the historical epic Barry Lyndon (1975) Kubrick obtained lenses developed by Zeiss for NASA in order to film scenes under natural candlelight, while his horror adaption of The Shining (1980) was among the first to make use of a Steadicam for stabilized and fluid tracking shots. After the Vietnam war film Full Metal Jacket (1987) Kubrick waited a decade before making the erotic thriller Eyes Without Shut (1999). Just four days after editing the final cut of the film Kubrick died in his sleep at the age of 70 after suffering a massive heart attack.