A story is a living thing. And you don't work on a living thing, you work with it. This is the way of the screenwriter, and it is something that writer and director Amnon Buchbinder believes all masterful screenwriters understand intuitively: learning how to work with story through a painstaking process of trial, error, and self exploration.

Amnon Buchbinder draws on his knowledge as a teacher and his experience as a script doctor and a story editor to explore this creative process. Along the way he illustrates principles often inspired by the philosophy of Laozi (Lao Tze) with examples drawn from major motion pictures such as Memento and The Piano.

For the beginning or seasoned screenwriter who aspires to more than mere competence, Buchbinder illuminates a path towards mastery of the craft. For the lover of the cinematic experience, he opens a curtain to reveal a rarely seen world behind the big screen.

Amnon Buchbinder has directed two feature films, The Fishing Trip (1998) and Whole New Thing (2005), and numerous short films. He is an Associate Professor at York University, where he has been teaching screenwriting for the past ten years. He has a busy practice story-editing feature films, and has taught professional screenwriting workshops across Canada. He was previously a film programmer for the Toronto and Vancouver International Film Festivals. He received his BFA and MFA in Film from the California Institute of the Arts. He is the father of two sons and lives with his family in Toronto.

Amnon Buchbinder's profile page