I am the Author of two well-regarded books on film-making for Focal Press/Routledge and Oxford University Press, the most recent of which went straight to #1 New Release on Amazon Film & TV.

The Tao of Peter is a compilation by AFI Conservatory Directing Fellows of insights from a broad cultural canvas I would quote as each class began.

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Publishers:

Oxford University Press

Focal Press/Routledge

The Art of the Filmmaker:

The Practical Aesthetics of the Screen

Published by Oxford University Press 13th October 2023

Available at Bookshop.org , global.oup.com , Barnes & Noble, Amazon

The Art of the Filmmaker: The Practical Aesthetics of the Screen explores the filmmaker's intention and method, their creation and capture of the fiction on the screen, and their formulation of the elements of the frame as a designed address to the audience. Positing 'practical aesthetics' as a resource of visual communication central to cinematic art, this book examines the concepts fundamental to the selective processes of the filmmaker and offers the reader highly informed textual analyses of specific films to explain the how and why of cinematic decision-making.

After general consideration of language and cinema, Peter Markham sets out categories essential to the reader in their understanding of the filmmaker's art: dramatic narrative, elements before the lens, screen language, the shot, camera, editing, sound and music. Furthermore, Markham provides insight into how a comparison of the film with its screenplay can reveal the evolution of the filmmaker's storytelling strategies.

This book also includes case studies of scenes and sequences from three films by contemporary filmmakers: Hereditary (Ari Aster), Moonlight (Barry Jenkins), and Nomadland (Chloe Zhao). Screenshots are used to illustrate the concepts articulated in the carefully constructed text.

This book is intended for the student of filmmaking, its practitioners, students and scholars of film studies and film theory, for those in media studies and arts programs, and for lovers of movies.

What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay:

An Essential Guide for Directors and Writer-Directors

Published by Focal Press/Routledge 8th September 2020

Available at Amazon, Routledge Press, Bookshop.org

A structured perspective on the crucial interface of director and screenplay, this book encompasses twenty-two seminal aspects of the approach to story and script that a director needs to understand before embarking on all other facets of the director’s craft.

Drawing on seventeen years of teaching filmmaking at a graduate level and on his prior career as a director and in production at the BBC, Markham shows how the filmmaker can apply rigorous analysis of the elements of dramatic narrative in a screenplay to their creative vision, whether of a short or feature, TV episode or season. Combining examination of such fundamental topics as story, premise, theme, genre, world and setting, tone, structure, and key images with the introduction of less familiar concepts such as cultural, social, and moral canvas, narrative point of view, and the journey of the audience, What’s The Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay applies the insights of each chapter to a case study―the screenplay of the short film Contrapelo, nominated for the Jury Award at Tribeca in 2014.

This book is an essential resource for any aspiring director who wants to understand exactly how to approach a screenplay in order to get the very best from it, and an invaluable resource for any filmmaker who wants to understand the important creative interplay between the director and screenplay in bringing a story to life.

"Peter Markham is a passionate, rigorous, devoted, and (most importantly) mischievous teacher. I cherish my time as his student at AFI, and count myself fortunate to now have this comprehensive guide to refer to."

Ari Aster, writer-director of Hereditary, Midsommar, and Beau is Afraid.

“You taught me everything I know…”

Zal Batmanglij, producer, writer, director of The OA and Retreat

"An extremely well-researched treatise on a vital aspect of the directorial process, this book teaches directors how to understand, and think deeply about, the fundamentals of the script prior to stepping onto set."

Greg Takoudes, director, producer, writer, Adjunct Professor of Film Studies at The New School, New York

From Nietzsche to Beyoncé:

The Tao of Peter

Limited edition. 2018.

A compilation of my quotations in class from filmmakers, novelists, artists, musicians, psychologists, and philosophers, and of my own observations, put together as a farewell gift by the AFI Conservatory Directing Fellows.

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The intellect cannot do the work of the imagination; the emotions cannot do the work of the imagination; and neither of them can do anything much in fiction without the imagination.

Ursula le Guin

Language is the house of being.

Martin Heidegger.

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.

The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor.

In this apparently chaotic world of the unconscious there is an inevitability as logical, as coherent, as final as any to be found in classical drama.

Anaïs Nin.

The writer is that person who, embarking upon her task, does not know what to do.

Donald Barthelme.

The face is the soul of the body.

Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Anyone who is bright in any way knows himself to be mediocre.

Michael Haneke.

Any artist should be grateful for a naïve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

Saul Bellow.

There is nothing good in this world that does not have some filth in its origin.

Ward No. 6. by Anton Chekhov.

The moral earth is round too.

Nietzsche,

Utopias, they don’t much interest me. I always mess things up a bit. It’s chaos, in part, that helps us see.

Beyoncé

… and much more…