Sofia Cop­po­la invites us into her world with her first book

It’s been a busy year for Sofia Cop­po­la. In between shoot­ing her Priscil­la Pres­ley biopic and a trib­ute to Sun­to­ry whisky with her good pal Keanu Reeves, she’s also found time to cre­ate her first book. Archive by Sofia Cop­po­la is a mam­moth look back across 24 years of film­mak­ing, from The Vir­gin Sui­cides to Priscil­la. Pre­ced­ed by an inter­view between Cop­po­la and her close friend Lynn Hirschberg, it’s the most in-depth look we’ve ever had at Coppola’s cre­ative process.

Divid­ed into eight chap­ters – each ded­i­cat­ed to one of her films, in chrono­log­i­cal order – the book com­pris­es short intro­duc­tions from Cop­po­la fol­lowed by pho­tog­ra­phy and scanned doc­u­ments from the pro­duc­tion process. While most books about film­mak­ing com­prise lengthy essays full of anec­dotes and advice, it’s fit­ting that Cop­po­la – a film­mak­er who has always been led by her strong pho­to­graph­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty – is more visu­al in her approach. Mood­boards, cos­tume tests, mag­a­zine cut­tings and ref­er­ence images instead fill the pages, as well as plen­ty of gor­geous set pho­tog­ra­phy from Coppola’s long-time col­lab­o­ra­tor Andrew Durham (who was also instru­men­tal in the cre­ation of Sofia Cop­po­la: For­ev­er Young).

For fans of her work, it’s a beau­ti­ful peek behind the cur­tain, cap­tur­ing sweet on-set moments – such as Coppola’s young daugh­ter vis­it­ing the set of Some­where – along­side cap­tions that pro­vide some inter­est­ing triv­ia about her work. Beneath a behind-the-scenes pic­ture from The Beguiled, Cop­po­la reveals that the film was Elle Fanning’s first with­out a chap­er­one, and she lived with Kirsten Dun­st through­out production.

Repro­duced copies of script pages, let­ters and email screen­shots also pro­vide a rare insight into what goes into mak­ing a Cop­po­la film. We see a note from Jef­frey Eugenides about The Vir­gin Sui­cides and the pho­tos that Priscil­la Pres­ley emailed to Cop­po­la for her research. Such a wide range of doc­u­ments might also prove use­ful to film­mak­ers or screen­writ­ers work­ing on their own projects – it’s use­ful to see how anoth­er artist organ­is­es their thoughts, and Coppola’s wide-rang­ing inspi­ra­tion from clas­si­cal art to Paris Hilton’s per­son­alised cushions.

Archive by Sofia Cop­po­la is out now from MACK Books, RRP £55.