Peter Cowie began writing about the cinema while at Cambridge University in 1960. Three years later he founded the annual International Film Guide, which he edited for forty years. He has written more than thirty books on the cinema and its personalities, including Akira Kurosawa, Francis Ford Coppola, Orson Welles, and Louise Brooks.  He is known for his numerous commentaries on classic films in the Criterion Collection, and has served on the juries at festivals such as Cannes, Venice, and Berlin.  Cowie was International Publishing Director of Variety from 1993 to 2000.