Chris’ legacy : the owl and the cat named Guillaume

With my camera on my shoulder, I filmed a sort of “controlled improvisation” : I had to be able to see and hear in order to use the camera to interpret the scene we had previously discussed. Chris would give us some ideas to start with and then provided us with ways to enable our ideas to meet up and join. His attitude was “You ! The man behind the camera ! It’s up to you to use your artistic sensibility, your eye, and your know-how !”
Briefly put, that is how I remember what it was like to film with Chris. Later on, when we would shoot in studio in Paris, we had taken an image of an owl that he had chosen and that he really loved and had it printed in different colours. This fixed image was the “back projection” behind the characters being filmed. It was supposed to subtly illuminate and change colour over the characters’ faces. We had a lot of fun with that.

Chris had his own codes and we had to interpret them and work around them. You had to be familiar with these codes if you wanted to meet with him, talk to him on the phone, or write to him. He was always direct and precise, but, out of philosophical conviction, he also always left an element of randomness. We were close with one another in the 1980s. He would be in his laboratory, workshop, cutting room, and archives, which were all situated in the basements of the Anatole Dauman production offices in Neuilly. He had installed an electronic video station that he had really tinkered around with in order to experiment with and tweak images. I loved it and it was really new for that time, so I would spend afternoons at his side watching him play with the colour, contrast, and texture of his shots while he looked for a sort of photographic decomposition of his images. We would then film the screen in 35mm with a Caméflex : it was a sort of live kinescoping. Then, we would go watch the results and calibrate the images at LTC with Claude Léon*. Some of these shots are in his film Sans soleil.

Over the last few years I would call him from time to time, but he would use his voicemail to screen calls and he didn’t always answer my calls. Sometimes, he would tell me where to go on the Internet to see his latest work.
Chris was a very great artist, a sublime poet, a marvellous photographer and cameraman, a wonderful director, an exceptional videographer, a great tinkerer, an inventor of images and sounds, a true author.
He will always remain present in my memory as a master thinker who always surprised me with his intentions and with his creations.
Chris, you leave us your cat Guillaume, so many memories, and above all, a body of work so dense and rich in lessons, a true example of hard work and modesty. Thank you.

* Claude Léon was Production Manager at L.T.C. at the time.