Passing of Carlo Varini, AFC Cinematographer

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It is with great sadness that we learned of the death of our colleague, cinematographer Carlo Varini, AFC, due to a tragic accident that occured on Sunday, May 18, 2014. He was sixty-seven years old.

An active member of the AFC since our association’s inception in 1990, Carlo Varini was of Swiss origin. After studying cinema in Zurich, he began his career in the 1970s as a news cameraman for the “Ciné Journal Suisse”. He went on to become the assistant cameraman and later camera operator for the director of photography Renato Berta, AFC.
It was in Switzerland that he signed off on Matlosa, his first feature-length film as a director of photography, directed by Willy Hermann. Luc Besson asked him to be the director of photography on his first movie, Le Dernier combat, in 1982, and later they worked together on Subway and The Big Blue. He has filmed over thirty films over the course of his career.

Carlo Varini was nominated for the César award for Best Cinematography for Subway in 1986, and for The Big Blue in 1989. He was also nominated for a Golden Frog Award for Best Cinematography for The Chorus in 2004.
Some of his films have also competed at international film festivals : Mrinal Sen’s Genesis at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989 ; Willy Hermann’s Bankomatt at the Berlin Film Festival in 1989 ; Matteo Bellinelli’s La Terza luna at the Locarno Film Festival in 1997. Animal Heart, by Séverine Cornamusaz, received the Quartz Award for Best Swiss Film in 2010.

The warm thoughts of the AFC member directors of photography go out to his wife Claire, his daughters, Giulia and Serena, and to all of his loved ones.