Screenings

July 29^th, 2021, the sun is sinking beyond the horizon, turning the sky a glimmering, rusty color. After a 65-day shoot, director Guillaume Canet is shooting the last sequence of the most expensive and most eagerly awaited film of the year: Astérix and Obélix: The Middle Kingdom.

The Robby Müller Award is a collaboration between the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), the Netherlands Society of Cinematographers (NSC) and Andrea Müller-Schirmer, Robby Müller’s wife. For our upcoming edition the award goes to French cinematographer Hélène Louvart, whose cinematography is also featured in Limelight title, Un petit frère, by director Léonor Serraille.

An initiative of the University of Marburg (Germany), the Marburger Kamerapreis is an annual prize that highlights filmmakers’ work by recognizing exceptional cinematography. Claire Mathon, AFC, will receive the prize this year in recognition of her exemplary and innovative work.

With Oscar® wins in the Cinematography and Documentary categories last night, productions shot on RED Digital Cinema capped off a successful awards season.

The 2020 Toute la mémoire du monde Festival (4-8 March) paid tribute to Jean-Pierre Beauviala by screening Holy Motors, by Leos Carax, and The Hurt Locker, by Kathryn Bigelow, both of which were shot with Aaton cameras. Although Barry Ackroyd, BSC was unable to be present at the festival with Caroline Champetier, AFC to introduce The Hurt Locker, he sent her a speech that she read aloud before the screening.

As part of the “Toute la mémoire du monde” Festival, held on 13-17 March 2019, the Cinémathèque française has celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the ASC. François Thomas, who has spoken as part of this event, sheds light on some of the facets of this highly-historic association for the AFC.

For the second year in a row, Laurent Mannoni invited the AFC to attend the last meeting of the 2017-2018 season of the Scientific Council of the Conservatoire des techniques de la Cinémathèque française. The meeting took place in the storage rooms at Bercy, and there, the eleven “extra-mural” members in attendance were told about the current season’s conferences, recent acquisitions and gifts to the collection, and the schedule of upcoming conferences.

Our English friends of the BSC, like our American friends of the ASC, have an annual ritual which is unfamiliar to us, an awarding ceremony or “Awards”, celebrating the talents and the glory of the cinematography.

Since Laurent Mannoni joined the AFC as a consulting member, the ties between the Conservatoire des techniques cinématographiques of the French Cinematheque, where he is the Director of Patrimony, and the AFC have become closer. I was able to attend the annual meeting of the Conservatory’s scientific counsel as a reciprocal representative of the AFC, which was attended by Frédéric Bonnaud, the new general director, in the equipment storage room on 2 June 2016. Here is a brief review of the conferences and acquisitions for the 2015-2016 season at the Conservatory.

Within just a few days, I shall come to the end of my term as Director-General of the Cinémathèque française. As of February 1^st, 2016, Frédéric Bonnaud will take up the reins and assume full responsibility for this great institution.

The ASC has nominated Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, Janusz Kaminski, Ed Lachman, ASC, Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC, and John Seale, ASC, ACS, for the ASC Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in a Theatrical Release.

During the traditional presentation of the program for the coming season at the Cinémathèque Française on Thursday, 25 June 2015, Serge Toubiana detailed the long list of events, exhibitions, retrospective-commemorations and other activities that will highlight many great figures of the cinema whose films are often shown on the screens of this venerable institution.

In February, the Cinémathèque Française launched its online illustrated catalogue of cinema equipment held by Cinémathèque Française and the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC).

During the 20^th annual Prix Lumière awards, whose awards ceremony took place on Monday, 2 February 2015 in the Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris, the film Timbuktu, by Abderrahmane Sissako, cinematography by Sofiane El Fani, won the awards for best film and for best director. Cinematographer Rémy Chevrin, AFC, was awarded the CST’s Special Award for A la vie, by Jean-Jacques Zilberman.

Organized by the “Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” the 87^th award dinner for the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards was held on Saturday, 7 February 2015 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills (California). In total, twenty-one awards were given out to fifty-eight different personalities from the cinema industry. Leica and Sony, associate mmbers of the AFC, were amongst those recognized.

Cinematographer for Godard, Welles, Skolimowski, Pialat, Gainsbourg and more recently Garrel, Willy Kurant has had a prolific, eclectic, yet coherent career since his early days as a cameraman for television news reports in the 1950’s. In order to synthesize his career, we have made the (of course) arbitrary choice of describing it as seven cinematographical lives, each of them related to the others

During its Summer Luncheon at Pinewood on Sunday 22^nd July 2012, the BSC was delighted to announce the winner of the Best Cinematographer Award for 2011 : Guillaume Schiffman, AFC for The Artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius. The award was presented in presence of Guillaume himself.

With painter Albert Sauteur, we decided to conduct a one-of-a-kind experiment: he would paint a painting and I would film him image by image while he was doing it. A low-resolution video on my blog has allowed viewers to follow this project since mid October.