Philippe Faucon and Laurent Fénart, AFC, have been working together for twenty years. One is a director with a commitment to a cinema rooted in social realism – Fatima, which received the 2016 César for Best Film and the Louis Delluc Prize in 2015, Amin, La Désintegration – the other is a cinematographer who has an equal passion for documentaries and fictions. We meet with them here to talk about their latest collaboration on Les Harkis, a film that denounces the tragic destiny of the Algerians enlisted in the French army. Les Harkis is selected in the Directors’ Fortnight in this 75th Cannes Film Festival. (BB)
After The Nile Hilton Incident, Tarik Saleh, a Swedish director of Egyptian origin, continues his exploration of genre film. He moves more towards a more realistic drama on Boy from Heaven but still keeps us in suspense with, this time, a power struggle at the heart of Sunni Islam. The cinematographer Pierre Aïm, AFC, who already worked with Tarik Saleh on The Nile Hilton Incident, has created a more restrained, naturalistic image that pushes us to eliminate the border between reality and fiction. Boy from Heaven is being presented in Official Competition at the 75th Cannes Film Festival. (BB)
After the very tender Garçon chiffon, in official competition at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, cinematographer Raphaël Vandenbussche is back at the Festival, with Rodéo, in the Un Certain Regard selection. Lola Quivoron’s first feature film depicts, with passion and sincerity, the world of Bikelife, and the struggle of a young woman to find her place in it. (MC)
Unselfconsciously embracing its status as a remake of a concept film from Japan, Final Cut, by Michel Hazanavicius, is above all a comedy about the world of cinema, with a star-studded cast. This latest film from the director of The Artist with its hectic pace, its thirty-minute opening long take and its very particular construction, which is faithful to the original but has literally been translated into the language of French cinema, is being screened at the opening of the 75th Cannes Film Festival. Jonathan Ricquebourg, AFC, is the director of photography and here, he recounts the behind the scenes of the shooting of this film, a great, ambitious game. (FR)
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.
Entries open on 1 May 2022, with new category to celebrate unsung talents. Following a hugely successful debut in2021, nominations are now being invited for the FilmLight Colour Awards 2022. This year’s awards, which will again be presented at EnergaCamerimage in November, include a new category celebrating the work of colourists on lower budget, independent and international features.
“No Man of God” is a behind-closed-doors look into a cell where an FBI agent is interrogating a serial killer. It is an adaptation of authentic recordings made by Bill Hagmaier during his interviews with Ted Bundy. Director Amer Sealey and her DoP Karina Silva implemented directorial and cinematographic strategies to portray these sequences, which are all alike on paper, in order to impart rhythm to the film. “No Man of God” is in competition this year at Torun in the “Cinematographers’ Debuts Competition”. (FR)
Presented in the “Contemporary World Cinema” selection, As In Heaven is the first feature film by Danish director Tea Lindeburg. She worked on this film alongside cinematographer Marcel Zyskind, DFF. This film—starring mainly children, shot in film, low-budget, and dealing with a taboo topic—was, despite all these challenges, a total success, revealing the Marcel Zyskind’s admirable gaze, at once modest and grandiose, in a grainy and sun-filled 35mm. The film navigates between dream and reality, confining itself strictly to a child’s view on events whose scope is beyond her ken and that will nonetheless deeply change her life. The cinematographer, a regular at the festival, and the director were in attendance on Monday to answer the audience’s questions after the film’s first screening. (MC)
From the family of films about the Knights of the Round Table, I choose… The Green Knight! A new variation on the quest theme, that sheds light on the lesser-known character of Sir Gawain (played by Dev Patel, the British actor of Indian descent, who had his breakout role with Slumdog Millionaire). Andrew Droz Palermo, Californian cinematographer, seconds his faithful collaborator, David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, A Ghost Story), in filming this mysterious story that draws as much from the universe of chivalry as from fantasy.
Cinematographer Xavier Dolléans, AFC, partnership with director David Hourrègue is long-standing, and the two have worked together on several series, such as "Cut" (France Ô) and "Skam" (France TV Slash). The duo has built a certain reputation on the back of the success of these programmes, and they attacked their first big-budget project with the same production crew. This project is a new, six-episode adaptation of Zola’s novel Germinal, shot with a 12-million-Euro budget. This series will be broadcast on public television by France Télévisions and is expected to be one of the public service broadcaster’s main attractions of October 2021. This is also a major event for Xavier, who has been selected in competition at Toruń for Best Television Series Image. (FR)
This year, students from the ENS Louis Lumière, La Fémis and CinéFabrique attended the Camerimage festival. Therefore, the AFC has offered them different opportunities of participating in the articles published on this website. In his second article, Clément Colliaux, a 3rd-year student at the Ecole nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière, takes a look at the tribute entitled “Remembering the Masters” * that was dedicated to Allen Daviau, ASC and Michael Chapman, ASC, in presence of Lawrence Sher, ASC, Seamus McGarvey, BSC, ASC, and Amy Vincent, ASC.
A rare filmmaker, director Jane Campion, is back 12 years after her last film, Bright Star. This time, she has chosen to adapt Thomas Savage’s novel The Power of the Dog, a rivalry between two brothers in which isolation and nature — a ranch in Montana in the 1920s — play a preponderant role. Following in the footsteps of Stuart Dryburgh, ACS, ASC, and Greig Fraser, ACS, ASC, it is now the turn of young DoP Ari Wegner, ACS, to accompany the Australian 1994 Oscar-winning director. Produced by Netflix, The Power of the Dog will be released online on the company’s platform on 1st December.
For her first film, filmmaker Ameen Nayfeh chose to plunge her viewers into the Kafkaesque experience of daily life in Palestine. Separated from his wife and children by 200 meters (she lives and works on the other side of the wall, in Israel), Mustafa has no choice but to communicate with them every evening by a childish game of turning the lights on and off. But when his son is the victim of an accident, he tries to gain access to the Jewish State by any means possible. Elin Kirschfink, AFC, SBC, was the cinematographer of this audacious testimony, which already received the Audience Award at the Venice Film Festival this year. (FR)
In 2019, the AFC hosted several screenings of a comparative test of lenses designed for standard 18 × 24 format. Presented in Paris at the Cercle Rouge and the Louis-Lumière school, in Poland at the Camerimage Festival and in Los Angeles at the E-Film laboratory, the test examined lenses currently available on the market for sale or rental and was, of course, presented without bias or preference of any kind, regardless of the manufacturers or partners participating in the project.
Along with an exhibition of his photographic work at Toruń’s Center of Contemporary Art, from November 13 to 25, Camerimage will host a "Meeting with Bruno Nuytten," on Wednesday the 17th at the Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej (CSW) at 6:15 PM.
After Moonlight, in 2016, which won the Oscars for best film and best screenplay, director Barry Jenkins decided to adapt Colson Whitehead’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize winning "Underground Railroad" for his first series. He teamed up again with James Laxton, ASC, whom he has known since they were both students at the University of Tallahassee, Florida. Both filmmakers explored a very different universe from that of their prior films, one that mixes the authenticity of a period film (the story takes place in the slave era in the middle of the 19th Century) with fantasy. The story follows the flight of Cora, a young slave being pursued by one of her master’s employees, through several states. A series broadcast on Amazon Prime, which has been heaped with praise since its release online. (FR)
Lucie Baudinaud is a young French cinematographer who has recently signed off on many shorts and feature films, both documentary and fiction. Noteworthy amongst her recent projects is Elie Grappe’s Olga, in competition at the Cannes Critics’ Week, and which will be released in theatres on Wednesday. Today at Camerimage, she is presenting Les Enfants Terribles, a documentary by Ahmet Necdet Cupur. (MC)
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