AFC’s Conversations

Mikhail Krichman, RGC, is a Russian cinematographer who was “discovered” via his work with his fellow Russian, director Andrei Zvyagintsev. Since their first project, The Return, in 2003, they have also filmed The Banishment (2008) and Elena (2012) together. With Leviathan, which was chosen for the Official Competition in Cannes, they have created a social and political drama filmed in the furthest northwestern reaches of Russia, in a little village on the banks of the Barents Sea. A man whose government wants to deprive him of his lands decides to fight back… (FR)

Alain Marcoen, SBC, and camera operator Benoît Dervaux form the team that is the backbone of the Dardenne Brothers’ films. With the release of Two Days, One Night — their most minimalistic film yet in terms of the screenplay, yet also perhaps their most visually elaborate — the chief operator from Liege shares with us what it is like to work with the Brothers. (FR)

André Turpin is a director of photography, filmmaker and scriptwriter from Quebec. In 1995 he produces his first film, Zigrail, followed by Cosmos, a year later. In 2002 he receives the Jutra Award and the Genie Award for the best production, the best script and the best photographic direction for his third feature film, Un crabe dans la tête (Soft Shell Man).

After the international success of The Artist (first screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011), Michel Hazanavicius has once again joined forces with Thomas Langmann, Bérénice Bejo and Guillaume Schiffman, AFC, for a movie that takes place during the war in Chechnya. The subject is somewhere between current events and history at a time when Russian pressure is once again being exerted on the former territories of the Soviet Empire... This dual interview was conducted during colour timing on the film The Search. (FR)

For The Homesman, his second film as a director, American actor Tommy Lee Jones enjoyed being in the great outdoors that are so dear to his heart. We remember his film Three Burials, which won Best Screenplay in 2005. This new Western offers Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC, another opportunity to film the American West. (FR)

A fan of the universe of Gaspar Noë, star Ryan Gosling has availed himself of the services of Benoît Debie, SBC, to create the visuals on his first, strange feature-length film that oscillates between social fable and fantasy story. "Lost River" is one of the most anticipated films in the “Un certain regard” selection this year at the 67^th Cannes Film Festival. (FR)

Josée Deshaies, who we have already met to discuss Before I Forget, by Jacques Nolot, Heartbeat Detector, by Nicolas Klotz, Rebecca H., by Lodge Kerrigan, and House of Tolerance, by Bertrand Bonello, discusses Saint Laurent, which is in the official competition at Cannes this year. This is Bertrand Bonello’s sixth feature film; she has contributed to every single one. (BB)

Christophe Beaucarne has been working for over twenty years with very different directors on films with very different visual worlds. He has worked with the Larrieu brothers on Un homme, un vrai and Peindre ou faire l’amour, and with Anne Fontaine on Coco Before Chanel and Perfect Mother, with Jaco Van Dormael on Mr. Nobody, and recently with Christophe Gans on Beauty and the Beast. With The Blue Room, the fourth feature film by Mathieu Amalric, competing in the Un Certain Regard section, Christophe Beaucarne is once again working with Amalric, following their collaborations on Stade de Wimbledon and Tournée. Adapted from the eponymous novel by Georges Simenon, Mathieu Amalric plays the lead role alongside Léa Drucker. (BB)

For his fourth movie, The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012), director Felix Van Groeningen once more teamed up with director of photography Ruben Impens. The movie tells the love story of Elise and Didier (Veerle Baetens en Johan Heldenbergh). They couldn’t be happier when their daughter Maybelle is born.
However, when Maybelle turns six, she becomes seriously ill and her illness impacts Didier and Elise’s relationship. Both of them react differently to the diagnosis, but don’t have any other choice but to fight together for their daughter. The Broken Circle Breakdown was an enormous success and the movie won many international prices, one of which was a César for the Best Foreign Film. It was also nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Foreign Language Film.

After Cannes in May and Camerimage in November, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, photographed by Phedon Papamichael, ASC, GSC, was honored at the American Society of Cinematographers Awards in February where many attending delighted in the rumor that Nebraska would upset Gravity and steal the top prize. Afterall, cinematographers were voting for what they recognize to be the year’s greatest achievement in lighting and photography, not visual effects. The rich black and white imagery has a raw and simple beauty that is unique today; it defiantly counterpoints the glossy, artificial, commercial-advertising look found in most other Hollywood Studio movies.

Life’s vicissitudes led Dominique Bouilleret, AFC, to cross paths with Alain Resnais on his last film. Discussing Life of Riley, he reveals the gaiety and creativity of a very pleasant shooting. He is so glad to have been able to share this creativity with the great director and is only sorry that he won’t be able to repeat the experience. Following Alain Resnais’ demise, unfortunately their collaboration has ended just as it was beginning.

After the release of his film Melancholia in 2011, Lars Von Trier was banned from the Cannes Film Festival for controversial statements on Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer. This year, he has returned with Nymphomaniac, an ambitious exploration of female psychology from a sulphurous, sexual perspective. Manual Alberto Claro, DFF, replaced Anthony Dodd Mantle, BSC, in order to film the last two projects by the Danish maestro of atypical cinema.

The first time I met Jean-Pierre Jeunet to discuss his new film, he immediately told me that he was looking for someone who could help him evolve his taste for coloured and contrasted images. I was delighted to work inside of his universe which I love and which was an inspiration for I, Cesar, A Butterfly Kiss, and Les Tribulations d’une caissière.

For his first project filmed inside the Cité du cinéma, Luc Besson decided to make an adaptation of Tonino Benacquista’s novel depicting a reformed New York ‘godfather’ forced to live under a false identity in the Normandy countryside. A mix of comedy and film noir that is largely carried by the presence of a cast that would make even the largest Hollywood studios jealous (Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones, and Michelle Pfeiffer). Here, along with Thierry Arbogst, AFC, who regularly works alongside Besson, we take a look at this film’s approach to visuals and filming in studio. (FR)

Jean-Marie Dreujou, AFC, has been a faithful partner to Jean-Jacques Annaud since they worked together on Two Brothers. He is responsible for the cinematography of eight films by Patrice Leconte (including Girl on the Bridge, which was nominated for the César Award for best Cinematography in 2000). Today, writer, director and poet Alejandro Jodorowski has entrusted him with the camera on his latest movie, The Dance of Reality, an autobiographical film he directed on the eve of his eighty-third spring.

Since The Beat that my Heart Skipped, for which he was awarded the César Award for Best Cinematography in 2006, Stéphane Fontaine has worked on Jacques Audiard’s films and received a second César Award for A Prophet. He has once again joined forces with Arnaud Desplechin, ten years after working together on In the Company of Men, for a film shot in the USA entitled Jimmy P., which was nominated in the Official Selection at Cannes 2013.

Tom Erisman, NSC, is a Dutch cinematographer who received his cinema training during his work as a gaffer between 1976 and 1987. After his shift to filming, he was behind the photography on a number of television series and films in the Netherlands. Amongst the directors with whom he has worked is Alex Van Warmerdam, with whom he worked in the past on The Northerners in 1992 (2^nd unit) and more recently on The Last Days of Emma Blank in 2009. Borgman is his latest film. (FR).

The three-time Oscar nominee (Amélie Poulain,A Very Long Engagement and the sixth Harry Potter movie), Bruno Delbonnel, AFC, ASC, recently filmed Dark Shadows, by Tim Burton and Faust by Alexander Skouras. Joel et Ethan Coen called on him to visually recreate 1960’s New York for the set of Inside Llewyn Davis