AFC’s Conversations

After having worked his way up as a lighting technician, Glynn Speeckaert divided his career as a DoP on feature films and numerous international commercials. Based for some time now in the US , he has a filmography of English, German or French films. After having replaced Yorick Le Saux to shoot A l’origine for Xavier Giannoli, it is Radu Mihaileanu who calls upon his talents this time to shoot La Source des femmes (The Source), his second film in the official competition at Cannes.

For the past twenty years, Christophe Beaucarne has been working on features steadily, collaborating with many directors, including Bruno Podalydès, Cedric Klapish, Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, Jaco Van Dormael... So it was fitting to see his cinematography credit on not one but two films at Cannes this year: Outside the Law, by Rachid Bouchareb and On Tour, by Mathieu Amalric.

Laurent Brunet, who has photographed all of Raphael Nadjari’s films (including Tehilim, selected at Cannes in 2007), has a lot of experience filming abroad. But he didn’t know Africa, which he discovered while collaborating for the first time with Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, the only African to compete at Cannes 2010, with his fourth feature film, A Screaming Man. The original title was A Screaming Man is not a Dancing Bear a quote from The Notebook, Returning Home by the poet Aimé Césaire.

During the last Cannes Festival, the AFC published a series of interviews on its website of cinematographers with films in one of the selections.
On the occasion of the first screenings of The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke, the Palme d’Or winner for the Festival’s 62^nd edition, we published an interview with the Austrian cinematographer Christian Berger, AAC, where he discusses his work on the film, and a lighting system that he helped develop.

Eric Guichard: Yves Cape, hello. Two films that you’ve photographed were in competition at the 2009 Venice Film Festival. Let’s talk about both films, but perhaps we can begin by talking about the one by Patrice Chereau.

You spoke to me about doing tests with the Red, but you ended up shooting in 35 mm. When did you decide to do these tests in Red and why the final choice of 35 mm?
}}Yves Cape: During one of my first encounters with Patrice Chereau, he discussed the possibility of making a film in HD without being specific. He wanted to know if I was up for it. Without hesitation, my answer was yes. Once it was established that I was doing the film, Patrice told me his idea: he had documented one of his plays with the Red and had been surprised by the quality. He wanted to explore that option to see what it could bring from an aesthetic and an economic standpoint.

At the last Cannes Film Festival we started a series of interviews with directors of photography who were not members of the AFC.

I had the pleasure of meeting Lubomir Bakchev at the special screening, organized jointly with the CST, of A Secret by Claude Miller, photographed by Gérard de Battista.

I knew that the release of The Secret of the Grain (La Graine et le mulet) by Abdellatif Kechiche was imminent and I asked Lubomir to see a preview. I then suggested to Lubomir that we extend our conversation with the present interview.

If I had one wish to make for the AFC, it is that interviews, like the one of Gérard de Battista by Wilfrid Sempé, become a means of strengthening relationships and kinship between members, and of reinforcing that most important subject for the future of our association: the image of a film.

Enjoy the interview. Eric Guichard

On November 7^th, 2007 at the Espace Cardin, Paris 8^th, the AFC and CST organized an event entitled “From Digital to 35mm” based around Claude Miller’s film, A Secret. A discussion with the film’s director of photography, Gérard de Battista followed the screening. Wilfrid Sempé wished to continue this discussion by talking with Gérard who “went digital” once again on a Claude Miller film.

Josée Deshaies is a Quebecker. Having studied Art History in Italy, she started training in Montreal as a second assistant cameraman, before photographing documentaries and short films. Through her encounter with Bertrand Bonello, she switched to full length with Quelque chose d’organique (Something Organic) in 1998. Since then, she has photographed such films as Royal Bonbon by Charles Najman, Cache cache by Yves Caumon, Les Invisibles by Thierry Jousse as well as Bertrand Bonello’s Tiresia and Le Pornographe (The Pornographer). Two of the films selected for this year’s edition of the Director’s fortnight were photographed by Deshaies: Avant que j’oublie (Before I Forget) by Jacques Nolot and La Question humaine (The Human Question) by Nicolas Klotz. (FR)

Upon graduating from the Femis in 1999, Celine Bozon made her debut with Jean-Paul Civeyrac on Fantômes, a low-budget film freely shot on video with a tiny crew. The result, feature film Fantômes, was given a theatrical release. Then came Le Doux amour des hommes (Man’s Gentle Love) and Toutes ces belles promesses (All the Fine Promises). At the same time, she shot medium-length Mods with her brother Serge Bozon, then two films by Tony Gatlif (Exils (Exiles) and Transylvania). In 2007, two of the films she photographed were selected in the Quinzaine des réalisateurs: her brother’s second feature La France and Lebanese Danielle Arbid’s Un homme perdu (A Lost Man).

Having worked for over 20 years as a gaffer to the greatest American cinematographers of the 1970s (Bruce Surtees, Owen Roiszman, Haskell Wexler, Conrad Hall…), then 46-year-old Tom Stern started a new career as a cinematographer on Clint Eastwood’s Blood Work. His faithful collaborator since 1981 Honkytonk Man, he has photographed all of the star’s films since 2002 and subsequently won several international awards.
Four years after Mystic River, Tom Stern returns to Cannes as foreman of the CST jury.