AFC’s Conversations

Elin Kirschfink, SBC, AFC, discusses the challenges of shooting Ameen Nayfeh’s “200 Meters”
A frustrated road movie

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)

James Laxton, ASC, talks about shooting Barry Jenkins’ series "Underground Railroad"
Between magic and reality

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 discusses her work on "Les Enfants Terribles", by Ahmet Necdet Cupur

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)

Stéphane Kuthy, SCS, discusses the shoot of "Neighbors", by Mano Khalil
The Tragic and the Absurd

Stéphane Kuthy, SCS, is a Franco-Swiss cinematographer who lives and works in Zurich. He has shot over fifteen fiction features and about twenty documentary features with the likes of Bettina Oberli, Emily Atef, Georges Gachot and, recently, Mano Khalil, a Swiss director of Kurdish origin. The latter’s film Neighbors is Kuthy’s entry to this year’s Camerimage festival, in the Cinematographer’s Debuts Competition. The film is a reconstitution of life in a Kurdish village on the border between Turkey and Syria in the early 1980s. Mixing humour and drama, this is the story of a young boy’s life in this rapidly changing country divided by an arbitrary border. (FR)

Interview with gaffer Jim Plannette

In a career spanning over five decades, gaffer Jim Plannette has participated in crafting the lighting of such iconic films as Young Frankenstein (1974), E.T. (1982), The Fisher King (1991), and Magnolia (1999). Apart from collaborating multiple times with influential cinematographers like John A. Alonzo, Sven Nykvist, László Kovács, and John Toll, Plannette has been a key creative partner to Steven Soderbergh ever since the director began serving as his own DP, from 2000’s Traffic up to his latest movie, KIMI. Fresh from wrapping Lisa Azuelos’s I Love America, shot by Léo Hinstin, AFC, the 81-year-old gaffer reflects here on his cinematic journey and the technological advances that have accompanied it. (YT)

The 2021 Cannes Festival interviews

During the 74th Cannes Film Festival, we have published 34 written or video interviews (20 are in English, others in French), in which directors of photography speak about their work on the selected movies. Here are the links allowing you to read or watch each of them.

Virginie Surdej, SBC, and Amine Messadi, TSC, talk about their work on "Haut et fort", by Nabil Ayouch

Belgian Cinematographer Virginie Surdej, SBC, won the Magritte for Best Image for Insyriated, by Philippe Van Leeuw, AFC. Amine Messadi, TSC, Tunisian cinematographer, signed the pictures of Sortilège, the feature film by Tunisian Alaeddine Slim, presented at the Directors’ Fortnight in 2019. After working together on Razzia and Much Loved, it is for a third collaboration with Nabil Ayouch that the two cinematographers meet again to film Casablanca Beats (Haut et fort), presented in the Official Competition at the 74th Cannes festival. (BB)

Interview with Fiona Braillon, SBC, Cinematographer for Rachel Lang’s film "Mon légionnaire"

Fiona Braillon, SBC, began her career in cinematography together with Rachel Lang, a young Belgian director. After graduating from the IAD (Institute of Broadcasting Arts) in 2010, Fiona Braillon signed in 2016 the cinematography of Rachel Lang’s first feature film, Baden Baden, then, four years later, that of My Legionnaire. This film was selected at the Directors’ Fortnight of this 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. (BB)

Interview with Vladislav Opelyants, RGC, about his work on "Petrov’s Flu", by Kirill Serebrennikov
A hypertrophied Surrealist reality

Shot over the course of 36 days in Moscow, Petrov’s Flu is a very strange film, which keeps even the most stalwart viewers in its grip and sometimes brings them to the point of malaise. Kirill Serebrennikov’s latest work is a 2.5-hour-long nightmare in a timeless Russia. Vladislav Opelyants, RGC, his faithful cinematographer, just won the 2021 CST Award of the Technical Artist for this film.

Ruben Impens, SBC, discusses his work on "Titane" by Julia Ducournau
Palm oil in the engine

With her 2nd film, French director Julia Ducournau had to top the sensation she made at the 2016 Festival with Grave. She did indeed, with Titane, an even more radical work in which the main character’s trajectory borrows as much from the horror genre as from romance. Ruben Impens, SBC, who was also the DP on Grave, shares with us his method for "giving the viewer a good punch in the face". (FR)

Christophe Beaucarne, AFC, SBC, discusses the shooting of "Serre-moi fort", by Mathieu Amalric

With Serre-moi fort, his eighth feature film, Mathieu Amalric returns to the Croisette for the third time, where he won best director in 2010 for Tournée. Christophe Beaucarne, AFC, SBC, the faithful DP to many directors, has worked on almost all Amalric’s feature films. He has created a discreet and minimalistic lighting for this melodrama and has selected shots that are in perfect alliance with the plot. Serre-moi fort is part of the Cannes Première selection. (BB)

Paul Guilhaume, AFC, discusses the shooting of "Les Olympiades", a film by Jacques Audiard
Paris in black-and-white

Jacques Audiard is what one might call a habitué of the Cannes Film Festival. Besides his Golden Palm Award for Dheepan, in 2015, he has presented most of his films at Cannes. This year, he is offering audiences a study based around the love relationships of four young people of different backgrounds, but who all live in the same neighborhood in Paris. A new choral film photographed in black-and-white by Paul Guilhaume, AFC. (FR)

Jean-Louis Vialard, AFC, discusses his work on CB Yi’s "Moneyboys"
A cause des garçons

Moneyboys is a first Taiwanese film, selected in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, which paints a sensitive and elegant portrait of a young Chinese male prostitute. Director CB Yi and cinematographer Jean-Louis Vialard, AFC, decided to work using long takes in a series of different locations, each of which was very carefully chosen, to literally build the ambience and the visual identity of this film. (FR)

Jonathan Ricquebourg, AFC, discusses his work on the Larrieu brothers’ film "Tralala"
A Parisian in Lourdes

Like their other films, Tralala, by Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, is an eccentric poem in which Mathieu Amalric, their favorite actor, plays a homeless musician who is visited by religious passion. Filmed between Paris and Lourdes (their hometown), this film is also a musical comedy where the different songs are sung by the actors themselves. Jonathan Ricquebourg, AFC, was behind the camera, and traveled alongside the filmmaker brothers on their strange journey to a city deserted by its pilgrims because of Covid. (FR)

Interview with Jeanne Lapoirie, AFC, about her work on "La Fracture" by Catherine Corsini

Set at the beginning of the “Yellow Vest” crisis in France, La Fracture, by Catherine Corsini, provides a behind-the-scenes look at the emergency room at the Hôpital Lariboisière in Paris. This is also a choral film, where a couple of women in the middle of a breakup cross paths with a truck driver injured by a riot police bullet and a public hospital nurse in the middle of a night of social upheaval. This retelling of a recent event is even more striking after the public health crisis which had a very hard impact on the French hospital system. Jeanne Lapoirie, AFC, was responsible for the film’s image. She has worked with the director on four films to date. (FR)