Bookshelf

In honour of the Kazuo Miyagawa retrospective, which is being held at the MoMA in New York from 12-29 April 2018, and the Kenji Mizoguchi retrospective (Miyagawa filmed many of his movies) taking place at the Cinémathèque Française through 15 April 2018, Marc Salomon, consulting member of the AFC, offers us the opportunity to look back on the career of this Japanese cinematographer.

Fascinated by experiments with lighting, Bruno Nuytten, the cinematographer who made his débuts in cinema on Marguerite Duras’ films, and who later worked with the likes of Godard and Claude Berri, decided to stop working on films in 2001. After a long absence, he’s back with photographs and an exposition in Paris.

An adaptation of the real-life event of August 2015 in which three young American tourists prevented carnage on board a Thalys train, The 15:17 to Paris is a strange cinematographic mix of fiction and reality. The movie stars the three heroes themselves, and the film transitions from an adaptation of a drama (about the three boys’ childhoods) to a sort of documentary-fiction style in which each element seems to have been drawn straight from reality, down to the integration of archival footage for the epilogue in the Elysée Palace. Tom Stern, AFC, ASC, the Californian director’s loyal cinematographer, explains the cinematographic issues facing this extra-ordinary film. (FR)

Walter Lassally, BSC passed away on 23 October 2017 at the age of ninety. His death marks the turn of an important page in the history of cinematography, as his career and his work belong to a time that, alas, is definitively over.

Dear Sir,
You live in Argenteuil… I live in Paris, in the 18^th arrondissement… So we are neighbours and have grown up together in France, where both of us were educated to “the right to freedom of expression” and “the right to create”?

Within the same week, two major and emblematic figures of American cinematography departed this earth. They particularly represented the style that emerged within the “New Hollywood” movement, and which irrigated American cinema with a new lifeblood from the end of the 1960s to the early 1980s.

During the 2016 Micro Salon session dedicated to the CCTC (Committee for Creative Technologies in Cinematography) of Imago, Rolf Coulanges, BVK, delivered a ‘’concentrate’’ of the intervention he has made at the Oslo Digital Cinema Conference in Novembre 2015.

Jean-François Hensgens is a SBC and AFC member. For instance, he has shot movies like Victor, by Philippe Martinez (2014), Turk’s Head, by Pascal Elbé (2010), District 13: Ultimatum, by Patrick Alessandrin (2009), Dikkenek, by Olivier Van Hoofstadt (2006), and Dark Tide, by John Stockwell (2012). The White Knights is his third collaboration with director Joachim Lafosse. They worked together in 2010 on Entre les mots (a short film) and in 2012 on Our Children.

Following Oceans with around 7.5 million tickets sold worldwide, including 2.9M in France, and Winged Migration with 4.6 million tickets sold worldwide, including 2.7M in France, Seasons is the latest nature documentary from Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud.

I met Kheiron at the begining of 2014. I had already read his script and we ran into each other in Simon Istolainen’s office at Adame Pictures. I was instantly excited about the adventure. The script based on Kheiron’s parents life was a mix of strong emotions that I immediately wanted to see on screen.

On the occasion of the screening of Albert Lewin’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray at the Mac-Mahon Cinema in Paris on 2 December 2015, Marc Salomon, Consulting Member of the AFC, reflects upon the careers of one of Hollywood’s master directors of photography of the 1940s and 1950s: Harry Stradling Sr. “Nothing is too difficult because making movies is our job,” he used to say about his work.

Last August, Robert Aldrich’s 1975 film Hustle was screened in cinemas again, which gives us the opportunity to take a look back at the career of an atypical and very important cinematographer: Joseph F. Biroc, ASC.

During last IBC (September 2015), thanks to Christian Grafwallner, Research & Development Supervisor Digital Workflow Solutions, we received informations on the SXT Color Workflow (page 11 to 14) and thanks to Michael Jonas, Product Manager Camera Systems, you will find these new following informations.

Two important news for those who want to control the texture of the digital image: Workshop at Arri Munich and Oslo Digital Cinema Conference.

Starring Mathieu Kassovitz, Céline Sallette, David Gastou, French release: 29 October 2014.
Vie Sauvage was filmed over a 9-week period, between the summer of 2013 and the winter of 2014, mostly between Carcassonne and the Cevennes. The film was entirely shot using two shoulder cameras and all-natural lighting.

ACS France recent news is about the follow up of the “Open Doors” and the release of the movie Bird People, directed by Pascale Ferran and selected at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival to which our team cooperated.

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.

Famous British director of photography Oswald Morris, who won an Oscar in 1971 for Norman Jewison’s Fiddler on the Roof, has published his autobiography whose ironic title pastiches the warning message sent out by the Apollo 13 crew in April 1970: “Houston, we have a problem!”