Lenses

When cinematographer Yves Angelo first met Agnès Jaoui about the film they were to shoot together, Place publique, the actor-director expressed one wish... which doubled up as a tall and quintessential order: "Cinema is all about dreaming, I want it to be beautiful".

Every summer, in the house near Paris that his grandfather shared with his family, Julien Poupard made a short film with friends as passionate about cinema as he was. His father, a producer of institutional films, looked on that enthusiasm with a favorable eye and gladly provided his son not only with his equipment, but also – and no less important - his encouragement and advice.

In Liège, a small French-speaking town in Belgium and the self-proclaimed “waffle capital of the world,” a child was born that no one could predict would become an internationally known cinematographer. Like so many kids, that child, Benoît Debie, has a character trait that all parents dread: he hates school. But he also has another trait, far more predominant - and deeply embedded: whatever he undertakes, he is determined to succeed.

Shot in and around Paris in the dead of winter, David Oelhoffen’s Territoires is a "twilight urban western" that stars Reda Kateb and Matthias Schoenaerts. Long before principal photography was scheduled to start, cinematographer Guillaume Deffontaines, AFC, worked closely with the director to make the (intense) seven-week-long shoot as smooth as possible.

In the early 1970’s, in Meknes, Morocco, the Empire Theatre was a venue where films were released on the same day they were in Paris. Built in the colonial era, that theatre had an enormous impact on young Yves Angelo.

Claire Mathon’s graduation dissertation at the Louis-Lumière Film School focused on a theme that would, over the years, become both her obsession as a cinematographer and her trademark, her specialty: natural light.

When director Jaco Van Dormael gives 18-year-old Christophe Beaucarne the oral exam prior to his graduating from the INSAS (the famous Belgian film school), neither can imagine that twenty years later, they will be brothers-in-cinema, partners-in-crime on such films as Mr Nobody (2009) and The Brand New Testament (2015).

Angénieux announces a New Long Range Multi-Format Design Zoom Lens at IBC 2017 (booth number 12.E36) and continues to adapt its offer to the market trends by announcing new innovative zoom lens series. Following up the Angénieux Type EZ Series for S35mm and larger image formats recently unveiled at IBC 2016 for the growing corporate, documentary and owner-operator markets, Angénieux is now announcing at IBC2017 a new multi format 12x Optimo zoom lens for the high-end production market.

Way back when, the guidance counselor at her high-school in Lyon told her, in no uncertain terms, that "one should not choose photography as a profession because it [was] tantamount to choosing a life with no work, no money and no prospect." In short, the life of a gypsy.

On August 6 and August 9, 1945, two atomic bombs codenamed "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" wiped out the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in southern Japan, instantly causing over a hundred thousand casualties. More than anything, that traumatic dual event determined Tetsuo Nagata’s destiny.

The time: the 1980s. The place: A commuter train between Paris and the suburb of Chaville. On one of the faux-leather seats, lies a Leica R6 camera its owner must have left behind. A photo-loving teenager stares at it as if it were the Holy Grail. Honesty, however, along with the secret hope of - perhaps - recovering it some day, compels Guillaume Deffontaines to bring it to the railway company’s Lost and Found Department. His exceptional memory also brings him back to the Department — just in case! — exactly a year and a day later.

First things first. When you are the eldest son of a merchant navy captain whose ancestors, fishermen and sons of fishermen, came all the way from Ukraine..., when you were born and grew up in Marseilles as a certified "Corniche Kid" (the local equivalent to a Bow-bell Cockney)..., when you’d always dash wherever the fancy takes you - preferably beyond the horizon..., somehow, "moving up" to Paris to make movies in the 1980’s is not exactly the "normal" thing to do.

Evoking one’s debut as a cinematographer and remembering it as a professional experience at once too beautiful, too unexpected and too...special, inevitably makes one nostalgic. Furthermore, as one celebrates its 20^th anniversary, the phrase "track record" hits one in the face like a boomerang!

After twenty-six years of uninterrupted collaboration, Luc Besson’s cinematographer, Thierry Arbogast, was determined to surprise him. Again. Old couples must constantly reinvent themselves, mustn’t they? And so he did when they tested and tried whichever equipment they might eventually use for their next project, Valerian.

At the end of the last Claude Lelouch’s movie, Everyone’s Own Life and Intimate Conviction, Ariane Damain Vergallo met, on behalf of CW Sonderoptic-Leica, its director of photography, Robert Alazraki, AFC, and camera operator Berto, to talk about lenses, but not only...

As part of its development, Papa Sierra invests to better serve you and offer you even more possibilities with its new GSS C520.

Following, cinematographers Artur Zurawski, PSC, and Pawel Dyllus talk about the use of Angénieux Optimo 56-152 A2SC anamorphic zoom on one of their latest shooting.

For over 60 years the Leica M full frame lenses have inspired photographers and cinematographers alike with their unique interpretation of light, skin tones and color. The Leica M 0.8 lenses bring the iconic look and character of Leica’s legendary M glass directly to the world of moving pictures by making it easier than ever to work with these lenses in true cinema applications.