Just after the 39-45 war, Mathieu Plainfossé’s architect great-grandfather, inspired by the faith of the pioneers, set about rebuilding the town of Saint Malo, which had been almost destroyed by American bombing raids. It was a mammoth task that lasted more than 15 years, and which he oversaw with talent and perseverance. As for his grandfather, a renowned equestrian veterinarian, he had operated on nothing less than the Queen of England’s racehorses and those of the Aga Khan in his famous Grosbois clinic, using a technique invented by him. Remarkable men of whom he could later be proud.
“I can’t get enough of this impression of blinding light and absolute blackness.” Darius Khondji, AFC, ASC, loves the dazzling effect of strong lights and, by contrast, the deep blacks where the light is engulfed and disappears completely.
Born in the mid-1960s in German-speaking Switzerland, Thomas Hardmeier spent his entire youth in a village named Küsnacht, which in German means “night kiss”. The name must have delighted Freud’s disciple Carl Gustav Jung. As almost everyone knows, Jung attached major importance to dreams and, as fewer people know, had lived in Küsnacht and died there a few years before.
Although Paul Guilhaume has not been a film student for a while, he still dissects the storyboards of such masterpieces as Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, David Cronenberg’s History of Violence or the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men - films that triggered his desire to be a cinematographer. Again and again, he watches the splendid lighting mismatches concocted by cinematographer-cum-magician Vilmos Zsigmond for Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in the opening scene of which, on every single hot, everything and everyone is backlit against the sun!
Forty years ago, benevolent angels leaned over Leo Hinstin’s cradle, bestowing upon him the privilege of being born into a family of long, brilliant and enlightened bourgeois lineage. As far back as a genealogy-obsessed great-uncle was able to go, he had found a multitude of men whom France could be proud of: Ecole Polytechnique alumni, soldiers, intellectuals.
In 1991, while shooting J’embrasse pas (I Don’t Kiss), director André Téchiné falls in love with Super-8 images taken in some paratroopers’ barracks by the first assistant camera. Techiné has been entrusted with that footage by cinematographer Thierry Arbogast who is unable to finish the film.
In 1935, Benoît Delhomme’s grandfather Georges helped create Lancôme, a fragrance house for which he designed bottles or, more accurately, glass sculptures that were at once ethereal, bright and fanciful. "Magie", "Trésor", "Peut-être", "Joyeux Été" were the scents these bottles contained, the aim of which was to help women overcome the traumas of World War2.
On a specific day in September 1984 (a year George Orwell definitively made famous), in a small courtyard off the Rue Rollin in Paris, the final results are – at last! - to be posted of the competitive exam to enter (or not) the Louis Lumière Film School’s prestigious Camera Dept. Myriam Vinocour has been waiting all summer for this moment because, mere months ago, right after she took the exam, she ranked twenty-fifth… but only the top twenty-four were taken. But who knows? Perhaps Lady Luck is in a good mood and one of the twenty-four stood down?
Grenoble is a town in the French Alps surrounded by high mountains that prevent you from ever seeing the horizon. In the cold season, the sun may appear then suddenly disappear several times a day.
In 2017, the Ministry of Culture offered cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman to honor him by making him “Knight of the National Order of Merit.” Being offered that so-evocatively named reward pleased the man no end... but he never finished filling the proper documents and never went to fetch it.
Alexis Kavyrchine has always been grateful to his Russian ancestors for giving him a) those last and first names that seem plucked right out of a Dostoevsky or Tolstoy novel; and b) that tall stature, blond hair and blue eyes which, by chance, he also inherited.
Denis Lenoir is already a confirmed cinematographer when he reads Pierre Bourdieu’s essay, Photography: A Middle-brow Art. The idea that ‘‘bourgeoisie dunces’‘ are particularly successful in photography - a way for them not to downgrade - has always interested him. Born in that milieu and a “lazy, lousy student,” Denis Lenoir totally recognizes himself in that analysis.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Bulgaria is one of the most communist countries in the world. The "Russian Big Brother" does not even bother to dispatch an occupation army there as the Bulgarian population fully adheres to the system. Propaganda is beyond effective and one risks one’s life at the mere hint of a protest.
In the dead of winter 2016-2017, Laurent Machuel is traveling across the north of the United States. One evening, he finds himself in the middle of a road stretching through the icy vastness of the plain. He sees the sun setting before him right in line with the road and, turning around, the moon rising at the other end in perfect symmetry.
As a child, Eric Gautier spends a long time in his grandmother’s flower shop in the Paris suburb of Bondy. He daydreams while devouring the Tintin comic albums (conceived and designed by Belgian artist-auteur Hergé), not knowing yet that his desire for cinema would be born right there in the midst of mortuary crowns and that, much later, he would say: "I owe everything to Hergé".
In the 1960s, the combined peculiarities of the Belgian and American administrations deprived Yves Cape of any kind of citizenship until he was to turn 16. Born in Belgium, the only son of an American father and a Belgian mother, young Yves had to carry a ‘‘Stateless’‘ safe-conduct – a traumatizingly pink document - until he was ordered to choose between being Belgian or American. He went for Belgian. With no regret whatsoever.
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.