Min Man Ma

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.

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).

Eclectic and determined, enthusiastic and rebellious, from the start of his career Luciano Tovoli upset the habits and traditions of the profession with his mix of verve, self-confidence, and occasional ingenuity. He has what is sometimes called “character”.

Performance, art film, testimony of an artist in his autumn years - Man in Black is a new film by Chinese director Wang Bing, known for his documentary work, such as Youth, in Official Competition. Wang Xiling, a Chinese artist in exile and composer aged 87, bears witness to what he has seen and experienced as an artist. Naked, showing the scars of torture and abuse, he wanders through the spaces of the Bouffes du Nord, the legendary and beautiful Parisian theatre. He plays fragments of his works, sings… and above all recounts, in sparing unemotional prose, the experience of an artist under the Chinese regime. An intensely personal and moving film, with an image as powerful as the force of his narrative.
 Caroline Champetier spoke with us briefly about her collaboration with Wang Bing. (FR)

Volontairement très éloigné de la traditionnelle saga héroïque américaine, le biopic de Damien Chazelle, First Man (Le Premier homme sur la Lune) se veut intimiste et sombre, et dépeint les difficultés d’un couple à la suite de la perte de leur premier enfant. Alternant beaucoup de techniques de prise de vues différentes selon les séquences, Linus Sandgren, FSF, fait de nouveau équipe avec le jeune réalisateur, tous deux oscarisés pour La La Land. Il nous parle de cet aspect peut-être un peu moins spectaculaire, mais tout aussi important pour lui, de la fabrication du film. (FR)

Le magazine anglais British Cinematographer publie dans sa parution de septembre 2015 (n° 71) "Walkie Talkie", un article où il est question du travail de Darius Khondji, AFC, ASC, sur le film de Woody Allen Irrational Man (Un homme irrationnel), qu’il a photographié, dernier sorti des cinq longs métrages qu’ils ont tournés ensemble.

Cinematographer Jimmy Glasberg, AFC, passed on 13 January 2023, aged 83. He was the direct descendant of the pioneering "camera men" who weren’t yet called "directors of photography". Jimmy Glasberg, in both his thinking and his work, constantly questioned what it means to film and what he called "the filial passage from a still image to a moving image." He left behind a filmography that is rich in both its diversity and its ideological commitments.

Extending rather than recreating the cult film by Nicholas Roeg, The Man who Fell to Earth – in which David Bowie plays an alien on Earth looking for a way to save his own planet – the eponymous TV series is a readaptation of the original novel that introduces a good dose of modernity. The impeccable British actor of Nigerian origin Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things, 12 Years a Slave...) lends his features to the visitor from another galaxy, while Noémie Harris (the mother in the film Moonlight) plays the Earthling who will be forced to accompany him on his mission. The screenplay by Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet of course seizes the opportunity to show the social reality of present-day America, like an echo of the science-fiction short story that centers the theme of the foreigner.
Tommy Maddox-Upshaw ASC is the mind behind the images. He discusses with us the challenges involved in filming this series, a Spanish-British coproduction, which has been broadcast since April 2022 on Showtime. (FR)

I first met Gerry Fisher in 1975 on the set of Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein. At that time, I was 2^d AC in Pierre-William Glenn’s team, who was operating on this film. I admired his work on Accident, Secret Ceremony, The Offence, A Doll’s House and Man in the Wilderness, and was shadowing him on the set, trying to learn his cinematography.