Entertainment > Iranian Filmmakers > DARIUS THE GREAT PART I BY DARIUS KADIVAR
In The Shadows of Cinematography with Darius Khondji
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“Filmmaking is The Orchestration of Emotions Through Light” –Director Ridley Scott
He is one of the great names in his profession and yet virtually unknown to the audience at large for he works in the shadows of the film directors and the actors on a movie set. His job is Cinematography, which basically consists of defining what the movie will ultimately look like onscreen: The lights, the type of film and lens to be used up to overseeing the photography are all part of his job. Darius Khondji has remarkably imposed his unique style in both French and Hollywood Films for the past two decades becoming one of the most envied and demanded talents in an already highly competitive industry. Just to name a few of his achievements: Marc Caro and Jean Pierre Jeunet’s Delicatessen and City of Lost Children , David Fincher’s Se7en, Alan Parker’s Evita should be enough to introduce him but would certainly not be complete without Roman Polanski’s Ninth Gate, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty, Danny Boyle’s The Beach, Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter and once again back to his collaboration with Jean Pierre Jeunet with Alien: Resurrection (deemed by many critics as the Only good follow-up to Ridley Scott’s original classic).
France has always been in the forefront of motion pictures history and creativity ever since the genesis of filmmaking. The Lumières brothers equally claim the paternity of the invention of Cinema with Thomas Edison and George Mélies
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was the first to mesmerize moviegoers with great Special Effects. The French New Wave of the early 1960’s spearheaded by François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Goddard has influenced generations of moviemakers to this day in filming on location and in the streets rather than in pre-fabricated Hollywood Studio’s. If by the early 80’s French Cinema seemed to have lost some of its global influence it was due to the overgrowing gap between technological breakthrough’s due to Hollywood’s new Golden Boy’s like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg who were entirely redefining and reinventing what films were to look like often to the dislike of critic’s of the prestigious Les Cahiers du Cinéma. At the same time a new generation of French talents fascinated by Hollywood productions was blooming and waiting for their hour while making small budget but visually attractive films. Amongst them was Luc Besson the director of the 5th Element and Leon aka The Professional
who was to transform the French cinema industry thanks to the digital revolution of the 1990’s that allowed European and Asian film industries to get back in the global race dominated till then by Hollywood productions. Soon the innovative approach of Besson was to launch the career’s of an entire new generation of film professionals in nearly every field from directors like Jean Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro, Jan Kounen, Mathieu Kassovitz or Special Effects Wizards like Pitof , and Cinematographers like Thierry Arbogast and Darius Khondji who were to be known as the Frenchy’s of Hollywood in the years that followed because they were to partly work for Hollywood Studio’s while developing their own more personal projects back home and often cooperating with one another. This was particularly true for the successful collaboration between Darius Khondji and Jean Pierre Jeunet who truly gained fame with two landmark movies Delicatessen and City of Lost Children where their creative bond drew the attention of Hollywood Studio’s and led them to international fame for their groundbreaking work on Alien: Resurrection that revived Ridley Scott’s classic Franchise.
A closer look at Darius Khondji’s cosmopolitan background certainly explains the facility with which he was to jump from French Art Films to Blockbuster Hollywood Productions for which he has now become a reliable household name and mu
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