PIERRE LHOMME AFC – LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 2008

Thursday April 10th, 2008

We have a great honour to announce that acclaimed French cinematographer, Mr. Pierre Lhomme, Honorary President of the French Association of Cinematographers, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 16th Edition of the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography PLUS CAMERIMAGE.

Pierre Lhomme

The career of Pierre Lhomme spans 40 years of the French cinema, passing with ease and from the works of Alain Cavalier to Chris Marker, from Jean Eustache and Jean-Pierre Melville, to Marguerite Duras and Jean-Paul Rappeneau, from Robert Bresson to James Ivory…, collaborations enriched by their diversity that were nurtured by an attentive and uninterrupted observation of all forms of natural light. On his personal journey that starts with the “classics" (in which through apprenticeship Pierre Lhomme began his career) and then on to the “New Wave", Pierre Lhomme was able to reconcile the strength of an image that was reflected and constructed with the tastes of the period, and then move more towards a more natural approach of cinematography.

Born on the 5th of April, 1930, Pierre Lhomme studied from 1951 to 1953 at the Ecole Louis Lumiere, then was integrated into the cinema division of the French army. From 1955, he worked as assistant cameraman with Michel Kelber, Henri Alekan, Jean Bourgoin and, above all Ghislain Cloquet (ASC). In 1958 Pierre Lhomme began working as “camera operator" with Ghislain Cloquet (Le bel age by Pierre Kast, La belle Americaine by Robert Dhery), but also with Nicolas Hayer in Le signe du lion by Eric Rohmer, and then with Jean Penzer for Les jeux de l’amour and Le farceur by Philippe de Broca.

For Pierre Lhomme, meetings with certain directors had a greater impact on him than meetings with cameramen. It was with Alain Cavalier in 1961 that he first worked on a fiction (Le combat dans l’ile - Fire and Ice), and with Chris Marker in 1962 on documentaries (Le joli mai) working with the sense of new possibilities that came with “direct cinema" -- made possible with the arrival of lighter cameras and synchronized sill now.

Emmanuelle Béart, Eric Ruf Stolen Life

Isabelle Adjani, Quartet

If Le joli mai shows us today the power inherent in a lighter, more liberated camera that is able to observe and listen, then Le combat dans l’ile (Fire and Ice), La vie de château (A Matter of Resistance) reveal the possibilities of mastering black and white images that are rigourously composed and structured through the use of light. Faces in particular (Romy Schneider, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani) show again a totally classical influence that Pierre Lhomme would later abandon going more for the force of softness. After the King of hearts by Philippe de Broca, and with L’Armée des ombres (The Army of Shadows), Pierre Lhomme confronted a decisive moment in his career, through the close association with a director (Jean-Pierre Melville) who was not part of the same generation as Lhomme. A sort of film manifesto deeply anchored in a twilight environment with a tone that became very dear to him.

Following the black and white tendencies from La Maman et la putain (The Mother and the Whore) by Jean Eustache, the bold colours full of sunlight in Le Sauvage (Lovers Like Us) by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, the pale clarity of daylight seen in La Chair de l’orchidee (Flesh of the Orchid) by Patrice Chéreau, the warm and fuzzy ambiance in the films Quartet and Maurice by James Ivory, the cold and aesthetic feeling of Mortelle randonnée (Deadly Run) by Claude Miller... but always with the overriding theme of a lighting that remains clear and visible.

Gérard Depardieu, Cyrano de Bergerac

Nick Nolte, Thandie Newton, Jefferson in Paris

It’s with Robert Bresson’s Les Quatre nuits d’un rêveur (Four Nights of a Dreamer) that Pierre Lhomme will have a better reach of the purity of an image, rigour in the framing and simplicity of the use of either natural lighting or lighting that was carefully reconstituted to lend a very sober and serene feeling that would illuminate the Pre-Raphaelite face of Isabelle Weingarten.

The same concerns and constraints exist when faced with re-creation within a studio environment the slightest variations and vibrations of natural light, the sunrise over the artist studio in Camille Claudel by Bruno Nuytten in the opening sequence, the changes of season suggested through the windowpanes in the laboratory of Marie Curie (Les Palmes de M. Schutz by Claude Pinoteau), the perfect cohesion between the exteriors on the Island of Ouessant and the studio interiors in Voleur d’un vie (Stolen Life) by Yves Angelo, and the final scene in Cyrano de Bergerac by Jean-Paul Rappeneau from the end of the day to the rising moon.

Pierre Lhomme has been nominated seven times for France’s Cesar Award and twice awarded the Cesar. He is a winner of Technical Grand Prize at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, winner of the B.S.C. award, a BAFTA film award in 1992, and the Premio Gianni di Venanzo in 2005. He is the Officer of the Order of Arts and Literature and Knight of the French Legion of Honour and also Honorary President of the AFC (French Association of Cinematographers).

text by Marc Salomon

Selected filmography: