A Conversation with Willy Kurant, AFC, ASC

Photo by Douglas Kirkland

The Renowned Cinematographer Discusses Cannes, the Future of Filmmaking, and his Advice for Emerging Filmmakers

Willy Kurant, AFC, ASC has blazed an untraditional career path. He was a newsreel and documentary cameraman before he became a director of photography in France, the United States and other countries. He was on the leading edge of the New Wave in France. His body of work includes some 60 narrative films, including Masculin Feminin, The Immortal Story, The Night of the Following Day, Je t'aime, moi non plus, Sous le soleil de Satan, Trans-Europ-Express, Le Depart, and such contemporary films as China Moon, A Business Affair, Delivering Milo, Pootie Tang and White Man’s Burden. Kurant has collaborated with such legendary directors as Jean-Luc Godard, Orson Welles and Maurice Pialat.

QUESTION: You were a member of the Camera d’Or jury at Cannes in 2008. Will you share some of your memories about that experience?

KURANT: The Camera d’Or prize is given to someone who has directed his or her first feature. The president of the jury last year was Bruno Dumont, who is a director in the contemporary New Wave of author-directors. Other people on the jury were Jean-Henri Roger, Monique Koudrine, Jean-Michel Frodon, who is the editor of Cahiers du Cinéma, and Isabelle Danel from Télérama, which is known for their radical film buff critics. It was a very diverse group with directors, film critics and me. We had interesting and also tough discussions.

QUESTION: Who did the jury choose and why?

KURANT: It wasn’t an easy decision. It never is. The 2008 Camera d’Or award was presented to Steve McQueen for Hunger. He is not the Steve McQueen who came to your mind when I said that name. This Steve McQueen is a conceptual artist in London. He also co-authored the script. It was a difficult subject about a member of the IRA who went on a long hunger strike in a British jail. It was a very visual story that I appreciated as a cinematographer. I didn’t realize until I spoke with Steve at a celebration after he received the award that his film was produced in two-perf 35 mm format. He said they had a very low budget but didn’t consider not shooting on film.

QUESTION: Were you surprised that it was produced in two-perf format?

KURANT: Actually, I think that I surprised Steve McQueen when I told him that I shot several features in two-perf format more than 30 years ago. I did a little research and found a 35 mm film print of a two-perf film I had shot that was made in the traditional way at a film laboratory. I thought that the richness of black tones was much better than you often get with today’s digital timing with computers.

QUESTION: Does it surprise people when you say that?

KURANT: Cinematographers aren’t surprised. They know that if you scan 35 mm film at 2K resolution to do a DI, you are going to lose details that are on the negative. The problems occur when someone convinces a producer or even the director that they can save money by shooting with one of the digital formats. The truth is that the choice of medium is the smallest part of the budget. Why compromise?

QUESTION: What do you think is driving the perception that you save money with digital?

KURANT: That’s an easy question to answer: marketing. I bought a digital camera. It wasn’t bad. About a month later the manufacturer brought out a new model, and bang, my camera was obsolete, because the new camera had the latest and best technology. The truth is neither my digital camera nor the new model could match the tones and colors we can record on film, which is also the only proven archival medium.

 QUESTION: Are you very passionate about archiving?

KURANT: I believe that the stories we tell on film are the history of our times. If you store film in a proper way it will be there 100 or more years from now.

QUESTION: What were you other memories about the 2008 Camera d’Or competition?

KURANT: We had a lot of movies to consider and we all had different tastes, so we didn’t automatically agree on everything. However, all of us were very impressed by a movie made by a 21-year-old Russian filmmaker named Valeriya Gai Germanika. Her film was called Everybody Dies Except Me (Vse umrut, a ya ostanus). It was shot in Super 16 format and blown up to a 35 mm print. We gave her film a Special Mention as our second choice.

QUESTION: How do you respond when aspiring filmmakers ask you for advice?

KURANT: I tell them that filmmaking is a collective form of expression. Of course, the director and the story are the boss, and in some countries it’s the producers. But no one makes a movie that is worth watching alone. I say to young people “learn to listen to everyone around you.” I also tell them that movies aren’t radio shows. There are directors who can write very nice scripts, but it is important for them to surround themselves with people, including cinematographers, who can help design and make shots at the right locations and sets. The way a shot is composed, focused and lit can speak as loudly as the words in the script.         

QUESTION: What other advice do you offer young filmmakers at Cannes?

KURANT: The Cannes Festival can be an important stepping stone in your career. You are going to meet other filmmakers, distributors, critics and other journalists from around the world. Jim Jarmusch got his break when Stranger Than Paradise won the Golden Camera award in 1984. There is a long list of other young filmmakers who were discovered at Cannes. Where else would Valeriya Gai Germanika, a 21-year-old woman from Russia, meet filmmakers and critics from around the world? Maybe someday she will look back at that experience and say that’s where it all began.

QUESTION: Do you think of moviemaking as a global language?

KURANT: It’s totally a global language… of course, there are differences in the various cultures that you can see in American, French or Japanese films, for example, but people everywhere in the world can understand and appreciate films that were made in different countries and cultures. Filmmaking is a language where you use camera movement, composition, focus and lighting to help convey the story. Every director will read and interpret the same script in different ways, just like every actor and actress will interpret their characters differently, and the cinematographer will create images from their perspective. When directors ask me for advice, I tell them to be true to their vision but to choose the people they work with carefully and to listen to everyone because it’s a collective art.

QUESTION: What questions do young cinematographers ask you?

KURANT: Sometimes they ask me very practical questions, like how to shoot day for night or something like that. I tell them that it is very important to learn their craft, but you have to know why you create backlight as well as how— even if it isn’t in fashion at that given moment. Maybe you want to separate the actors from the background to draw attention to them. Many times, I have had people who worked on my crews as assistants call and ask me to watch and critique a film they shot. It’s obvious that the time they spent working on camera crews with different cinematographers was an important part of their education.

QUESTION: Do you ever teach?

KURANT: A few weeks ago, I was a guest lecturer at the French Cinematheque. I showed the public clips from Se7en, which Darius Khondji (AFC, ASC) shot with David Fincher; 1900, which Vittorio Storaro (AIC, ASC) shot with Bernardo Bertolucci; and The Godfather, which Gordon Willis (ASC) shot with Francis Ford Coppola. We had an interesting discussion about the collaborations between the directors and cinematographers.

QUESTION: There have been comparatively few women cinematographers. Are you seeing signs of progress being made in that area?        

KURANT: It has taken a long time, but we are beginning to see progress. There are some very talented women cinematographers in France, including Caroline Champetier, AFC, who is the president of the Association of French Cinematographers.

QUESTION: What advice do you have for women who want to succeed as cinematographers, which has traditionally been a male role?