Henri Alekan
Biography
Henri Alekan (10 February 1909, Paris – 15 June 2001, Auxerre, Bourgogne) was a French cinematographer. Alekan was born in Montmartre in 1909. At the age of sixteen he and his brother became travelling puppeteers. A little later he started work as third assistant cameraman at the Billancourt Studios. He then spent a short time in the army, returning to Billancourt in 1931. In the late 1930s he was the camera operator to Eugene Shufftan on Marcel Carné's Quai des Brumes and Drôle de drame. He was greatly influenced by Schufftan's non-naturalistic style. His first success as a director of photography was René Clément's realistic war drama La Bataille du Rail of 1946. In the same year he worked on Jean Cocteau's fable La Belle et la Bête. He found himself out of sympathy with the French New Wave cinema which emerged in the late 1950s and Alekan shot some rather conventional films in Hollywood. A new generation of directors appreciated his visionary style, however, and he worked with Raúl Ruiz on The Territory and On Top of the Whale, with Joseph Losey on Figures in a Landscape and The Trout, and with Wim Wenders on The State Of Things and Wings of Desire. His last films were made with the Israeli director Amos Gitai. He wrote one of the best books about cinematography Des lumières et des ombres (1984, Éditions du Collectionneur). Alekan died from leukemia on 15 June 2001 in Auxerre, Bourgogne, aged 92. Source: Article "Henri Alekan" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Known For & Full Filmography12 Titles
Drama Series - 1978, 16 episodes • as Self
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 1984, 2h 15m • as N°330
Reel 34 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.
Movie - 1993, 2h 15m • as Captain
A group of angels look longingly upon the life of humans. Berlin now is a very different place: unified in name but overrun with crime, corruption, and—in what turns out to be a key theme here—Americans.
Movie - 1984, 2h 15m • as Self
In Our Nazi, we are plunged into a situation we barely, and only slowly, understand: the filming of Thomas Harlan’s experimental feature Wundkanal (1984), in which true-life ex-SS officer Alfred Filbert, now very old, is ‘put on trial’ for the camera, without him suspecting what is to come or why he is really there. Kramer’s confronting film is an essay about the sticky complicity of everyone present at this event, each bringing their own history, their own political ideology, their own desires to take revenge, to seek redemption or compassion, or just to put their heads down and ‘get the job done’ professionally, or (in the case of Filbert) to be a star, a part of the magnificent, magical, seductive world of cinema, even if it kills him.
Movie - 1997, 2h 15m • as Self - Interviewee
More than fifty years after its making, we return to the set of Jean Cocteau's 1946 film "La Belle et la Bete" (Beauty and the Beast). Included are interviews with the the lead actors, the cinematographer, along with excerpts read from the director's journal.
Movie - 1997, 2h 15m • as Self
This documentary consists mainly of archive interviews of Jean Cocteau, and it features interesting contributions by Jean Marais and especially Jean-Luc Godard, who discusses Cocteau's foray into cinema. The film documents all the artistic media explored by a man who defined himself, first and foremost, as a poet.
Movie - 2001, 2h 15m • as Self
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 1991, 2h 15m • as Self
This film essay explores the strange case of G.W. Pabst, the Austrian filmmaker who was considered a giant of early cinema before his reputation went behind a cloud.
Movie - 1952, 2h 15m • as Priest on Bicycle
A down-and-out crook on the lam befriends a young street urchin, in an Italian port city. At first amused that the boy is a sneak thief, he tries to deflects the kid from a life of crime. Tipped off by a woman anxious to collect the reward for him (who is wanted for murder), the police pursue the two lost souls.
Movie - 1990, 2h 15m • as Self
Employees remember the director Max Ophüls, who was forced to emigrate in 1933 - his fifth film "Liebelei" was a great success in cinemas. After an odyssey through France, Italy, the Netherlands and the USA, he returned to work in France and Germany in the 1950s. The film commemorates Ophüls, who died in 1957 at the age of 54, and uses a series of film examples to demonstrate his special way of directing.
Movie - 1988, 2h 15m • as Self
An episode of the show "Océaniques " about the craft and lighting techniques of the legendary French cinematographer Henri Alekan
Movie - 1984, 2h 15m • as Self
Short film showing cinematographer Henri Alekan, director Raúl Ruiz and actress Olimpia Carlisi at work creating sublime visual effects of the sort seen in City of Pirates.