Henri Alekan
Camera
Born 1909-02-10
Died 2001-06-15
Paris, France
95 credits
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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.
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Filmography
— top 60 of 95
Other credits
50 credits
Roman Holiday
Red Sun
Wings of Desire
Beauty and the Beast
Triple Cross
Mayerling
Austerlitz
Topkapi
Anna Karenina
Just Me
The State of Things
Queen Margot
The Poppy Is Also a Flower
The Divisions of Nature
Five Miles to Midnight
Lady L
The Christmas Tree
Gun Moll
The Magic of the Kite
Wundkanal
The Beautiful Prisoner
Our Nazi
The Case of Dr. Laurent
Typhoon Over Nagasaki
The Battle of the Rails
Paris Is Always Paris
Would-Be Gentleman
Frou-Frou
The Damned
The Other Christopher
The Lovers of Verona
Marie of the Port
The Territory
Figures in a Landscape
A Stone in the Mouth
When You Read This Letter
En rachâchant
The Best Part
Trip to America
Such a Pretty Little Beach
The Little Ones of the Flower Platform
The Trout
The Great Deception
Golem, the Spirit of Exile
Forbidden Fruit
Golem: The Petrified Garden
Life Is Ours
Julietta
Woman of Evil
Three Women
Acting
11 credits
Ciné regards
German Film Award
Cinématon XXXIV
40° à l'ombre
Faraway, So Close!
Port of Shadows
Hatred
Our Nazi
Fanny
Heroes and Sinners
Screening at the Majestic
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