DENIS LENOIR

#1: From doc/interview [2012]

#2: From doc "Cinematographer Style" [2005]

DENIS LENOIR AFC/ASC/ASK

Born: 1949, Paris, France.

Education: École du Louvre, Paris [Art History]; École Vaugirard [now École Louis Lumière], Paris [Cinematography].

Career: 'I was born and raised in Paris and lived there until I moved to Los Angeles about six years ago. I'm a child of the French Cinémathèque. I started watching films when I was in medical school. In two years I saw about 1,000 films. I didn't do a lot of studying. After I dropped out of medical school, I thought seriously about becoming an English teacher in a high school. One day, my mother asked me, what are you going to do? I said I was thinking about studying English. She asked, if cinema is your passion, why don't you do that professionally instead of just your hobby? That opened a whole new world. I went to the Vaugirard film school. I wanted to be a director. I had no interest at the time in cameras, lighting, framing or techniques. After I finished school, I had to work and somebody suggested the camera department. I became a very bad camera assistant. After about three years, I was 27, and decided that I wasn't doing well as a focus puller. I decided to become a lighting cameraman. On my first job, I had 400 feet of film in the camera and a few lights. I was alone. I drove to a very small town in the morning and shot about 60 meters of film in a curtain shop, editing in the camera. In the afternoon, I drove to a music shop and shot the rest of the film. It was for local commercials that ran in one cinema in this little town. During the early 1980s, I started to do corporate movies. I had an opportunity to work with a director-producer who was a former cinematographer. The crew was three people. I was the cinematographer, electrician and focus puller. On my first day - we were working in a factory - I set up my lighting, running the cables myself. This director turned to me and said, "But Denis, it's flat." It was like opening a new world for me: light could be flat or non-flat! I started thinking about lighting, and studying my colleagues' work. Lighting became a passion for me. I still remember the first time that I realized light was not an immaterial, invisible concept but actually fluid photons that I could throw across a room like paint or water from a bucket and watch it bounce along the ground and against the walls. I realized light was something that I could physically manipulate, shape, bend. Suddenly, I could feel the light. It had taken me a while to learn the pleasure of switching on lights.' [From the KODAK OnFilm website, 2002.]

Was c.asst working with doph Bernard Lutic.

Ph music videos [a: Julien Clerc, Céline Dion, Amina, Texas, David Byrne, a.o.] and commercials [dir by Stéphane Sednaoui, Andrew McPherson, a.o.].

Was co-founder of the AFC. Member of the ASC since 2001.

Co-authored the book 'John Cassavetes' [1986].

Appeared in the doc 'Cinematographer Style' [2005, Jon Fauer; ph: J. Fauer, Jeff Laszlo, Brian Heller & David Morgan].

Awards: AFI [Aus] Award nom [1991] for 'Dingo'; ASC Award [2002] & 'Emmy' Award nom [2002] for 'Uprising' ['Emmy' for 'Part 2']; Camerimage 'Bronze Frog' Award [2002] for 'Demonlover'.

Website: Denis Lenoir

FILMS
1976	Sotelo [Raúl Ruiz] 16mm/c; doc/15m
1977	Colloque de chiens/Coloquio de perros/Dog's Dialogue [Raúl Ruiz] c; short/22m; cph: Patrice Millet
1982	Eros de conduite [Robert Millie] b&w-c; short/7m; cph: R. Millie
1982	Laissé inachevé à Tokyo [Olivier Assayas] b&w; short/22m
1983	Les veufs [Patrick Dewolf] c; short/14m
1983	Vivre dangereusement [Marie Sauvanet] c; short/6m
1984	Electra [Alain Guesnier] c; short/11m
1984	Winston Tong en studio [Olivier Assayas] 16mm-35bu/b&w; mus perf/10m
1984	Destino crudele/Cruel Destiny [Roy Lekus] 16mm/c; short/20m
1985	L'amour propre... ne le reste jamais très longtemps [Martin Veyron] c
1985	Dressage/Éducation perverse [Pierre B. Reinhard] c
1986	Désordre/Disorder [Olivier Assayas] c
1986	Le rescapé/The Survivor [Okacha Touita] c
1987	Le professeur Taranne [Raúl Ruiz] c; short/52m
1987	Eux! [Ann-Gisel Glass] c; short/8m
1987	La lumière du lac [Francesca Comencini] c
1987	Tandem [Patrice Leconte] c
1987	Ville étrangère/A Foreign City [Didier Goldschmidt] c
1988	Tocsin [Solange Martin] 16mm/c; short/12m
1988	L'enfant de l'hiver/Winter's Child [Olivier Assayas] c
1988	Monsieur Hire [Patrice Leconte] p/c
1989	Question de peau [Alain Le Breton] c; short/6m
1989	Le bal du gouverneur [Marie-France Pisier] c
1989	Dingo [- Dog of the Desert] [Rolf de Heer] p/c
1990	Daddy nostalgie/Daddy Nostalgia/These Foolish Things [Bertrand Tavernier] p/c
1990	Shuttlecock/Entre chien et loup [Andrew Piddington] c; addph: Robin MacDonald; see 2014
1991	Jeux d'hiver [Alain Le Breton] b&w-c; short/10m
1991	Paris s'éveille/Paris at Dawn [Olivier Assayas] c
*1991*	Farewell to Paradise [Alexandra von Grote] announced; status unknown
1992	Drôles d'oiseaux/Bilan provisoire [Peter Kassovitz] c
1992	Beau fixe/Set Fare [Christian Vincent] c
1992	Une nouvelle vie/A New Life [Olivier Assayas] p/c
1993	Decadence [Steven Berkoff] c; 2uc: John Ward
1993	L'éau froide/La page blanche/Cold Water [Olivier Assayas] c; 92m; ed version (67m) was ep of 9-part tv-series 'Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge'
1993	La partie d'échecs/The Chess Game [Yves Hanchar] p/c; cph: Rémon Fromont
1994	La séparation [Christian Vincent] c
1994	Carrington [Christopher Hampton] c
1994	Le géographe Manuel [Michel Sumpf] b&w/silent (1st part) & c/sound (2nd part); cph: Renato Berta, William Lubtchansky, Pascal Marti, Jacques Loiseleux, Dominique Chapuis, Agnès Godard, Raoul Coutard, Romain Winding, a.o.
1995	Clubbed to Death (Lola)/La petite Lola [Yolande Zauberman] c
1995	[Joseph Conrad's] The Secret Agent [Christopher Hampton] c
1996	Since You've Been Gone/Dogwater [David Schwimmer] c
1996	Food of Love [Stephen Poliakoff] c; cph: Wit Dabal; Lenoir: 'I worked 9 days on this film. Actually I left on the first day of the shooting, but stayed another 8 days waiting for the Polish doph to replace me.'
1997	Un air si pur/An Air So Pure [Yves Angelo] c; cph: Edward Klosinski
1997	Thursday [Skip Woods] c
1998	Fin août, début septembre/Late August, Early September [Olivier Assayas] s16-35bu/c; 2uc: Yorick Le Saux
1998	Steal This Movie/Abbie! [Robert Greenwald] b&w-c
1999	The Old Man Who Read Love Stories [Rolf de Heer] Hawk Scope/c; 2uc: Bruce Phillips
*2000*	Dragonfly [Thierry Fassioti] - Lenoir: 'I didn't film 'Dragonfly'; at some point I was supposed to film it and, with my permission, the director used my name in the trade papers.'
2001	Demonlover [Olivier Assayas] s35+s16-to-s35/c; 2uc: Yorick Le Saux; aph: Santiago Navarrete
2002	The Clearing [Pieter Jan Brugge] c; 2uc: Monty Rowan
2003	Intent [Mary Ann Marino] c; short/14m
2003	Control [Tim Hunter] c; 2uc: Andrej Certov & Emil Topuzov; uwph: Stefan Todorov
2004	Entre ses mains/In His Hands [Anne Fontaine] c
2005	Paris, je t'aime [seg '14th arrondissement' dir by Alexander Payne] c
2005	88 Minutes [Jon Avnet] s35/c; addph: Uta Briesewitz & Francis Kenny
2006	Angel/The Real Life of Angel Deverell [François Ozon] c
*2007*	The Moon and Sixpence [Christopher Hampton] announced; status unknown

"Righteous Kill" - photo by Ken Regan

2007	Righteous Kill [Jon Avnet] s35/c; 2uc: Luke Geissbuhler
2008	The Vintner's Luck/A Heavenly Vintage [Niki Caro] scope/c; inserts ph: Sébastien Tran
2009	Carlos [, le film] [Olivier Assayas] ts/c; cph: Yorick Le Saux; comp of 3-part tv-miniseries
2010	La belle endormie/The Sleeping Beauty [Catherine Breillat] c
2010	Tous les soleils [Philippe Claudel] HD (Sony F35)-to-35mm/c
2010	So Undercover [Tom Vaughan] HD (ARRI ALEXA) scope-to-D-Cinema/c; 2uc: Rémi Tournois; filmed 2010-11
2012	100% cachemire/The Ultimate Accessory [Valérie Lemercier] HD (ARRI ALEXA Studio)-to-digital/c
2012	Avant l'hiver/Before the Winter Chill/Winter Rose [Philippe Claudel] HD (ARRI ALEXA Studio/Hawk Scope)-to-35mm scope (+ D-Cinema)/c
2013	Eden [Mia Hansen-Løve] HD (ARRI ALEXA Plus) scope/c; addph: Pascal Auffray
2014	Sins of a Father [Andrew Piddington] c; cph: Roger Eaton; partly reshot and re-edited version of A. Piddington's 'Shuttlecock/Entre chien et loup'; see 1990
2014	Still Alice [Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland] c; 2uc: Matthias Schubert
2014	Une Enfance/A Childhood [Philippe Claudel] HD (Sony F55)/c
2015	L'avenir/Things to Come [Mia Hansen-Løve] s35/c
2015	The Tale [Jennifer Fox] HD/c; as cinematographer; ph: Ivan Strasburg
2016	Three Christs [Jon Avnet] HD/c

TELEVISION & INTERNET
1998	Mean Streak [Tim Hunter] tvm
2000	Meat Loaf: To Hell and Back [Jim McBride] tvm/s16
2000	Livin' for Love: The Natalie Cole Story/Unforgettable [Robert Townsend] tvm
2001	Uprising [Jon Avnet] 2-part tvm/b&w-c
2002	Boomtown [pilot, ep #2 'Possession' & #3 'The Squeeze' dir by Jon Avnet & #4 'Reelin' in the Years' dir by Bobby Roth] 24-part series, 2002-03; 1st season, 2002-03; other ph: John Newby
2003	E.D.N.Y. [Anthony Drazan] pilot; for NBC-tv
2005	Time Bomb [Stephen Gyllenhaal] tvm/HD
2008	Bunker Hill [Jon Avnet] pilot/HD (Genesis); for TNT-tv
2009	Hung [ep #2 'Great Sausage or Can I Call You Dick?' dir by Craig Zisk] 30-part series, 2009-11; 1st season, 2009; other ph: Uta Briesewitz (pilot + ep)
2009	Carlos [Olivier Assayas] 3-part (x 90m) miniseries/ts, 2010; ph majority ep #2 & 50/50 ep #3; cph: Yorick Le Saux (majority ep #1); also ed into a feature film (2009)
2011	Have a Little Faith [Jon Avnet] tvm/HD; ep #347 of 'Hallmark Hall of Fame'-series
2012	Blue Lagoon: The Awakening [Mikael Salomon] tvm/HD; cph: Roy H. Wagner

From doc/interview - "Kendra"

2012	Kendra [Jon Avnet] 8-part (x c. 7m) web series/HD (Sony F3), 2012; for wigs (YouTube channel) & watchwigs.com
2012	Mary [Tracy Gallacher] web short/HD/6m; cph: Michael Negrin; for wigs (YouTube channel) & watchwigs.com
2013	Lauren [12 ep (#4-15) dir by Jon Avnet] 15-part web series/HD, 2012-13; 2nd season, 2013 (12 ep); cph (#4-8 & #13-15): Michael Negrin; for wigs (YouTube channel) & watchwigs.com
2013	Susanna [Jon Avnet] 12-part web series/HD, 2013; for wigs (YouTube channel) & watchwigs.com

MISCELLANEOUS
1972	L'insolent/Deadly Sting/The Insolent/The Killer [Jean-Claude Roy] 2nd c.asst; ph: Claude Saunier
1974	Les autres/The Others [Hugo Santiago] 2nd c.asst; ph: Ricardo Aronovich
1975	Deux soeurs qui ne sont pas soeurs [dir; short/b&w/4m/16mm] ph: Bernard Lutic
1983	Y a-t-il un pirate sur l'antenne?/Superflic se déchaine [Jean-Claude Roy] c.op; ph: Robert Millie