Raoul Coutard
1924 - 2016He shot over 75 films during a career that lasted nearly half a century.
Coutard originally planned to study chemistry, but switched to photography because of the cost of tuition. In 1945, Coutard was sent to participate in the French Indochina War; he lived in Vietnam for the next 11 years, working as a war photographer, eventually becoming a freelancer for Paris Match and Look. In 1956, he was approached to shoot a film by Pierre Schoendoerffer, La Passe du Diable. Coutard had never used a movie camera before, and reportedly agreed to the job because of a misunderstanding (he believed he was being hired to shoot production stills of the film).
Coutard's first work collaboration with Jean-Luc Godard was Godard's first feature, À bout de souffle, shot in 1959. He was reportedly "imposed" on Godard by producer Georges de Beauregard; the director had already settled on a different cinematographer.
Coutard photographed nearly all of Godard's work in the Nouvelle Vague era (1959 - 1967), with the exception of Masculin, féminin; their last work during this period was Week-end (1967), which marked the end of Godard's work as a 'mainstream' filmmaker. The two did not work together again until Passion; their final collaboration was Godard's next feature, Prénom Carmen. ...
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Z
Costa-Gavras
Yves Montand, Irene Papas
Amidst a heated political climate, the opposition leader is killed in what appears to be a traffic accident. When a magistrate finds evidence of a government cover-up, witnesses start to get targeted. A thinly-fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963, Z captures the outrage about the military junta that ruled Greece at the time.
Z
CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel
Shivendra Singh Dungarpur
Jiří Menzel, Antonín Máša
An epic exploration of the Czechoslovak New Wave cinema of the 1960s and 70s, structured around a series of conversations with one of its most acclaimed exponents - Closely Observed Trains director Jiří Menzel.
CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel
Contempt
Jean-Luc Godard
Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli
A philistine in the art film business, Jeremy Prokosch is a producer unhappy with the work of his director. Prokosch has hired Fritz Lang to direct an adaptation of "The Odyssey," but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb at the box office, he brings in a screenwriter to energize the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.
Contempt
The Bamboo Incident
Raoul Coutard
Phi Lan, Huynh Cazenas
A young Vietnamese boy's life is thrown into turmoil by the war raging in his country. The ten year old remains with his mother and baby sister as his father goes off to fight for the Viet Cong. During his father's absence, his mother dies from overwork and the inability to find proper medical care for her illness. He cares for his baby sister and struggles to earn a living by shining shoes and doing other odd jobs before his father returns. Both an American soldier and a Viet Cong regular are shown defending their country's political agenda. Also shown are guerilla tactics and bombings in this feature directed by veteran combat photographer Raoul Coutard.
The Bamboo Incident
Godard, l'amour, la poésie
Luc Lagier
Charles L. Bitsch, Raoul Coutard
Documentary about director Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina. In 1960, Jean-Luc Godard films for the first time Anna Karina and falls in love. His cinema is transformed by it forever. Spanned from "Little Soldier" to "Crazy Pete" through "A Woman is a Woman", "My Life to Live" andd "Alphaville", this documentary tells how, during five years , Godard and Karina consciously mixed cinema and private life, with constant will to film "as in true life" and to live "as in film"
Godard, Love and Poetry
Chambre 12, Hôtel de Suède
Claude Ventura, Xavier Villetard
Richard Balducci, Jean-Paul Belmondo
Claude Ventura's documentary Chambre 12, Hotel de Suede, was made for the French television channel Arte in 1993. Ventura checks into room twelve in the hotel's final week of operation: it is demolished the day after he checks out. Room twelve was one of the principal locations for Jean-Luc Godard's New Wave masterpiece Breathless, and Ventura's documentary investigates the production of Godard's film.
Chambre 12, Hôtel de Suède
Jean Seberg: American Actress
Fosco Dubini, Donatello Dubini
Jean Seberg, Raoul Coutard
On September 8, 1979, actress Jean Seberg was found dead in her car not far from her home. Conclusion: suicide. Directors Fosco and Dubini believe she was murdered. The documentary is abundantly illustrated with film fragments and testimonials with people who knew her. Dubini and Fosco wrote the screenplay and edited it.
Jean Seberg: American Actress
The Making of Rocky Road to Dublin
Paul Duane
Raoul Coutard, Jean-Luc Godard
This documentary reunites director Peter Lennon and cinematographer Raoul Coutard, who recount the making of their then controversial but now classic documentary on Ireland in the Sixties. Rocky Road to Dublin was screened for only a few weeks at a single Dublin theatre.
The Making of Rocky Road to Dublin
La légion saute sur Kolwezi
Raoul Coutard
Bruno Cremer, Mimsy Farmer
In May 1978, the mining town of Kolwezi in Katanga, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo, the former Belgian Congo) is under attack from a group of communist guerillas coming from nearby Angola. The Europeans who work for the Belgian mining company and the Blacks who live in the town are taken as hostages by the invaders, who start a blood bath, shooting Europeans as well as Africans. Many of the Europeans being French, the French decide to organize a counter-attack, and to send a Regiment of Paratroopers from the Foreign Legion. The movie follows the stories of Delbart, a former non-commissioned officer, who was about to go back to France with his African wife and his child, Damrémont, who was Delbart's replacement, Bia, a Zairian doctor, and Annie, an American married to a Belgian engineer as well as Non com Legion officer Federico and the French Ambassador and the Military Attaché.
Operation Leopard
S.A.S. à San Salvador
Raoul Coutard
Raimund Harmstorf, Miles O'Keeffe
Enrique Chacon kills Oscar Romero, a Catholic archbishop in San Salvador. The CIA calls a special agent, Malko Linge, a ruined prince who lives with an expensive woman - Countess Alexandra - to get rid of this nuisance of a man. He does, with many encounters with sweet girls, and macho villains. (Written by Artemis-9, IMDb)
S.A.S. San Salvador
