“I don’t know what truth is. We can’t think we’re creating truth with a camera. But what we can do is reveal something to viewers that allows them to discover their own truth.” – Michel Brault.
🌹Michel Brault 🔼
(25 June 1928 – 21 September 2013)
He was a Canadian cinematographer, cameraman, film director, screen writer & film producer. He was a leading figure of Direct Cinema, characteristic of the French branch of the National Film Board of Canada in the 1960s. Brault was a pioneer of the hand-held camera aesthetic.
Michel Brault was a bridge between Québec and the French New Wave, notably due to his collaboration with Jean Rouch, showing in Europe the recent achievements of direct cinema.
He his of most of NFB’s flagship works in direct cinema, including Les Raquetteurs (1958), Wrestling (1961) and Pour la suite du monde (1963). He also directed Orders (1974), a must-see film about the October Crisis, which occurred in Quebec in October 1970 and with which he won the 1975 Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
For the whole of his works, Michel Brault received the Victor-Morin Award (Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal) in 1975, the Molson Award ( Canada Arts Council) in 1980, and the Governor-general’s Award in 1996.
In 1956, Michel Brault joined the National Film Board (NFB) of Canada and two years later he made together with Gilles Groulx Les Raquetteurs, a film that had a decisive influence on NFB’s french section in question of engaging in Direct Cinema movement. As a cinematographer Brault was a pioneer of the hand-held camera aesthetic and collaborated with number of film directors from both North America and Europe.
In 1838, François-Xavier Bouchard returns to Lower Canada after a brief exile in the United States to continue to participate in the struggle of French Canadian patriots against the British authorities. But Bouchard is captured by the English company of Chevalier De Lorimier.
Les Ordres (Orders, 1974) follows five individuals who were arrested by the police during the time, towards the end of 1970, when the Canadian government rounded up people on the suspicion that they were members of the Quebec Liberation Front. Based on around 50 interviews conducted with those who lived through this ordeal, the film, in black and white and colour, is a shattering indictment of the misuse of power. The picture won Brault the best director award at the 1975 Cannes film festival, the only time a Canadian has won that particular prize.
🔺Director Denis Villeneuve told, “When I was designing the shots for Prisoners, I was thinking of Michel Brault. There’s a lot of confidence and simplicity, and strength in his work, and a lot of ambition at the same time… There’s inner strength, kind of Nordic strength, and calm in his work.”
🔺Québec Premier Pauline Marois, announcing special aid to expand a cinema special-effects studio, took a moment to “underscore what a giant Michel Brault was, with all his talents and everything he left as a legacy.”
🔺The British newspaper, The Guardian, called him “one of the great unsung heroes of cinema.”
🔺Actress M. Lanctot told Radio-Canada, “Michel had an exceptional eye. He had a vision that was very personal and very original. I don’t think it can be replaced.”
ANDRÉ KERTÉSZ (2 July 1894 – 28 September 1985) was a Hungarian-born photographer known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition & the photo essay.
Now he is considered one of the seminal figures of photojournalism.
Andre Kertesz is one of the most original and celebrated of photographers of the 20th century. He was a founder of the modernist photography that originated in the European avant-garde movements of the 1920s, and although his lifelong unwillingness to compromise his independence and his creation of “photographic poetry” made him an almost marginal figure for most of his life, his influence on the development of photography, particularly photojournalism, during the middle years of the century was profound. This comprehensive book accompanies a major retrospective exhibition of Kertesz’s work at Paris’s Jeu de Paume Museum (also visiting several other European venues including Winterthur, Berlin, and Budapest). The text is organized around the three main periods of Kertesz’s seventy-year-long career: Budapest, 1914-25; Paris, 1925-36; and New York, 1936-85. Each section of the text includes an illustrated historical analysis, a portfolio of works, and notes on particular elements of Kertesz’s style and practice. Many rare vintage and period prints produced under the photographer’s control are reproduced to highest standards in this beautiful book, reflecting the visual quality of this exceptional body of compelling and poetic images.
.He is known for his lyrical and formally rigorous pictures of everyday life. One of the most-inventive photographers of the 20th century, Kertész set the standard for the use of the handheld camera, created a highly autobiographical body of work, and developed a distinctive visual language.
Mondrian’s studio,Paris 1926
💠He began photographing in 1912, the same year he took a job as a clerk at the Giro Bank of the Budapest Stock Exchange. During World War। he served in the Austro-Hungarian army. He saw action and continued taking pictures on the Eastern Front, where he was severely wounded. In 1918 he returned to work at the bank, photographing in his spare time.
Because of a lack of opportunities in Hungary, Kertész moved to Paris in 1925 to work as a freelance photographer. His poetic images of Paris street life, often taken from high vantage points, involve unexpected juxtapositions and make frequent use of reflections and shadows. In 1927 Kertész had a well-received show at the Au Sacre du Printemps Gallery in Paris. The following year he participated in the influential First Independent Salon of Photography. His photographs, notable for their blend of a romantic sensibility with modernist attitudes, were frequently cited by critics of the 1920s and ’30s as proof that photography could be considered a fine art.
The Fork, or La Fourchette, was taken in 1928 and is one of Kertész’s most
famous works from this period.
Books :
In 1933 Kertész published his first personal book of photographs, Enfants, dedicated to his fiancée Elizabeth and his mother, who had died that year.
This, the first edition of Andre Kertesz’ scarce first book, is a collection of images of children reflecting a quality evident in most of Kertesz’ work: a sense of the sweetness of life and a pleasure in the beauty of the world. Photographs by Kertesz; text by Jaboune (Jean Nohain). Unpaginated [48 pages]; 54 gravure-printed b&w images; 8 7/8 x 11 7/8 inches. Text in French.
He published regularly during the succeeding years. Paris (1934) was dedicated to his brothers Imre and Jenő. Nos Amies les bêtes (“Our Friends the Animals”) was released in 1936 and Les Cathédrales du vin (“The Cathedrals of Wine”) in 1937.
Kertész married Elizabeth on 17 June 1933. In 1936 they emigrated to New York where within a decade, they became naturalized citizens. Here his struggle & talent internationally flourished more.
Elizabeth and I, 1931
In December 1937 Kertész had his first solo show in New York at the PM Gallery.
Lost cloud, New York, 1937
Gradually his work was featured in many exhibitions throughout Europe & America, including a one-man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1964.
Washington Square, 1954
His legacy as an idiosyncratic & influential photographer has been acknowledged by critics internationally.
Publisher- Yale University Press (21 September 2010) Language- English Hardcover- 360 pages ISBN-100300167814 ISBN-13978-0300167818
: Motivation : 