{"id":19024,"date":"2012-04-28T21:50:11","date_gmt":"2012-04-29T04:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=19024"},"modified":"2012-04-30T13:39:06","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T20:39:06","slug":"cinematographer-ed-lachman-bezalel-lecture-workshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=19024","title":{"rendered":"Cinematographer Ed Lachman – Bezalel Lecture & Workshop"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Ed Lachman\/Photo: Ayelet Dekel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI thought I\u2019d be a painter,\u201d said cinematographer, director and producer Ed Lachman, in a workshop at the Screen Based Arts Department of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem last Wednesday, April 18, 2012, when he visited Israel for the first time as the guest of Bezalel and the Sam Spiegel School of Film and Television Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Lachman studied art history and painting, but soon found his way into films. \u201cI always liked the idea of the collaborative nature of filmmaking,\u201d said Lachman, a preference demonstrated by his many memorable collaborations over a 40-year career, with prominent directors including: Wim Wenders (Tokyo-Ga<\/em>), Mira Nair (Mississippi Masala<\/em>), Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich<\/em>), Robert Altman (A Praire Home Companion<\/em>), David Byrne (True Stories<\/em>), Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides<\/em>), Todd Solondz (Life During Wartime<\/em>).<\/p>\n

In his conversation with students at Bezalel, much of the focus was on his work with director Todd Haynes over the past decade, on Far From Heaven<\/em> (2002 \u2013 for which Lachman was nominated for an Oscar) and I\u2019m Not There<\/em> (2007) an artistic take on the elusive Bob Dylan, and the award-winning television series, Mildred Pierce.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always looked at cinema as an art form,\u201d said Lachman, who recalled that he was originally drawn to film as an expression of his interest in the Dada and Surrealist concept of the found image. He began \u201cmaking my own little films\u201d \u2013 these soon attracted the attention of directors who wanted him to come aboard as cinematographer on their films.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere does our vision take us? Are images in our mind or what we see outside ourselves?\u201d \u2013the philosophical and pragmatic are interwoven in Lachman\u2019s work and approach. Always engaging with wider issues and considerations \u2013 artistic, historic, political or philosophical, he emphasized, \u201cIt\u2019s important to see what\u2019s in front of us.\u201d To illustrate his approach, Lachman described a scene filmed in a kitchen with students at Sam Spiegel. The room was lit with two light bulbs. Surveying the scene, Lachman had felt that the existing lighting would work well for filming, and told the Bezalel audience, \u201cIt\u2019s almost what you don\u2019t do that creates your images.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saying that \u201cfancy angles and shots kinda leave me cold,\u201d Lachman also commented, \u201cI\u2019m very much opposed to using hand hold to say \u2018this is a real moment with the actors\u2019 – I think that\u2019s been over-used. I feel like it\u2019s just another device that doesn\u2019t forward our connection with the story.\u201d Yet he emphasized that the choices involved in positioning the camera play an significant role in conveying the film\u2019s point of view, as he said, \u201c\u201cWhere you place the camera says a lot about what you\u2019re looking at.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lachman showed scenes from his films with Todd Haynes, I\u2019m Not There<\/em> and Far From Heaven<\/em>, discussing the process and choices involved in the filming. Far From Heaven was made in the style of Douglas Sirk films of the 1950s. Sirk (1897 \u2013 1987), was a Danish-German director whose Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s – Magnificent Obsession<\/em> (1954), All That Heaven Allows<\/em> (1955), Written on the Wind<\/em> (1956), and Imitation of Life<\/em> (1959) – were popular at the box office but disdained by critics. Long after Sirk abandoned Hollywood, his films were rediscovered by critics and appreciated for their subtle critique of American middle-class values.<\/p>\n

Lachman studied Sirk\u2019s style, noting his use of a moving camera for wide shots in a manner that \u201cembodied a Brechtian sense of distance,\u201d shots in which people were framed by a doorway or bannister \u201ctrapped by the world they are part of.\u201d One of the ways that Lachman created the atmosphere of the film was through the colors, working with two color palettes \u2013 autumnal browns and oranges, a warm natural palette and an artificial, cold palette based on magenta and green \u2013 reflecting the characters\u2019 different emotional realms. One scene, showing a movie theatre and usherette, is a reference to the painter Edward Hopper (1882 \u2013 1967), and his depiction of American life. Although Hopper is considered a realistic painter, Lachman said, \u201cThose locations didn\u2019t really exist, 99% were manufactured. He didn\u2019t paint totally realistic, he was going for something more psychological.\u201d<\/p>\n

The thought of Hopper\u2019s manufactured scenes and their relationship to film sparked an idea \u2013 recreating a Hopper painting as a studio set. That idea will become a reality as Lachman will recreate the painting \u201cMorning Sun,\u201d a girl sitting on a bed and looking out the window, at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum<\/a>\u00a0 in Madrid.<\/p>\n

Lachman\u2019s work spans the range of film, from feature films to commercial work and documentaries. In his discussion of the different projects, he made it clear that even in a commercial project, there are significant creative choices that the cinematographer can make. Lachman concluded the workshop by showing Life for a Child<\/em>, a documentary he filmed in the Congo and Nepal on the treatment of Juvenile Diabetes. Commissioned by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, Lachman was able to enter and film in the Congo in places where film crews usually would not be allowed. Lachman visited the treatment clinics, meeting and talking with families to select those he wished to interview for the film. Once he chose the families, he spent a week living with each family, \u201cto capture their world and their story.\u201d The result is a warm and intimate look at the lives of the people and country, and the film has developed its own trajectory, becoming far more than a promotional film for a pharmaceutical company. In working on the film in New York, Lachman found a translator, a woman who was a refugee from the Congo. Moved by what she saw, she asked Lachman if she could invite a friend to see it. The friend turned out to be a member of the government in exile, who is making use of the film to show people what is happening in the Congo. As Lachman sums it up, \u201cthe film ends up being about faith.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI thought I\u2019d be a painter,\u201d said cinematographer, director and producer Ed Lachman, in a workshop at the Screen Based Arts Department of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem last Wednesday, April 18, 2012, when he visited Israel for the first time as the guest of Bezalel and the Sam Spiegel School of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}