| Claire Denis | |
|---|---|
Denis at the 66th Venice International Film Festival |
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| Born | 21 April 1948 Paris, France |
| Occupation | Director, writer, professor |
Claire Denis (born 21 April 1948) is a French film director and Professor of Film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.[1]
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Denis was born in Paris, France, and raised in colonial Africa (Burkina Faso, Somalia, Senegal and Cameroon), where her father was a French civil servant.[2] She moved houses every two years because her father wanted them to know about geography. She used to watch the old damaged copies of war films sent from America when she was growing up in Africa. As an adolescent she loved to read. She would read all the required material in school, but would then sneak her mother's detective stories at night.[3]
Denis initially studied economics, but, she has said, "It was completely suicidal. Everything pissed me off."[3] She then went to the IDHEC, the French film school, at the encouragement of her husband. He told her she needed to figure out what she wanted to do.[3] She graduated from the IDHEC, and served as assistant to Jacques Rivette, Costa-Gavras, Jim Jarmusch, and Wim Wenders. Since 2002 Claire Denis has been a Professor of Film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.[1]
Her debut feature film Chocolat (1988), a semi-autobiographical meditation on African colonialism, won her critical acclaim. With films such as US Go Home (1994), Nénette et Boni (1996), Beau travail (1999), Trouble Every Day (2001), and Vendredi soir (2002) she established a reputation as a filmmaker who "has been able to reconcile the lyricism of French cinema with the impulse to capture the often harsh face of contemporary France."[4]
A large number of Denis' films concentrate on the everyday lives of immigrants and French people of African origin. Indeed, a lion's share of her films possess a central character that is a black male; this tendency remains unique to Denis in both France and abroad. However, Denis' films can be said to maintain less avowed political overtness than subtle multiculturalism and plurality.
Denis was a band leader, worked as an actress, notably in Venus Beauty Institute (2000), and directed for French TV. Two of her movies, L'Intrus and her contribution to Ten Minutes Older: The Cello, were inspired by the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, as Denis and Nancy have confirmed in a video lecture at European Graduate School.[5]
The majority of Denis' oeuvre uses location work over studio work. She sometimes places her actors as if they were positioned for still photography. She uses longer takes with a stationary camera and frames things in long shot, resulting in fewer close ups. However, Denis' cinematic and topical focus always remains relentlessly on the faces and bodies of her protagonists. The subject's body in space, and how the particular terrain, weather, and color of the landscape influences and interacts with the human subjects of her films maintains cinematic dominance.
Tim Palmer explores Denis' work as a self-declared formalist and brilliant film stylist per se; an approach the filmmaker herself has declared many times in interview to be as much about sounds, textures, colors and compositions as broader thematic concerns or social commitments.[6]