One of the surprises of this awards season is A Separation, a highly lauded film from Iran that has captivated reviewers and moviegoers and garnered two Oscar nominations. The beautifully photographed movie tells a multi-layered story of a modern-day couple in Tehran who are on the verge of a divorce. The wife wants to... »

“On most films I’ve worked on, the most important thing is to 'make the day,'" (keep to the shooting schedule) says Emmanuel Lubezki, director of photography on The Tree of Life, helmed by imagistic director Terence Malick. “Working with Terry, sometimes I can shoot a whole day and not know if there’s anything that’s... »

Nicolas Windng Refn, director of Drive, doesn’t himself drive. He has failed his driver’s license test eight times. Yet the heralded Danish director came to Los Angeles, the city of cars, to make a film filled with some of the most authentic and exciting car chase sequences seen on the screen in years. »

In its visual sweep and narrative scope, War Horse, directed by Steven Spielberg, harkens back to the kinds of movies Hollywood used to make. Much of the film’s impact derives from the eye-filling images created by director of photography Janusz Kaminski. And at a time when technology is remaking cinematography, the DP relied almost... »

Lensing comedy-drama Carnage, award-winning director of photography Pawel Edelman was literally cornered, as were the quartet of actors who make up the entire cast. The film is directed by Roman Polanski, with whom the DP has worked on his three previous films. The movie is about an increasingly hostile confrontation between two sets of... »

Among the many felicities of comedy-musical The Artist, French director Michel Hazanavicius’ captivating silent-film tribute to American filmmaking as the silent era transitioned to the talkies at the end of the 1920s and early 1930s, is the spot-on black-and-white cinematography of Guillaume Schiffman.  It’s therefore surprising to learn that the film was shot in... »

Melancholia is the visually stunning, apocalyptic new film from boundary-pushing Danish director Lars Von Trier. The movie is a psychological disaster story about nothing less than the end of world. The title references the personal depression that starts unraveling a newly-wed bride, played to great acclaim by Kirsten Dunst. Melancholia is also the... »

“Marty does not settle for less than what he has conceived,” says double-Oscar-winning director of photography Robert Richardson. “That is always a tremendous challenge.” On the new film Hugo director Martin Scorsese demanded more than ever from his top-flight team of veteran collaborators. For Richardson, it was the first time he shot an... »

Director of photography Dariusz Wolski has been the cinematographer on all four of the visually-spectacular Pirates of the Caribbean blockbusters, devoting much of the last nine years to the series, During gaps between the productions, he has also lensed two movies for director Tim Burton, Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and... »

This year, director of photography Phedon Papamichael has applied his considerable skills as a cinematographer to two very different films that both happen to star George Clooney. In The Descendants, Clooney is the conflicted scion of a clan with deep roots in Hawaii whose wife is in a coma from an accident. At the... »