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Third
Keswick Film Festival
15-17 February 2002 |
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A legendary figure in movie making, Cinematographer, Jack Cardiff OBE is travelling to the Keswick Film Festival as a special guest next weekend. He will open the Third Keswick Film Festival (15th - 17th February) and, in an addition to the published programme, will be interviewed on-stage at Theatre by the Lake on the closing day.
Jack Cardiff was born in Great Yarmouth in 1914 and his career in film spans ten decades, from the early days of silent movies when he worked as a child actor in 1918, through to the 21st Century when he is still making moving pictures. He has continued in the actor's role over the intervening 84 years making the occasional appearance as a supporting player in his own projects, but it is as a cinematographer (or, Director of Photography) that he is best know. Collaborations with such visionary directors as Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston and Michael Powell lead to a string of British and Hollywood movie classics. He worked with a dazzling array of stars including Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Kirk Douglas and Sophia Loren to name but a few.
It is his work in this country with director, Michael Powell that first brought him to prominence. Cardiff learned the technical world of cinema from the ground up as a runner and then camera operator in the 1930s, and it was his endeavours on the Powell film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp that captured the director's attention. Powell hired Cardiff to shoot his next - and arguably best - picture, A Matter of Life and Death, starring David Niven, a film screened at Keswick Film Club in 2000. It was his cinematographer's mastery of the then new medium of Technicolor that lead to Powell describing Cardiff as "the greatest colour cameraman in the world".
Jack Cardiff's collaboration with Michael Powell continued through Black Narcissus (for which he won an Oscar) to The Red Shoes (shown last year at Theatre by the Lake). It is his 1951 film The African Queen, made with director, John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn that screens at the Festival as part of its 'Painting with Light' strand, a celebration of the works of some great British cinematographers.
Jack Cardiff's interview with Tim Young, Lecturer in film at Lancaster University on Sunday 17th February promises to be a fascinating insight to the life and work of one of this country's true legends of cinema.
For more infomation on the festival please contact Ian Picken on 017687 72398
©
Keswick Film Club 2002
Keswick Film Club is a voluntarily-run, not-for-profit organisation.
Registered Charity Number 1083395