Famous Biographies

Born: Lille, France, 8 October 1896. Died: 1967. He began a brief career in 1916 as an actor on the Paris stage. Two years later he entered French films as assistant director (to Feuillade, L’Herbier, etc.) and occasional screenwriter. In 1919 he directed his first film. His films of the 20s g Continue reading the biography

Born: Giadinh, Indochina [Vietnam], 4 April 1914. Died: 3 March 1996. Born in Giadinh, Indochina (now Vietnam) to French parents, both teachers. She went to live in Paris at 18 and studied mathematics, law, and political science at the Sorbonne. In 1935 she became a civil servant in the Ministry for Continue reading the biography

Born: Amiens, France, 17 November 1882. Died: 1942. The daughter of a cavalry captain, she was raised by a grandmother in Paris, where she studied various forms of art with an emphasis on music and the opera. In 1905 she married engineer-novelist Marie-Louis Albert-Dulac and under his influence veer Continue reading the biography

Born: Sosnitsa, Ukraine, Russia, 12 September 1894. Died: Moscow, Russia, 25 November 1956. Ukrainian Soviet director and writer. Trained as a teacher, Dovzhenko worked as a civil servant and diplomat, then studied painting in Munich and became a newspaper cartoonist. He began film work in Odessa in Continue reading the biography

Born: Helsinki, Finland, 5 February 1933. Finnish director, producer, writer and actor. Donner began his career as a film critic in the early 1950s, publishing pamphlets, novels and travel books as well as a biography of Ingmar Bergman. He co-founded the Finnish Film Archive in 1957, established his Continue reading the biography

Born: Maceio, Brazil, 19 May 1940. During his school days, he was active in the political affairs of the academic community and became film critic of O Metropolitano, a publication of the Metropolitan Union of Students. While becoming established as a critic and a poet, he began directing film short Continue reading the biography

Born: Villefranche-sur-Saone, France, 1942. Raymond Depardon has helped revolutionize photojournalism in France over the past 30 years. His first photographs were taken on his parents’ farm in 1954. After working for the Delmas agency (1960­1962), in 1967 he founded the Gamma agency with Gill Continue reading the biography

Born: Pontchâteau, France, 5 June 1931. Died: 27 October 1990. One of the outstanding filmmakers of post-war France, Demy is best known for his first feature Lola (1961) and for Les Parapluies de Cherbourg / The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), his first musical proper. Demy was brought up in Nantes, Continue reading the biography

Born: Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 15 May 1943. Once hailed as one of the most original and sophisticated of the new generation of horror filmmakers that came to prominence during the 1970s, Cronenberg went on to transcend the limitations of his somewhat disreputable genre. By the 90s, after helming th Continue reading the biography

Born: Venlo, Holland, 16 April 1940. The son of a film producer, he spent his early childhood as a WWII evacuee. After art school training in still photography, he went to Australia in 1963 as part of a student exchange program by Melbourne University. He returned home after a year but was back Continue reading the biography