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SHOOTING THE PAST
T
AN INTERVIEW WITH
ASHLEY ROWE BSC
Fujifilm Motion Picture • The Magazine • Exposure • 3
here have been perhaps two pivotal film moments in the life and times of one of the most in-demand talents among the newer generation of British cinematographers. The first was when Ashley
Rowe’s father, during a brief moment of domesticity in between travelling the country almost constantly as a professional clown, took his son to see 2001 – A Space Odyssey at one their local cinemas - the Tivoli, Wimbourne. The result was, in fact, not so much pivotal as more an epiphany.
Rowe, born, raised and still resi- dent in Dorset, remembers it as if like yesterday: “I just sat there – there was a rip, I recall, in the screen in the top left-hand corner – and watched this visually amazing film. The whole atmosphere was really incredible.”
Thanks to his father, not to men- tion Stanley Kubrick, the teenage Rowe, until that point a devotee of still photography, promptly sold all his
equipment and bought instead a Super 8 camera, second hand projector and screen thereafter making endless films with his friends and family.
The second moment came more than 20 years later when Rowe – nowadays boasting a huge range of credits like Calendar Girls, Alfie, Still Crazy, Ali G Indahouse and 24/7 – got a call “out of the blue” from master craftsman Chris Menges BSC. It tran- spired that Menges – “one of my great heroes” - had just seen and been much impressed with Rowe’s work on a Sunday night TV drama called Losing Track, starring Alan Bates, and was inquiring if he’d would be inter- ested in lighting Second Best, a rare directorial assignment for the great cinematographer.
Rowe really needed no second bid- ding to join up on Menges’ rather haunting tale, filmed entirely on loca- tion, of a shy Welsh postmaster (William Hurt) attempting to adopt a son (Chris Cleary Miles). However,
Photo main and above: Ashley Rowe BSC at work on Starter For Ten (photos courtesy Giles Keyte)
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