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OUT
OUT
OF AFRICA
OF AFRICA
An interview with Robert Alazraki AFC
B orn in Morocco, Robert Alazraki remembers being fascinated with photogra-
phy and, by the age of 10, was taking pictures with his Brownie camera. Growing up in Marrakech
in front of the majestic Atlas Mountains, he says he is marked by where he first lived, the type of light he grew up in, and that all of that is perma- nently imprinted in that “interior emulsion which is the brain.”
Alazraki was 19
when he came to France
intending to study archi-
tecture. He spent a year
at France’s most presti-
gious art school, L’Ecole
de Beaux Arts in Aix en Provence and he soon found himself at festivals in Avignon and Aix shooting stills for opera and theatre performances.
Realising that this is where he was happiest, he decided to study photography professionally, so he left for London. He passed the fiercely competitive entry examinations, which was more like winning the lottery in
those days, and entered the Royal College of Art to study film. He gradu- ated in 1970 and it was Tony Scott who shot his diploma film.
“The RCA was full of great people then and those years in London were some of the best in my life. The teach-
knew no one except an actress friend from their cine-club in Grenoble, Juliet Berthot, who introduced him to her friends.
Eventually he got a job on his first film as a runner, but during that same film he moved up from third to second
assistant director and then was put in the cam- era department to work as first assistant cameraman.
He spent the next few years assisting and oper- ating until he got the chance in 1975 to photo- graph his first movie, La Fille du garde-barrière.
“I still have wonderful memories of that film. I love working in black and white. My second film, Les Petites fugues, also is
one of my favorites and I attribute that to the relationship with the direc- tor Yves Yersin.”
Alazraki underscores the impor- tance of the director-cinematographer relationship. “For me, telling a story successfully with images depends on how well I work with the director. I like to go into their head, their universe. It is a very intimate relationship, one of
continued over
ers were all English directors and cine- matographers, and I’ll never forget when Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz would come in to lecture in the afternoon and show us their films,” he recalled, happily.
Alazraki could not stay in London because the unions were closed and it was impossible to work in the film industry. He went to Paris where he
Photos main: Robert Alazraki; inset: a scene from La Gloire de Mon Père