Page 31 - Fujifilm Exposure_15 Melinda Messenger_ok

Photos inset: Dancing in the Salsa club; above (l-r): Adrian Lester; Craig Ferguson and Olivia Williams
BE ROMANTIC
BE ROMANTIC
Just a week before shooting was due to start, he received some of the new Fuji F-400 Tungsten Balanced stock and decided almost then and there it would be perfect for the club scenes.
“Perhaps it was a bit crazy for me to start using it without more tests, but I was very happy with it. It was exactly what I wanted and it pro- duced a very different image in those scenes. All the characters meet at the
Salsa club; it’s the centre point where they gather then fall in or out of love. “For that reason I wanted an
image that was very different from what I was doing outside – with the much harder images of the city at night. Every time we were in this paradise of a club, I wanted it to look different. The F-400 was ideal for those very soft, low contrast scenes.”
Since Born Romantic, Alazraki, an
old friend of Fuji, used the stock again for the contemporary parts of his latest film La-bas... mon pays, also known as Return To Algiers, set now and 30 years ago when the North African country was still a French colony. Directed by Alexandre Arcady, it stars Eurotrash’s Antoine de Caunes, Samy Naceri and Mathilda May.
Says Alazraki: “I choose film stocks the same way I would choose a lens: for my particular needs.
I don’t think people should notice it’s this or that stock. And I don’t want them to. I just want them to be moved.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Born Romantic, to be released in February 2001, was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
lives.” After the success of This Year’s Love, Kane was keen to retain many of the same crew this time round, notably veteran French cine- matographer Robert Alazraki A.F.C.
feature in focus