Page 7 - AFM 2001 DIARY_full done

DIARY
BERLIN • LOSANGELES • MILAN • FOYER • CANNES • TOKYO • LONDON PAGE5
PAINTINGPICTURES
PAINTINGPICTURES
ONAGIANTCANVAS
ONAGIANTCANVAS
ReflectionswithcameramanTonyPierce-Roberts
It was the smell of a camera rather than its technical prowess which first really turned him on. All right, to be strictly accurate, it was the heady whiff of German adhesive used to glue the linings of an Arriflex camera box that gave him such a buzz while growing up as a teenager in Central Africa. Even from this considerable retrospect, the memory
clearly still lingers on pleasurably for Birkenhead-born cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts, now 56, twice
Oscar-nominated and winner of two
BAFTA awards for best film cameraman.
One of Britain’s most versatile craftsmen, Pierce-Roberts has also made a powerful mark of late in Hollywood working on studio blockbusters like The Client, Disclosure and Jungle To Jungle (with comic superstar Tim Allen). But it’s probably his long collaboration with the Merchant-Ivory team on no fewer than six pictures, including Surviving Picasso, which really established his international reputation.
All of which was still a long way off when as an 11-year-old he emi- grated with his parents to Rhodesia where his father worked on the rail- ways and mother was a journalist. After he left school he joined the Central African Film Unit, essentially a Government-organisation which, among various tasks, used to service visiting film crews.
When Pierce-Roberts wasn’t sniffing the equipment containers, he graduated from gofer to trainee film cameraman and finally even got to shoot some material. At 21 he decided to return to Britain confident that he would get a job right away at the BBC because of all those contacts he’d made. In fact he had missed the boat and actually had to wait a while before getting, first, a holiday relief job then, thankfully, a perma- nent slot at the Corporation.
continued on page 9
Photos main: Anthony Hopkins as the old master in Surviving Picasso
above: Tony Pierce-Roberts; opposite page from left: Tim Allen (right) and Sam Huntingdon inJungle2Jungle; NataschaMcElhoneasFrancoiseGilotinSurvivingPicasso;Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in The Remains of The Day (BFI Stills)