Claire Denis is a French film director and screenwriter.
37 Facts About Claire Denis
2.
Claire Denis won the Grand Prix, sharing the award with Lukas Dhont's film Close.
3.
Claire Denis's work has dealt with themes of colonial and post-colonial West Africa, as well as issues in modern France, and continues to influence European cinematic identity.
4.
Claire Denis was born in Paris, but raised in colonial French Africa, where her father was a civil servant, living in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, French Somaliland, and Senegal.
5.
Claire Denis's childhood spent living in West Africa with her parents and her younger sister colored her perspective on certain political issues.
6.
Claire Denis's upbringing was a strong influence on her films, which have dealt with colonialism and post-colonialism in Africa.
7.
Claire Denis's father moved with the family every two years because he wanted the children to learn about geography.
8.
At age 12, Claire Denis was diagnosed with polio and returned to France for treatment.
9.
Claire Denis lived in Sceaux, a suburb of Paris, for the rest of her teenage years.
10.
Claire Denis was educated for a life in Africa, and felt completely different from everyone around her.
11.
In 1969, Claire Denis married a photographer she met at the age of 15, after being hired as his assistant.
12.
In 1969 Claire Denis studied at IDHEC with her husband's encouragement.
13.
Claire Denis told her she needed to figure out what she wanted to do.
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Claire Denis graduated from the IDHEC and since 2002 has been a professor of film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.
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Claire Denis's feature film debut, Chocolat, is a semi-autobiographical meditation about a French woman reflecting on her childhood in Cameroon and her relationship with her family's African servant.
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Claire Denis's second film, Man No Run, is a documentary that follows a group of Cameroonian musicians, Les Tetes Brulees, touring France.
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Claire Denis has made many short films spanning a multitude of subjects, such as Le 15 Mai while studying at IDHEC, Keep It for Yourself and Voila l'enchainement.
18.
Claire Denis made the short film Contact for a light installation by Olafur Eliasson, who helped on the production design for High Life.
19.
Claire Denis has said that usually she "hold[s] no auditions" for her films.
20.
Staples has composed eight of her films and Claire Denis has said that he "has a rapport with the body, with flesh, with desire which is very close to mine".
21.
Claire Denis has said that by collaborating with so many artists she has learned to trust the filmmaking process.
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Claire Denis's collaborations go beyond her own films, as she has appeared in other directors' films, such as Laetitia Masson's En avoir and Tonie Marshall's Venus beaute.
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Claire Denis worked as an assistant director with Wim Wenders on Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire, and with Jim Jarmusch on Down by Law.
24.
In 2005, Claire Denis was a member of the jury at the 27th Moscow International Film Festival.
25.
In 2006, Claire Denis directed the video for the song "Incinerate" by Sonic Youth, from their album Rather Ripped.
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Also that year, Claire Denis was awarded the Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award at the Stockholm Film Festival.
27.
Claire Denis announced in 2015 that she was partnering with Zadie Smith for her English-language debut film, High Life.
28.
Claire Denis went on to work on Let the Sunshine In, which starred Juliette Binoche and was released in 2017.
29.
In 2018 Claire Denis completed and released High Life, her first English-language feature film, with Robert Pattinson cast as the lead.
30.
Claire Denis has been a member of multiple film festival boards, starting with the Venice Film Festival board in 2005.
31.
Claire Denis uses longer takes with a stationary camera and frames things in long shot, resulting in fewer close ups.
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Claire Denis combines history with personal history, giving her films an autobiographical element.
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Claire Denis has worked in many genres, from horror to romance and drama.
34.
Critics have noted recurring themes in her films, but Claire Denis says she has no coherent vision of her career "trajectory".
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Claire Denis has said that the body is "central" to her work, and often uses skin, blood, and other bodily fluids to symbolize characters' feelings and highlight relationships between them.
36.
Claire Denis has directed a wide variety of films that span most known genres in her 30-year career, but is known for bending a genre's rules, often not obeying traditional rules of pacing or cinematography for established genres like horror, science fiction, and fantasy, focusing instead on the characters, their psyches, emotions and relationships.
37.
Noelle Rouxel-Cubberly argues that titles are intended to force the viewer to rethink a film's imagery and that Claire Denis uses them to describe the raw reality of her films.