François Catonné

François Catonné

Birth : 1944-09-03, Paris, France

Profile

François Catonné

Movies

Mélancolie ouvrière
Director of Photography
Long live the strike! Lucie Baud, one of the pioneers of the women's movement, went with creativity, fighting spirit and the power of singing against the weapons of male-dominated capitalist society in nineteenth-century France. The film, based on true events, describes the ambitious fight of a silk moth. She stood up for the rights of the female working class to end maltreatment and oppression once and for all. For the revolution in women's rights, she even put her family back and fought to the end for their beliefs.
Ablations
Director of Photography
Business trips are trapped by multiple temptations, such as a well stocked hotel bar. But this time salesman Pastor might have overdone it a bit. He wakes up in the middle of a field without any memory at all of how he got there. Even stranger is the ugly scar on his back. But what really drives him out of his mind is that the stitches from the operation are still fresh. Has he become the victim of on organ theft? Is he missing a kidney? Pastor starts to put everything in Question; being a father, a husband, a salesman... The only thing he wants is to find out what has happened to him and nothing and nobody will stop him.
The Clink of Ice
Director of Photography
An alcoholic writer is visited by an incarnation of his cancer.
Boxes
Director of Photography
Anna, 50 years old, moves into her new house. Rooms are full of boxes which contain a lot of things and plenty of memories. Anna has lived many lives and her past comes out of these boxes. Her parents surely, but also her children and their fathers, the living and the dead. In this breakneck period of her life, time is running faster and faster and Anna takes a run-up to face the past and try to go towards the future. And, maybe, to manage to still believe in love?
How Much Do You Love Me?
Director of Photography
After winning the lottery, François goes to a bar in Pigalle and offers one hundred thousand Euros per month to a prostitute named Daniela to live with him as his wife until his money runs out.
The Chops
Director of Photography
A father arrives at his son's house one evening. They begin talking about women, love, relationships and things turn awkward fast.
Actors
Director of Photography
Les Acteurs is the absurd story of Jean-Pierre Marielle desperately waiting for a cup of hot water, the story of a conspiracy against actors, the story of aging actors whose careers are slowly less active than they used to be, but a stunning tribute to French actors and their cinema.
Lulu Kreutz's Picnic
Director of Photography
Joseph and Olga Stegudith, who are elderly Parisians of Viennese Jewish extraction, come to luxurious Evian with Olga's brother Michel Mazelsky to hear their son, virtuoso cellist Jascha, perform. Jascha is lovesick over violinist Anna Ghirardi, with whom he had a brief affair a year ago, although she's happily married to naturalist Primo.
Fidèle
Director of Photography
A woman and a man recount their first sexual encounters to each other as they get out of bed and get dressed.
The Liars
Director of Photography
Zac is a well-respected French filmmaker who creates a major uproar when for no apparent reason he suddenly vanishes from his posh Parisian apartment leaving behind his lover Helene, a popular star. Marcus, his producer searches for eight months before locating Zac who has since become a homeless street bum in an expensive neighborhood. Marcus sends Zac to a posh hotel. He then sends Daisy, an ambitious secretary and aspiring screenwriter to learn what happened to the great director. It takes a lot of mutual verbal sparring and false turns (which are presented as creatively filmed vignettes that are done using a variety of techniques) from Zac before he finally tells her the truth. The two then decide to turn the story into a film. As they write, Daisy and Zac slowly fall in love. At the same time, Marcus has his hands full trying to avoid some tough Russian Mafiosos who want the money they invested back.
A French Woman
Cinematography
Wed just as war breaks out, Jeanne hardly gets to know her military husband, Louis, before the debacle of 1940. While waiting for his return from a POW camp, Jeanne journeys through countless affairs with Louis' comrades- in-arms. Hoping to forget these wartime betrayls, Louis takes his wife and the infant twins he didn't father to Berlin, where she falls for Matthais, a sensitive German industrialist. When the Indochinese war sends Louis to Vietnam, Matthais follows Jeanne back to France. A subsequent move to Damascus where Louis is posted as military attache, fails to break their bond.
Indochine
Director of Photography
Eliane Devries is the seemingly repressed owner of a prosperous rubber plantation in French Indochina, circa 1930. Her steely exterior, however, is only a mask intended to hide her torrid love affairs from upper class society
The Year of Awakening
Director of Photography
A sensitive, 14 year old orphan in a military school learns about life and love from his classmates and teachers.
The French Revolution
Director of Photography
A history of the French Revolution from the decision of the king to convene the Etats-Generaux in 1789 in order to deal with France's debt problem. The first part of the movie tells the story from 1789 until August 10, 1792 (when the King Louis XVI lost all his authority and was put in prison). The second part carries the story through the end of the terror in 1794, including the deaths by guillotine of Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, Danton, and Desmoulins.
Engagements of the Heart
Director of Photography
Alice is the widow of a Jewish surgeon who helps the former diplomat Jerome smuggle Jews out of Austria to save them from the Nazis. The duo recruits Charles, a shoe manufacturer whose uncle is a Nazi sympathizer in the Vichy government. Charles and Alice become lovers when they are picked up in Paris by Nazi soldiers on a curfew violation.
The Woman of My Life
Cinematography
Simon, a famous violinist, sinks into alcoholism. He finds support from his lover, who is also the manager of the orchestra in which he plays. But is she really helping him or is she exploiting his dependence on her? A man who has been through the same experience as Simon, offers to help him...
Terrorists in Retirement
Director of Photography
Not just another documentary on the French resistance movement, this film focuses on one particular group of underground fighters in France: those from Eastern Europe. Many were Jews and all had fled their native countries before the war broke out. They were among the most staunch and fearless enemies of fascism, as shown here in personal interviews and memoirs of war-time experiences. But the most famous of these immigrants were 23 who were rounded up among several hundred Parisians in 1943, tried for their activities, and executed -- all were immigrants under the leadership of the Armenian poet Manouchian. After their execution, Paris was papered with posters decrying these 23 martyrs as "foreign communists."
The Chicks
Director of Photography
Focuses primarily on three women and the (unseen) man who goes in and out of their lives. One member of this trio is a saleswoman with an open relationship that suddenly closes when she learns that her lover has been unfaithful. It seems that he has dallied with a book-dealer (her nemesis) who ultimately does not propose as much of a threat to the disillusioned saleswoman as a certain actress. Along with these three are several other females who interact with the main protagonists. Set up more in the manner of a stage play with changing scenes and acts.
For Those I Loved
Director of Photography
Polish Martin Gray recalls the Holocaust, New York prosperity, and losing his wife and family.
The Lady Banker
Camera Operator
The scene is the restless Paris of the interwar years where an attractive and ambitious woman successfully makes her way in a world previously reserved for men: that of high finance. Originating from a humble background, she quickly becomes popular with small savers by offering them outstanding interest rates. Extremely popular, she makes no secret of her taste for the good things in life and her homosexual affairs. They will cost her dearly...
West Indies
Director of Photography
A single-set color musical tracing the history of the West Indies through several centuries of French oppression.
Black Moon
Assistant Camera
There is a war in the world between the men and the women. A young girl tries to escape this reality and comes to a hidden place where a strange unicorn lives with a family: sister, brother, many children and an old woman that never leaves her bed but stays in contact with the world through her radio.
Lacombe, Lucien
Assistant Camera
In Louis Malle's lauded drama, Lucien Lacombe is a young man living in rural France during World War II who seeks to join the French Resistance. When he is rejected due to his youth, the resentful Lucien allies himself with the Nazis and joins the Gallic arm of their Gestapo. Lucien grows to enjoy the power that comes with his position, but his life is complicated when he falls for France Horn, a beautiful young Jewish woman.
Oh, Sun
Director of Photography
The film Soleil Ô, shot over four years with a very low budget, tells the story of a black immigrant who makes his way to Paris in search of “his Gaul ancestors”. This manifesto denounces a new form of slavery: The immigrants desperately seek work, a place to live, but find themselves face to face with indifference, rejection, humiliation…until the final call for uprising. “Soleil Ô” is the title of a West Indian song that tells of the pain of the black people from Dahomey (now Benin) who were taken to the Caribbean as slaves.
My Neighbours
Cinematography
African migrants in Paris talk about everyday life and racism on the labour and housing markets. The chanson from which the film takes its title sings of misery on people’s own doorstep. Hondo then switches to another mode to continue his analysis of social conditions: never has the post-colonial state of the world been summarised as succinctly as in the closing animated sequence.
Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay
Camera Operator
Two French girls get lost in the woods and accidentally enter the realm of sorceress Morgana Le Fay - who gives them the choice of either staying young forever as her lovers, or rot in a dungeon for eternity.