Antoine Bonfanti
Birth : 1923-10-26, Ajaccio, Corsica, France
Death : 2006-03-04
History
Antoine Bonfanti (23 October 1923 - 4 March 2006) was a French sound engineer and a professor at cinema schools and institutes in France and other countries. He taught regularly at INSAS in Brussels and EICTV in Cuba, and occasionally at Fémis and ENSLL.
He was born 26 October 1923 in Ajaccio, Corsica, and died 4 March 2006 in Montpellier, France.
He began learning his profession as a trainee boom-operator on the film La Belle et la Bête by Jean Cocteau. He is considered as being one of the pioneers of direct-sound in film-making on location: “the school of direct-sound is French - said the sound-engineer Jean-Pierre Ruh- it began with Antoine Bonfanti”.
He is characterised by his collaborations with directors as Bernardo Bertolucci, André Delvaux, Amos Gitaï, Jean Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Chris Marker, Gérard Oury, Alain Resnais, René Vautier, and Paul Vecchiali.
His primary occupation is the authenticity of sound: above all he likes building the whole universe of sound of one film, through every stage from filming to sound-mixing (that means the live-sounds, the ambiances in location and after the sound-effects, the dubbing and the mixing in auditorium). In this pattern, he had 120 films of which 80 feature films. Otherwise, his filmography includes about 420 titles of long and short Films of fiction or documentary; and within this number, some can be still missing because - as involved in cinema as in politics - Antoine did lots of "for free" that, may be, haven't been listed.
Member of the Résistance and, after, volunteer soldier in the war-years 1943-1945; militant, communist by spirit, vigilante, he is part of SLON collective - which later becomes ISKRA - and of the Medvedkine-groups.
He shared his sound-artist's talent and he has trained several generations of sound-engineers in many countries (Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Morocco, Mozambique, Peru, Portugal, Tunisia, Venezuela), where to make of the cinema is a matter of fight.
The film "Antoine Bonfanti - Traces sonores d’une écoute engagée" by Suzanne Durand, reconstitutes a professional path of more than 50 years which demonstrate a commitment going far-beyond the simple trade and his collaboration with a lot of film-makers; it is also an original approach of the sound's practical.
He recounts it himself also, interviewed by Noël Simsolo in a transmission on France-Culture, called "Mémoire du siècle, Antoine Bonfanti" on 20 August 1997, and broadcast during "Les Nuits de France-Culture" at midnight of 25 January 2016.
Antoine, nicknamed "Nono" by his Corsican family, "Toni" by his war comrades, "Bonbon" within the world of cinema, was born in Ajaccio in 1923. The family leaves again for Africa in 1926, having already spent some years in Conakry in "République de Guinée", (formerly "Guinée française"). His father is "receveur principal des postes" in Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina-Faso (formerly "Haute-Volta"). Antoine spends some of his youth there but, when his eldest brother must go to high-school, the family returns to Corsica, before his father be appointed "percepteur" (tax-collector) at Saint-Rambert d’Alban, and after at Touquet-Paris-Plage. ...
Source: Article "Antoine Bonfanti" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Sound
A theater actress leaves her show to retire with her sick son to her childhood city.
Sound Designer
An impossible love. Two young people who love each other. Vera and João can’t find in this life the space, time, or identity to resolve their love story.
To attain knowledge, man and woman had to be willing to give up their innocence," says Boris Lehman. Life Lesson is a poetic and philosophic reflection on the theme of paradise lost. Some fifty persons illustrate the planet's convulsions and the world's vacillations. Trying to communicate, to commune with the invisible, they cry out, sing out, give out messages, each in their own way, in their own state of solitude. These are like multiple echoes that resemble waves in the water or stars in the sky. " Behind these images and sounds that have been stifled by today's society, Lehman hunts for noises, cries, songs, messages that go astray. He says that if we look at the invisible we may hear the words. He invites us to look beyond the appearances of social life and to vibrate in tune with life's polyphony that is all around us."
Sound Mixer
To attain knowledge, man and woman had to be willing to give up their innocence," says Boris Lehman. Life Lesson is a poetic and philosophic reflection on the theme of paradise lost. Some fifty persons illustrate the planet's convulsions and the world's vacillations. Trying to communicate, to commune with the invisible, they cry out, sing out, give out messages, each in their own way, in their own state of solitude. These are like multiple echoes that resemble waves in the water or stars in the sky. " Behind these images and sounds that have been stifled by today's society, Lehman hunts for noises, cries, songs, messages that go astray. He says that if we look at the invisible we may hear the words. He invites us to look beyond the appearances of social life and to vibrate in tune with life's polyphony that is all around us."
Sound Editor
Fernanda, António and Quim are travelling by train to a provincial Portuguese industrial city. Fernanda, a teacher, agrees to replace a pregnant colleague. António is returning to the home he was forced to flee long ago, accused of setting fire to the Duarte’s factory. At the station he bumps into Mariana who is in love of him. António is not welcome and is violently attacked by a group connected to Duarte ...
Sound Mixer
From the construction of a sculpture "life size" in the earth, the director Boris Lehman imagines a story that staged a sculptor (Paulus Brun) struggling with an impossible order. The man of land is "golemise", takes life in the countryside, and ends up dying on an opera stage.
Sound Mixer
Abel, 47 years old, two wars - in the colonies and France, emigration - several scars from many battles lost, returns in a jump to Portugal, to his lost village in the northern interior, near the border, from where one day he'd be gone, also from a jump. A letter, from his brother Peter, warned him that everything changed. Even Teresa. Abel catches sight of his childhood in the village hills, the old tribe. From a distance everything seams to be in the same placesa, the old dog is all that remains of the past. In the village the Act of Passion will be performed and Teresa is one of the participants. Abel takes the old gestures and prepares his plan: eliminate one by one Teresa's suitors, to consummate during the act of the Passion, her death ...
Sound
Abel, 47 years old, two wars - in the colonies and France, emigration - several scars from many battles lost, returns in a jump to Portugal, to his lost village in the northern interior, near the border, from where one day he'd be gone, also from a jump. A letter, from his brother Peter, warned him that everything changed. Even Teresa. Abel catches sight of his childhood in the village hills, the old tribe. From a distance everything seams to be in the same placesa, the old dog is all that remains of the past. In the village the Act of Passion will be performed and Teresa is one of the participants. Abel takes the old gestures and prepares his plan: eliminate one by one Teresa's suitors, to consummate during the act of the Passion, her death ...
Sound Mixer
A story about character created by Reinaldo Ferreira (1897-1935), action reporter, mystery novelist and emotion journalist.
Sound Mixer
From pond to plate, we are shown the journey and destiny of one carp among many. This particular carp will be eaten stuffed during a family meal. Carp stuffed (in the Polish fashion), also called in yiddish (Gefilte Fish) is a traditional dish eaten by Ashkenazi Jews. It is cooked, sweetened and served as a cold dish at the start of the meal. The head is reserved for the head of the family. The film, set in Brussels, on the day of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), aims to show the culinary preparation together with the accompanying prayers and ritual. It focuses particularly on the sacrifice of the fish and on the issue of mass extermination.
Sound mixer
An indigenous tradition in the highlands of Peru where three key players take part: a wild condor, a raging bull and brave young men.
Sound Designer
This quickly-filmed avant-garde farce by prolific director Raul Ruiz features an insomniac (Michel Lonsdale) whose main preoccupation is surreptitiously watching private matters -- he is a voyeur. He and an equally disreputable acquaintance rape a woman alongside the Seine, a crime made all the worse because she is pregnant. The rest of this slow-paced film deals with the consequences of that action.
Mixing Engineer
The cowboy Lucky Luke tracks the Dalton brothers who escaped from prison and are seeking refuge in Canada.
Sound Mixer
Robert Dumortier and his son "La Puce" live on a barge moored to an island of the Seine and Robert dreams of cruising remote and exotic seas.
Sound Mixer
Ana combines straight-on documentary technique with unexpected flights of dreamlike surrealism. The title character, played by Ana Maria Martins Guerra, is a young Portuguese girl who lives with her grandmother. Through their relationship, we are witness to the Cycle of Life: Grandmother takes care of granddaughter until granddaughter is obliged to do same for grandmother. The scenes between the two protagonists are counterpointed with impressionistic camera compositions based upon famous religious paintings. Ana was impressive enough to earn an American art-house release, a rarity for independently produced Portuguese films.
Sound
In Bissau, the carnival, in its early days, was the cultural expression of the Portuguese settlers. Since the independence in 1974, it's a celebration for all the people.
Sound Mixer
A man exiled in Paris makes various trips to Portugal after the Carnation Revolution. Each trip is represented by a woman.
Sound
Ginette is at phone with the famous Rachah Rangers, who hosts a daily radio program. She talks about her break with Richard, her various relationship problems, her desires, fears and reproaches. Her friend, Simone Barbes, advised her to live, urgently, a new relationship ...
Sound Re-Recording Mixer
Simone and Martine are usherettes in a porno cinema in Montparnasse. Installed in the hall, they greet regulars, put men in their place, chat and pass the time. At midnight Simone departs to a lesbian nightclub.
Sound
After getting painfully separated from the woman he loves, Julien leaves his apartment. He goes in search of his old friends but no one is to be found and the city is silent.
Sound
A single-set color musical tracing the history of the West Indies through several centuries of French oppression.
Sound
Five romantic characters share their lives in a vast castle. Each in his own way is looking for an absolute: J. wanders in the graveyard, B. hacks, C. causes love adventures, A. walks the forest on his horse, and F. repeats in a rock band . A. and J. nourish an idyll that leads them on an "initiatory" journey. Different states of mind pass through them, a sweet mixture that will make them rediscover the world of childhood and haunted castles ... Sonorized with the voice of Antonin Artaud, shot with a very contrasting photographic process, Le rouge de chine refers to the origins of cinematograph.
Sound
The fortunes of a small theatrical company based in the Paris suburbs.
Sound
Pierre Lentier murders an 8-year-old in horrendous circumstances. This 30-something solitary factory worker who lives on the edge of society is sentenced to death. A damning indictment of the death penalty and the manipulative behaviour of the media.
Sound Director
Sound Mixer
Documentary filmed over a period of four months, from 25 December 1975 to 5 March 1976, in the area of the former Spanish Sahara claimed by the people who lived there, the Saharawis, a people now mobilised and in arms (the Polisario Front) against Morocco and Mauritania, two states that have signed an agreement to share the territory.
Sound Editor
Hamdias, a producer who's set out to break new boundaries, plans to finance a film about torture. According to him, torture, the clash of two or more people, is not only what substantiates basic human relationships but also love and politics. Unfortunately Hamdias dies in a freak accident and his project is grounded. After some time, Galai (Olga Karlatos), who should have been the main actress of Hamdias movie, sets out to complete the controversial project. As soon as filming starts again, the thin line that separates reality from a nightmarish obsession begins slowly to blur.
Director
Guerre du peuple en Angola focuses on the situation in Angola in June 1975, when the declaration of independence sparks the start of a civil war. The filmmakers, who went there to train young Angolan filmmakers, bring back this film, unequivocally presenting the war as the struggle of the people and their movement against imperialism and its allies. In the north, in the forests, villagers have joined the armed resistance and support the MPLA.
Sound Mixer
An actor is placed in dangerous situations and his fear will be broadcast to the television audience. The audience's emotions will determine whether he is sent into the future or the past.
Other
A filmed essay about the painter Bouts.
Sound Recordist
An intimate portrait of the small shops and shopkeepers of the Rue Daguerre in Paris, a picturesque street that has been the filmmaker’s home for more than 50 years.
Sound Mixer
India, 1937. Anne-Marie Stretter is the wife of the French ambassador and leads a solitary yet privileged life in Calcutta. The tedium of her existence is relieved by numerous illicit love affairs with government officials, young men who find her an object of desire and fascination. The Vice Consul is driven insane by his love for her and, expelled from the ambassador’s palace, cries like a sick animal. Life continues for Anne-Marie Stretter, the same tedious existence…
Sound
Two women work as entertainers and prostitutes to raise enough money for their dream home.
Sound
In this gentle comedy, a disaffected group of young people bungle their first hold-up when the old lady they choose to rob turns out to be even poorer than they are. Not only that, but her husband has died, and she needs to get his body back to his hometown for burial and she is getting no help from the state. The would-be robbers good-naturedly agree to help her, and have a series of odd adventures involving the old lady, the corpse, and themselves. Eventually, the old lady dies as well, and they are really in a pickle.
Sound Mixer
The winner of the Miss World Virginity contest marries, escapes from her masochistic husband and ends up involved in a world of debauchery.
Sound
This rambling political melodrama tells the story of a French Breton who learns about colonialism while teaching native students in France's colonies of Tunisia and Algeria and returns to his native Brittany to see that the same conditions prevail there.
Sound
A kaleidoscope of images from history populate this skillfully animated French feature. The story concerns a history professor whose ideas about human history cause him distress. Amid a flurry of newsreel-type images, Joan of Arc's trial is shown. Another theme which emerges is of two ages (in the far past and far future) in which naked humans fight one another with animalistic aggression.
Sound
A strike at a French sausage factory contributes to the estrangement of a married filmmaker and his reporter wife.
Sound
A composition of symbolic, surreal and almost mystic images.
Sound
Don Sallust is the minister of the King of Spain. Being disingenuous, hypocritical, greedy and collecting the taxes for himself, he is hated by the people he oppresses. Accused by The Queen, a beautiful princess Bavarian, of having an illegitimate child to one of her maids of honor, he was stripped of his duties and ordered to retire to a monastery.
Sound Mixer
Julien, a renowned geologist, lives with his wife Isabelle and their two children in a country house. But his sullen, uncompromising attitude leaves tensions high. The arrival of Carl-Stephane, a young German student, brings a breath of fresh air and lightness to the household.
Music
This bitter and ironic satire illustrates the universal problems with youth and their revolt against the bourgeois establishment. The man becomes a symbolic victim of what he is protesting and resigns himself to a gloomy future with bleak prospects for humankind. This directorial debut for Jean Pierre Lajournade was well received at the 1970 Mannheim Film Festival.
Sound
This bitter and ironic satire illustrates the universal problems with youth and their revolt against the bourgeois establishment. The man becomes a symbolic victim of what he is protesting and resigns himself to a gloomy future with bleak prospects for humankind. This directorial debut for Jean Pierre Lajournade was well received at the 1970 Mannheim Film Festival.
Sound
Mr. Freedom, a bellowing good-ol'-boy superhero decked out in copious football padding, jets to France to cut off a Commie invasion from Switzerland. A destructive, arrogant patriot in tight pants, Freedom joins forces with Marie Madeleine to combat lefty freethinkers, as well as the insidious evildoers Moujik Man and inflatable Red China Man, culminating in a star-spangled showdown.
Assistant Director
Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all across Algiers. Klein follows the preparations, the rehearsals, the concerts… He blends images of interviews made to writers and advocates of the freedom movements with stock images, thus allowing him to touch on such matters as colonialism, neocolonialism, colonial exploitation, the struggles and battles of the revolutionary movements for Independence.
Sound
Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all across Algiers. Klein follows the preparations, the rehearsals, the concerts… He blends images of interviews made to writers and advocates of the freedom movements with stock images, thus allowing him to touch on such matters as colonialism, neocolonialism, colonial exploitation, the struggles and battles of the revolutionary movements for Independence.
Sound
The Belgian linguistics professor Matthias is going through a difficult period in relations with his girlfriend Anne. She is French, he is Belgian, and, oddly enough for an enlightened Europe and a doubly enlightened university environment, this small difference is a shadow on the couple’s personal life. One day, during a train ride, Anne disappears and Mathias goes looking for her in an unknown city.
Director
SOUND DOCUMENTARY On April 27, 1968, workers from the Rhodiaceta factory in Besançon gathered at the village hall of Palente-les-Orchamps to attend the screening of the film À bientôt j'espoir by Mario Marret and Chris Marker. This documentary sound reproduces the critical debate that follows. In June 1969, at the end of the Wrestling Class , Pol Cèbe, the head of the Cultural Center of Palente-les-Orchamps, brings to the sound document a conclusion in the form of a report. Echoing an intense debate after the screening of To Soon I Hope , the movie The Hinge of Medvedkine Groups captures very well those moments when workers express their dissatisfaction with the way they were portrayed.
Sound Engineer
Rocky Road to Dublin is a 1968 documentary film by Irish-born journalist Peter Lennon and French cinematographer Raoul Coutard, examining the contemporary state of the Republic of Ireland, posing the question, “what do you do with your revolution once you’ve got it?” It argues that Ireland was dominated by cultural isolationism, Gaelic and clerical traditionalism at the time of its making.
Sound
Recovering from an attempted suicide, a man is selected to participate in a time travel experiment that has only been tested on mice. A malfunction in the experiment causes the man to experience moments from his past in a random order.
Sound Mixer
A mysterious violent man breaks into a rich couples apartment and holding his wife hostage. The threatening and dangerous situation devolve into an erotic game.
Sound
Two cartoonists meet a playboy who lives out the fantasies created in their cartoons. He hires them to create a new comic strip. As they work on the new strip, the playboy begins to live it out. Unfortunately, the new strip deals with murder.
Sound
As the city of Paris and the French people grow in consumer culture, a housewife living in a high-rise apartment with her husband and two children takes to prostitution to help pay the bills.
Sound
During World War II, two French civilians and a downed British Bomber Crew set out from Paris to cross the demarcation line between Nazi-occupied Northern France and the South. From there they will be able to escape to England. First, they must avoid German troops - and the consequences of their own blunders.
Sound Recordist
In this excoriating satire of the fashion industry, Polly Maggoo is a 20-year-old Brooklyn-born fashion model in Paris, on the runway at the big shows where magazine editor Ms. Maxwell is the reigning opinion maker. The ridiculous passes for sublime. Polly becomes the subject of an episode of a vapid TV news documentary series called "Qui êtes-vous?" and is pursued by the filmmaker and by the prince of Borodine, a small country in the Soviet bloc.
Sound
Govert Miereveld is a lawyer from a small Flemish town who also teaches in a school for girls. He harbors a secret love for one of his young students, Fran, whom he loses touch with after her graduation. Some time later, Miereveld has to attend an autopsy, and the shock of the experience deeply affects his mental balance. He finds out - or he believes so - that Fran has become a popular singer. He arranges to meet her to finally reveal his feelings. An ambiguous but perhaps tragic denouement follows which might be a figment of the protagonist's disturbed mind.
Sound
Diego is one of the chiefs of the Spanish Communist Party. On his way from Madrid to Paris, he is arrested at the border for an ID check but manages to get free. When he arrives in Paris, he starts searching for one of his comrade to prevent him from going to Madrid where he could be arrested.
Sound Mixer
Daniel needs some money to buy a duffle coat that is in fashion, so he agrees to work for a photographer by dressing up as Santa Claus. He discovers that it is much easier to meet girls when he is in his costume.
Sound Engineer
A millionaire realizes he really wants to live after he has hired an assassin to kill him.
Sound
Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.
Sound Engineer
In this Frenco-Italian gangster parody, a shop keeper on his way to an Italian holiday suffers a crash which totals his car. The culprit can only compensate his ruined trip by driving an American friends car from Napels to Bordeaux, but as it happens to be filled with such contraband as stolen money, jewelry and drugs, the involuntary and unwitting companions in crime soon attract all but recreational attention from the "milieu".
Sound Assistant
A young husband and father, perfectly content with his life, falls in love with another woman.
Sound
In an exploration of love and adultery, a woman is conflicted between her husband, her lover and herself.
Sound
Cinephile slackers Franz and Arthur spend their days mimicking the antiheroes of Hollywood noirs and Westerns while pursuing the lovely Odile. The misfit trio upends convention at every turn, be it through choreographed dances in cafés or frolicsome romps through the Louvre. Eventually, their romantic view of outlaws pushes them to plan their own heist, but their inexperience may send them out in a blaze of glory -- which could be just what they want.
Sound Designer
A small-time con man on the run from the gangster-husband of his girlfriend hides out in a strange, brooding mansion run by two mysterious women, where he finds himself trapped in deception between the two women.
Sound
In the seaside town of Boulogne, no one seems to be able to cope with their past, least of all Hélène, an antique furniture saleswoman, her stepson Bernard, and her former lover Alphonse.
Sound Engineer
In 1962, in the small town of Marvejols, young technicians from the RTF are trained to what can and should be direct cinema. “Liberate the camera, be able to throw it into the human space, into life.”
Sound
Candid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and inarticulable notion that evokes more basic and fundamentally egalitarian ideals of self-betterment, prosperity, tolerance, economic opportunity, and freedom.
Sound Recordist
A beautiful dancer has two admirers -- one is a young worker whom she has only met by accident, and the other is an unscrupulous businessman. The worker had been training as a Buddhist monk and as his interest in the dancer and the businessman's pursuit of the woman develop, the dancer and the former monk end up at the archaeological site of Angkor.
Sound Designer
A man is sent back and forth and in and out of time in an experiment that attempts to unravel the fate and the solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world during the aftermath of WW3. The experiment results in him getting caught up in a perpetual reminiscence of past events that are recreated on an airport’s viewing pier.
Sound Engineer
The surrealist painter René Magritte questions the objective reality and emphasizes the arbitrariness of the relationship between an object, its image and its name: the evocation of mystery consists of images of familiar things gathered or transformed in such a way that they no longer conform to our ideas, whether naive or wise.
Mix Technician
Sound
