Bruno Dumont
{{Short description|French filmmaker}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2020}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Bruno Dumont
| image = Bruno Dumont at Berlinale 2024-1.jpg
| caption = Dumont in 2024
| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1958|3|14|df=yes}}
| birth_place = Bailleul, Nord, France
| occupation = {{hlist|Film director|screenwriter}}
| years_active =
}}
Bruno Dumont ({{IPA|fr|dymɔ̃|lang}}; born 14 March 1958) is a French film director and screenwriter. To date, he has directed twelve feature films, all of which border somewhere between realistic drama and the avant-garde.
His films have won several awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Two of Dumont's films have won the Grand Prix award: both L'Humanité (1999){{cite web |url=http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/5322/year/1999.html |title=Festival de Cannes: Humanité |access-date=2009-10-06|work=festival-cannes.com}}(1999) and Flandres (2006).{{cite web |url=http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/4359937/year/2006.html |title=Festival de Cannes: Flanders |access-date=2009-12-13|work=festival-cannes.com}}
Life and career
Dumont has a background of Greek and German (Western) philosophy, and of corporate video.{{cite web|url=http://www.mastersofcinema.org/reviews/dumont.htm |title=MoC - the Polarizing, Magnificent Cinema of Bruno Dumont |access-date=2006-10-03 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061003153333/http://www.mastersofcinema.org/reviews/dumont.htm |archive-date=3 October 2006}} His early films show the ugliness of extreme violence and provocative sexual behavior, and are usually classified as art films. Later films bring novel twists to other movie genres like comedy or musicals. Dumont has himself likened his films to visual arts, and he typically uses long takes, close-ups of people's bodies, and story lines involving extreme emotions. Dumont does not write traditional scripts for his films. Instead, he writes complete novels which are then the basis for his filmmaking.
Dumont is known to cast nonprofessional actors in his films. In a 2019 interview for the Criterion Channel, Dumont explained: "If I believed in the ideal, I'd hire a professional actor, and I'd tell them, 'Act like this because this is the truth. Since I don't believe in the ideal, I hire nonprofessional actors...because I believe that anyone is a holder of the truth."{{Cite web |last=Clubb |first=Issa |date=2019 |title=Bruno Dumont on Humanité |url=https://www.criterionchannel.com/videos/bruno-dumont |website=Criterion Channel}} He says that some of his favorite filmmakers are Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roberto Rossellini, and Abbas Kiarostami. He is frequently considered an artistic heir to Robert Bresson.
His often polarizing work has been connected to a recent French cinéma du corps/cinema of the body, encompassing contemporary films by Claire Denis, Marina de Van, Gaspar Noé, Diane Bertrand, and François Ozon, among others. According to Tim Palmer, this trajectory includes a focus on states of corporeality in and of themselves, independent of narrative exposition or character psychology.Palmer, Tim (2011). Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema, Wesleyan University Press, Middleton CT. {{ISBN|0-8195-6827-9}}. In a more pejorative vein, James Quandt has also talked of some of this group of filmmakers, as the so-called New French Extremity.Quandt, James, "Flesh & Blood: Sex and violence in recent French cinema", ArtForum, February 2004 [https://web.archive.org/web/20040810004736/http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_42/ai_113389507] Access date: 10 July 2008.
His 2011 film Hors Satan premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.{{cite web|url=http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/article/58041.html |title=Festival de Cannes: Official Selection |access-date=2011-04-16 |work=Cannes |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110515065818/http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/article/58041.html |archive-date=15 May 2011}}{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/apr/14/cannes-film-festival-2011-full-lineup |title=Cannes film festival 2011: The full lineup |access-date=2011-04-16|work=guardian.co.uk |location=London |date=14 April 2011}} His 2013 film Camille Claudel 1915 premiered in competition at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival.{{Cite web |url=http://www.berlinale.de/en/presse/pressemitteilungen/alle/Alle-Detail_16404.html |title=Berlinale Competition 2013: Another Nine Films Confirmed |access-date=2013-01-11 |work=berlinale |archive-date=10 April 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130410152613/http://www.berlinale.de/en/presse/pressemitteilungen/alle/Alle-Detail_16404.html |url-status=dead }}
Filmography
=Feature films=
= Television =
- P'tit Quinquin / Li'l Quinquin (2014)
=Short films=
- Paris (1993)
- P'tit Quinquin / Li'l Quinquin (1993)
- Marie et Freddy / Marie and Freddy (1994)
References
{{Reflist|30em}}
External links
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20110208064108/http://brunodumont.com/ Official site]
- {{IMDb name|0241622}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20060901064650/http://www.flandres-lefilm.com/ Flandres official site]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20061218180056/http://tadrart.com/fr/films/29palms/projet.html Twentynine Palms official site]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20061003153333/http://www.mastersofcinema.org/reviews/dumont.htm Masters of Cinema article]
{{Bruno Dumont}}
{{Authority control}}
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Category:European Film Awards winners (people)