CLAUDE PINOTEAU, FOR THE LOVE OF CINEMA

  VERSION FRANÇAISE

Claude Pinoteau died on 5 October 2012 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, aged 87 years. He is one of the greatest French filmmakers, and leaves behind him a filmography composed of about fifteen works that he created between the 1960s and 2000: four short films, eleven feature films and one documentary film, without count his participation in the writing of numerous films.

But his career in the 7th art began long before the 1960s, when, after having climbed up the career ladder one by one (messenger, propsman, assistant, stage manager, technical adviser, scriptwriter and even extra and a little bit of an actor) and before becoming a director himself, he worked as first assistant to some of the big names in cinema: Jean Cocteau, Max Ophüls, Jean-Pierre Melville, Henri Verneuil, Jean Giono, Gilles Grangier, René Clément, René Clair, or Claude Lelouch, or Abel Gance, without forgetting his brother, Jack Pinoteau.

Through all his films, Claude Pinoteau has the gift of « unearthing » and then revealing on screen promising » actors and actresses and thus contributes to some very beautiful artistic careers. Sophie Marceau, Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Huppert, Elizabeth Bourgine, Géraldine Pailhas, Béatrice Agenin, Brigitte Fossey, Vincent Lindon, Charles Berling, Vincent Perez and many others started under the leadership of Claude Pinoteau or have pursued successful careers thanks to him.