The last time you worked with Sam Mendes, it was for 1917, which had a lot of logistical technicalities and planning behind it. An absolutely truthful account of what would happen if a bomb landed on London. The power of movies! Even if you watch the film now, it’s got a chilling reality to it. They fainted because it was so harrowing. But I particularly remember it because most of the people that went to this film society were old people who just went to the films because they had nothing else to do, and there were two elderly ladies in the front row who just collapsed. It’s basically about a nuclear attack on London, and it was so striking as a brilliant piece of filmmaking. That was a film that was only released to film clubs for a week or two and a couple of film festivals, and then it was banned by the BBC for 25 years. I remember seeing Peter Watkins’ The War Game. I would go to this film society and they had a little 16mm projector set up with a little freestanding fold-up screen, and they would show Alphaville and Last Year in Marienbad. In the winter, there’s not much to do in a seaside town, especially in Torquay. You had so many choices.ĭo you recall any particularly fond viewing experiences? And then there were the mainstream cinemas that showed Sound of Music, which I remember seeing on my first date. We had a little film club for a while that showed all sorts of films. There was one in Torquay that generally showed European arthouse films. There were quite a few, it depends on the show. It’s sad! And now I think there’s only two, they’ve all gone.ĭid you have a cinema you went to a lot growing up? But even then, I’d go and see a movie in the winter, there would be about four or five people. I remember in Torquay there were five cinemas within walking distance from where I was growing up. ![]() The film made me think about the state of independent cinemas, especially the local cinema, Belmont Filmhouse, which was recently shut down. I’m from Aberdeen and the whole coast has changed so much in the past 20 years. Some of the Georgian architecture and seaside architecture is being destroyed so I am quite sad about that. I love seaside towns, and I think a lot of them been ruined recently by modern development where it wasn’t necessary. But I did still go back to Torquay a lot and so I remember the period very well. I left Torquay by then, I was living in London and I was still shooting documentaries and segueing into shooting feature films. LWLies: What did you like about Empire of Light the first time you read the script?ĭeakins: It created a feeling of the time – the early 80s – that I remember. Nevertheless, finding (or rather, building) the perfect cinema was just as much of a challenge. ![]() Working once again with five-time collaborator Sam Mendes, Empire of Light sees Deakins pare back on the ambitious single-take bravado behind his Oscar-winning work for 2019’s World War Two drama, 1917, by moving from a muddy battlefield to a homely coastal cinema that conjures as much nostalgia as the movies that light up its screens. Accumulating an enviable list of directorial collaborators in a career spanning four decades (and counting), the pioneering, Torquay-born cinematographer is responsible for some of the most visually stunning frames in films by the Coen brothers, Denis Villeneuve and Martin Scorsese. ![]() Roger Deakins is a film industry titan who needs no introduction. The veteran cinematographer on his explosive formative cinema experiences and shooting Sam Mendes’s moving drama, Empire of Light. Roger Deakins: ‘With film, I used to be the first person to see a performance’
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