Cyril Collard

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Cyril Collard (born December 19, 1957 in Paris , † March 5, 1993 ibid) was a French screenwriter , director , actor , writer and musician . Collard died of the immunodeficiency disease AIDS just one year after completing his first feature film, Wilde Nights , at the age of 35 .

biography

Collard was born in Paris in 1957 to liberal parents. He received a Catholic education in Versailles before he attended the Ecole Centrale de Lille , the subjects Music and physics studied. In the early 1980s, however, he gave up studies to gain a foothold in the film business. Collard became an assistant director under the French director, screenwriter and actor Maurice Pialat and shot the drama Loulou with him in 1980 , in which Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu mock the prosperity of the French bourgeoisie and indulge in the social and sexual revolution of the late 1970s. After Collard directed six music videos and several TV films with Maurice Pialat, in 1981 he assisted René Allio in his film L'heure exquise , a documentary about Marseille in the 1920s. Two years later, Collard also acted in front of the camera for Maurice Pialat and played a supporting role in Auf das What wir liebe , in which the young Sandrine Bonnaire, as a seductive 15-year-old, has numerous love relationships with the opposite sex.

Cyril Collard made his directorial debut in 1982 with the 35-minute short film Grand huit , for which he had also written the script. Three years later he founded the music group Cyr, for which he tried his hand at songwriting. He published TV reports and video clips and wrote articles and scripts. In 1987 Collard made his second short film Alger la blanche , a study of love and violence, which was nominated for the César , the French equivalent of the Oscar , in addition to the Prize of the French Syndicate of Film Critics .

1986 Cyril Collard played a supporting role in Peter Kassovitz's TV drama Mariage blanc . After returning to Paris from filming in Morocco , the charismatic young director found out about his HIV infection. A year later, Collard dealt with the disease in his first autobiographical novel Condamné amour , in which the protagonist Sylvain dreams of distant Puerto Rico on a Sunday winter afternoon in Lille . In 1989 Collard published his second autobiographical novel Les nuits fauves . In it, the young promiscuous Jean is confronted with his HIV infection, the result of his constant forays into the Parisian homosexual milieu. The protagonist tries to cope with the disease, but withholds the test result from his new love, the passionate 17-year-old Laura, from whom he learns about his bisexuality , as well as the gay Samy, whom he secretly desires. With the novel, Cyril Collard treated the taboo subject far from any political correctness , he faced his bisexuality and the defiant, unrealistic idea of ​​his fate.

Collard was open about his bisexuality and was one of the first artists in France to publicly declare that he was HIV positive. After directing Taggers , a French TV film, Collard began to adapt his second novel for the big screen together with Jacques Fieschi in the early 1990s , but quickly realized that no French actor was ready to risk his career and the role of Jean to take over. In the film version of his novel, Collard not only directed and composed the score, but also played the lead role - a hedonistic and self-loving AIDS filmmaker with an insatiable sexual appetite who insisted on continuing his unusual lifestyle despite his illness, with tragic ones Consequences. His debut feature film, Wilde Nights , the sober, uncompromising approach to a taboo subject, enchanted and enraged the French film audience in 1992. The critics applauded his brave and unyielding, almost careless study, and Cyril Collard was the first filmmaker to be nominated for the three important categories of Best Picture , Best Director and Best First Work at the French Césars. In 1993, Wilde Nights was awarded four Césars under jury president Marcello Mastroianni , including the trophies for the best film of the year and the best first work. Tragically, Cyril Collard could not see the great success of his film; he had died three days before the award ceremony.

Cyril Collard's third novel L'ange sauvage and the volume of poetry L'animal were published posthumously in 1994 . In 1995 his screenplay Rai was filmed by director Thomas Gilou .

Works

  • 1987: Condamné amour
  • 1988: Les nuits fauves
  • 1994: L'ange sauvage
  • 1994: L'animal

Filmography

Director

actor

Screenwriter

Assistant director

Awards

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Collard, Cyril
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French director
DATE OF BIRTH December 19, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris , France
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1993
Place of death Paris , France