Jean-Paul Janssen

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Jean Paul Janssen - Brazil 1970

Jean-Paul Janssen (born July 10, 1940 in Saint-Rémy-sur-Avre , Département Eure-et-Loir , †  February 21, 1986 in Paris ) was a French cameraman and documentary filmmaker . In France he was called the "Rembrandt of the camera". His film La vie au bout des doigts (Life at your fingertips) was nominated for a César in 1984.

Career

Jean-Paul Janssen in Peru 1970
Jean Paul Janssen and his wife Edda Sörensen

In the 1960s Janssen was a cameraman for French television, specializing in foreign reports in programs such as 5 colonnes à la une (five columns on the front page). During the Vietnam War he films for François Chalais, the most important reporter in France at the time . With him he managed a special scoop : they were able to take in a captured American pilot in Hanoi , the future Republican presidential candidate John McCain .

Janssen shot with Treize jours en France (Thirteen days in France) the film about the X. Winter Olympics 1968 directed by Claude Lelouch in Grenoble , in particular the scene of the fall of a racing driver. Janssen followed the helmet on its ball-like jumps towards the valley in close-ups.

He experienced his greatest disappointment when the film L'amour de la vie - Artur Rubinstein was awarded the Oscar for best documentary and François Reichenbach was honored for his "shoulder camera", although it was Janssen who shot these recordings practically all by himself and on top of that there was no "s" in his name in the credits.

He met the Norwegian journalist and painter Edda Sörensen while filming Downhill Racer (Schussfahrt) ( BAFTA Film Award ) with Robert Redford . The two married in June 1969 in Paris and together they produced Janssen's first documentary Narragansett , about the Trans-Pacific Regatta from Los Angeles to Tahiti on a 27-meter-long wooden yacht that was piloted by Alain Colas , to which Serge Gainsbourg later dedicated his song Manureva . During the crossing, the ship got caught in one of the notorious South Seas storms and almost sank.

After the film was broadcast, a reviewer wrote in Le Monde : "A poeme of the sea." Harry Valérien presented the film in 1971 on the program The Current Sports Studio .

In 1971 he directed his second documentary Pen Duick III (52 minutes) on the first cap to Rio race from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro on board the yacht Pen Duick of Eric Tabarly .

Janssen then concentrated his work on extreme climbing . He first signed a documentary trilogy about the climber Patrick Berhault  : Overdon (1980), OverIce (1981) and Oversand (1981) and then made the first film about the climber Patrick Edlinger "Opera verticale" in 1982 , in the final scene of which he shot Edlinger in a close-up follows how the barefoot climbs a steep wall over a precipice several hundred meters deep. During the editing, Janssen underlines the long scene with the aria “How fearful my steps wavered” from Bach's cantata Alone to you, Herr Jesu Christ (BWV 33). Above all, his second film about Edlinger La vie au bout des doigts developed into a true myth in the world of climbers: It not only helped extreme climbing to gain worldwide attention as a separate discipline in alpinism , but also Patrick Edlinger to a world career. With this film Janssen was nominated in 1984 for the César in the category Best Documentary Short Film.

Honors

After Janssen's untimely death in 1986, a video competition was founded in his honor at the international video festival “Marsiannes” in Saint-Marcellin, Isère, with a focus on adventure, discovery and sport. The winners received a “Janssen”, a unique work of art by the award-winning ceramist Jean Girel .

Contemporary statements

"He had everything to himself and everything suited him: the youth, the virility, the cameras, the sun and the rain, the clothes, the children and the women."

- François Chalais , famous television reporter

"His amazed eye snaps the object through the lens, transforms it, transposes it, turns it into a unique object, a living painting, a poem in colors."

- René Barjavel , French writer

"Since you finally packed your suitcase, dear Paulo, our heart leaps every time we watch a sunset."

- Pierre Bachelet , French singer

Filmography

  • 1968: Treize jours en France , directed by Claude Lelouch; Camera: Janssen
  • 1969: L'Amour de la vie - Artur Rubinstein , director: Gérard Patris; Camera: Janssen
  • 1970: Downhill Racer , directed by Michael Ritchie ; Camera u. a .: Janssen
  • 1970: Narragansett , camera and realization: Janssen
  • 1971: Pen Duick , camera and realization: Janssen
  • Raid Orion. Camera and realization: Janssen
  • Overdon. 1980. Camera: Janssen; documented person: Patrick Berhault
  • OverIce. 1981. Camera: Janssen; documented person: Patrick Berhault
  • Overseas. 1981. Camera: Janssen; documented person: Patrick Berhault
  • Opera verticale. 1982. Camera: Janssen; documented person: Patrick Edlinger
  • La vie au bout des doigts. 1982. Camera: Janssen; documented person: Patrick Edlinger
  • Special Escalade: voyage au bout de l'exploit. Jean-Paul Janssen, realist; Patrick Edlinger, participant. LCJ éditions et productions, Puteaux 1997. 1 video cassette (52 minutes) color, SECAM, VHS

Web links

Commons : Jean-Paul Janssen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See INA web archive , Institut national de l'audiovisuel .
  2. ↑ See INA web archive , Institut national de l'audiovisuel
  3. ↑ L'amour de la vie - Artur Rubinstein. Internet Movie Database , accessed May 22, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Downhill Racer. Internet Movie Database , accessed May 22, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Cap to Rio Regatta
  6. ↑ Nancy Midol: La demiurgy dans les sports et la danse. Consciences traditional, modern and postmodern. L'Harmattan, Paris 1996, ISBN 2-7384-3988-8 .
  7. ↑ Michel Raspaud: La mise en spectacle. In: Communications. No. 67, 1998, pp. 165-178, here: p. 173. ISSN  2102-5924
  8. ^ Jean-Paul Bozonnet: Les allumés de la grimpe. Images et langages de la génération des années 80 dans les média. In: Imaginaires de la haute montagne. Center alpin et rhodianien d'ethnologie. Grenoble 1987, pp. 135-148.
  9. ↑ Where is Edlinger? ( Memento of the original from January 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / d526948.u28.hostdone.com
  10. ↑ Nomination aux César 1984 dans la catégorie “Meilleur Court-métrage documentaire” , French, accessed on August 18, 2012.
  11. ↑ Marsiannes. Le Festival de l'Aventure Sportive et de la Découverte .
personal data
SURNAME Janssen, Jean-Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French cameraman and documentary filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Rémy-sur-Avre , Eure-et-Loir department
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 1986
Place of death Paris