Rodrigo Prieto

Rodrigo Prieto (born November 23, 1965 in Mexico City ) is a Mexican - American cameraman .

Life

Rodrigo Prieto was born in Mexico City in 1965. His paternal grandfather, former mayor of the Mexican capital and leader of the Cámara de Diputados in the Mexican Congress, was forced to leave the country with his family and emigrate to the United States due to political differences. Prieto's father, who grew up in Texas and Los Angeles , studied aerospace engineering in New York City and had returned to his Mexican homeland after marrying an American, a native of Deer Lodge , Montana . Fascinated by horror movies Rodrigo Prieto came at the age of ten years for the first time making films in contact when he three-minute along with his older brother Antonio 8 mm films in stop-motion process for a Halloween staged -party. His mother, who had studied commercial art at the Pratt Institute in New York , had the greatest influence on him at this time . Later Prieto began studying communication science and at the same time completed training at a small film school. After dropping out of his studies and closing the film school, Prieto worked as an assistant in the studio of photographer Nadine Markova in Mexico City, where he came into contact with lighting and arrangement. After working as an apprentice on the camerawork of Markova's low-budget production Welcome Maria , he began training as a cameraman at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC) in Mexico City. At CCC Prieto worked on 16 mm - short films by directors such as Daniel Gruener , Silvana Zuanetti and Eva López Sánchez and began first at the age of 22 years commercials to turn, including his first work on 35 mm film . Prieto's commercials were popular and he received other jobs, mainly in Mexico.

In 1991, while still at the film school, Rodrigo Prieto worked under Emmanuel Lubezki as the second cameraman on Alfonso Cuarón's romantic comedy Sólo con tu pareja . After filming, Prieto was hired by his work at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica and his television commercials for the action film Un Instante para morir by Cristian González, a low-budget production that was made within three weeks and met with little success was. His next feature film was the film school work Dama de noche by Eva López Sánchez, but in 1996 he succeeded after several feature films with Daniel Grüners Sobrenatural the breakthrough as a cameraman and he was for his work on the horror film with the most important Mexican Film Award, the Ariel Award , awarded . Another Ariel followed in 1999 for Carlos Carrera's romantic drama Un Embrujo (1998) and the Jury Prize at the Festival Internacional de Cine de Donostia-San Sebastián . However, Prieto did not achieve great international success as a cameraman until 2000 through Alejandro González Iñárritu's feature film debut Amores Perros . Hailed by the New York Times as the “first classic of the new decade” , the episode film received 35 international festival and critic awards and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award and the Oscar for best foreign language film . Prieto himself received the Golden Frog at the Camerimage International Film Festival in Poland , along with his third Ariel . The work on Amores Perros , in which he combined his unconventional camera work with the increased use of gloomy light, should be exemplary for his next work. After moving to Los Angeles in 2000, where he was engaged for Michael Cristofer's thriller Original Sin (2001) starring Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie , Curtis Hanson's drama 8 Mile and Spike Lee's crime film 25 Hours followed . In the same year, the Frida Kahlo biography Frida by Julie Taymor was created , for which he was nominated for the first time in 2002 for the prize of the American Society of Cinematographers . With Frida , Prieto orientated himself on the paintings of the Mexican painter and provided the colorful photos with a digital color correction afterwards, desaturated the pictures and distorted them with atmospheric brown and green tones.

In 2002 Rodrigo Prieto traveled to Cuba with the renowned director Oliver Stone , where the 99-minute documentary Comandante (2003), which is about Fidel Castro , was made. After working on Alejandro González Iñárritu's second feature film 21 Gramm with Sean Penn , Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro in the lead roles, Prieto worked again with Stone. The documentary Persona Non Grata , a film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , was made in the Middle East . After the television documentary Looking for Fidel in 2004, the cameraman also worked on Oliver Stone's historical film Alexander , a portrait of the eponymous Macedonian king and general Alexander the Great , which, however, had little success with audiences and critics. However, Prieto's camera work received recognition. After Alexander , Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain followed in 2005 . The drama, based on the short story of the same name by E. Annie Proulx , describes the relationship between two homosexual cowboys in the western United States from 1963 to 1983 and was to become the greatest success in Prieto's career to date. The work of the father of daughters, who can be seen in the film in a minor supporting role as a Mexican prostitute, compared critics with the pictures of the American photographer Ansel Adams (1902-1984) and he was awarded the prizes of the film critics associations of Chicago , Dallas -Fort Worth , Florida and Phoenix Awards . At the 2006 Academy Awards (official count 2005) Brokeback Mountain received eight nominations, but was surprisingly defeated by Paul Haggis ' episode film LA Crash and won three Academy Awards. Not among the winners was Rodrigo Prieto, who, as at the British Academy Film Awards 2006 and the award ceremony of the American Society of Cinematographers in the same year, had to admit defeat to the Australian Dion Beebe ( The Geisha ) .

2006 saw the third collaboration with Alejandro González Iñárritu, for whom he created the dark images for his film Babel . The episode film, starring Brad Pitt , Cate Blanchett and Gael García Bernal , among others, won an award at its premiere at the 59th Cannes International Film Festival and earned Prieto another BAFTA Award nomination. In 2007, the cameraman repeatedly worked with Ang Lee on the spy thriller Danger and Desire , set in Shanghai at the time of World War II . The film premiered at the 2007 Venice Film Festival , where Prieto was honored for his cinematography with the Osella for the best technical performance in the competition, while Danger and Desire was awarded the main prize, the Golden Lion . After Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Hugs (2009) and Kevin Macdonald's State of Play (both 2009), Prieto worked again in 2010 with Oliver Stone ( Wall Street: Money Doesn't Sleep ) and Alejandro González Iñárritu ( Biutiful ) .

Filmography (selection)

1988: Hoy estoy triste (short film)
1992: Objetos perdidos (short film)
1993: Dama de noche
1996: Sobrenatural
1998: Fibra óptica
1998: Un Embrujo
2000: Amores Perros
2001: Original Sin
2002: Frida
2002: 8 mile
2002: 25 hours (25th hour)
2003: Comandante (documentation)
2003: 21 grams (21 grams )
2003: Persona Non Grata
2004: Looking for Fidel (TV documentary)
2004: Alexander
2005: Brokeback Mountain
2006: Babel
2007: Danger and Desire ( 色, 戒 ; Sè, Jiè)
2009: Broken Hugs (Los abrazos rotos)
2009: State of Play - State of Play
2010: Wall Street : Money Never Sleeps (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps)
2010: Biutiful
2011: Water for Elephants (Water for Elephants)
2011: We Bought a Zoo (We Bought a Zoo)
2012: Argo
2013: The Wolf of Wall Street
2014: The Homesman
2016: Silence
2016: Passengers
2019: The Irishman

Awards

Oscar

2006 : Nominated in the Best Camera category for Brokeback Mountain
2017 : Nominated in the Best Camera category for Silence
2020 : nominated in the category Best Cinematography for The Irishman

British Academy Film Award

2006 : Nominated in the Best Camera category for Brokeback Mountain
2007 : Nominated in the Best Camera category for Babel

Premio Ariel

1996: Best camera for Sobrenatural
1999: Best Camera for Fibra óptica , nominated in the Best Camera category for Un Embrujo
2001: Best Cinematography for Amores Perros
2011: Best camera for Biutiful