Almendros, Néstor

(1930-1992)

   Néstor Almendros was born in Barcelona, but migrated to Cuba in 1948 to meet his exiled father. He studied film in New York and Rome, and came back to the Caribbean island in 1959, shortly after Fidel Castro entered Havana. He then became an early supporter of the Cuban revolution, and in 1960, shot several documentaries, including Gente en la playa, that ran into trouble with the Castro regime. Soon his enthusiasm for the Revolution waned, the situation became increasingly difficult for him, and Almendros returned briefly to Barcelona before settling down in Paris in 1964. In the Catalan capital, he became friends with Spanish intellectuals of the period like Jaime Gil de Biedma and Terenci Moix, but also had difficulties as a political dissenter at a time when international left-wing artists in Europe had expressed support for Castro's policies.

   Almendros was called by Eric Rohmer, and became the latter's favorite cinematographer in the late 1960s: his training in documentaries was important in creating the apparently artless images required by the director. With Rohmer, he did La collectionneuse (The Collector, 1967), Ma nuit chez Maud (My Night with Maud, 1969), and Le genou de Claire (Claire's Knee, 1970) among others. At the same time, he started a creative collaboration with François Truffaut in a series of films including L'enfant sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970) and Les deux anglaises et le continent (Two English Girls and the Continent, 1971). By the mid-1970s, he had built an international reputation, but in spite of his personal impact on Escuela de Barcelona filmmakers, he did not return to mainstream Spanish cinema. Still, he assisted Vicente Aranda with the cinematography of Cambio de Sexo (1977). For the rest of the decade, he alternated between France (in particular, he continued to work with Rohmer and Truffaut) and Hollywood.

   Almendros' most influential work was for Hollywood maverick Terrence Malick: he experimented with atmospheric lighting and pastoral style in Days of Heaven (1978), shooting with very little natural light at dawn and dusk, and received an Oscar for his effort in conveying serene, open spaces that were more than just background for the Depressionera drama. Other famous films of the period were The Blue Lagoon (Randal Kleiser, 1980) and Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979); the latter the beginning of a substantial collaboration with Robert Benton that extended over three more films. In a more political vein, he worked with Orlando Jiménez Leal on Conducta Impropia (Improper Conduct, 1984), a film in which different testimonies described the injustices and cruelties of the Castro regime. He died of complications from AIDS.