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Michel Gondry and Ellen Kuras on set of Be Kind Rewind

The Oscars are just over an hour away, so here’s a quick post featuring some articles that appeared today.  First, cinematographer and director Ellen Kuras, who is a featured voice in Chapters 4 and 6 of Moving Images, wrote a piece about the art of cinematography in a discussion of the tricky art of collaboration and the difficulty of determining awards for everything that happens in the creation of movies.  Her work for many directors, including Michel Gondry (with brilliant photography for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind Rewind, among others), Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, and Jonathan Demme, marks her as one of the foremost pioneers in the relatively recent arrival of women into camera crews in Hollywood.  She also directed the acclaimed documentary The Betrayal (featured in Recording and Presenting Reality in Moving Images).  

Marion Dougherty and director George Roy Hill

Another piece in this series about people or crafts that can fall through the cracks in moviemaking awards is about the role of the casting director, written by Vickie Thomas.  In particular, it points out a story about the production process that can be quite enlightening: The unawarded, but highly respected and quite astonishing career of Marion Dougherty, whose work is featured in the documentary Casting By.  

And pretty soon we’ll see who tonight’s big winners will be…