CHIVO

The A.S.C.
(The American Society of Cinematographers)
defines cinematography as:

A creative and interpretive process that culminates in the authorship of an original work of art rather than the simple recording of a physical event. Cinematography is not a subcategory of photography. Rather, photography is but one craft that the cinematographer uses in addition to other physical, organizational, managerial, interpretive and image-manipulating techniques to effect one coherent process.




" For me, the magic moment happened when I was looking through the viewfinder on a Super 8 camera and shooting the film."
-Emmanuel Lubezki

As if he knew all the secrets inside the light, Emmanuel Lubezki is the synonym of modern Cinematographer excellence. He has become a reference between his peers and to us all. Lubezki brings life to every frame of every film he has worked on. Chivo, as his friends call him, is a master of his craft. 

Born in 1964 in Mexico City,  as Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki Morgenstern, son of actor Muni Lubezki. He studied at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (C.U.E.C.  Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos)

"I was born and raised in Mexico City. My grandmother, my father's mother, was born in Russia. Her family escaped to China during the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. She lived in Shanghai for a while, but wanted a career as an actress in Hollywood, and convinced her family to move there. They had to stop in Mexico, because the quota restriction for immigrants in the U.S. was closed. She lived in Mexico City where she met and married my grandfather. […] I was in high school. All the people in one class spent a full year working together on the production of a documentary. We went to the state of Veracruz and made a documentary about workers in the sugarcane fields."

" I started out studying history at the University of Mexico. There was a still photography department at the Mexican School of Cinema at the university. I started shooting short films and abandoned studying history. There were maybe three kids at the school who wanted to be cinematographers. We shot most of the films for different directors. I met Alfonso Cuarón, Xavier Pérez Grobet, Rodrigo Prieto, Luis Estrada, who directed my first couple of movies, and other friends. At that time, it was practically impossible for a young person to find work on movies. The industry was very small and the unions were completely closed to new people. "

"There was a rule that only allowed seven cinematographers in the union, so you had to wait for somebody to die or retire before you became an operator, and then you waited for another cinematographer to die or retire. A group of maybe 10 friends decided that if we wanted to be professionals, we would have to make our own movies. We put all our money together and produced our first feature film. I think it was something like $7,000. I was one of the producers. "

"Guillermo Navarro let us use his Éclair camera for free. Our idea was to make a movie for the Hispanic speaking market in the United States. The picture was called 'El camino largo a Tijuana'. We were going to distribute it on VHS and use the money to make more films. We used that money to produce our second film, 'Bandidos'. That was the first film I shot. Luis Estrada was the director. We didn't make our money back, but 'Bandidos' was relatively successful. Afterwards, I started getting calls." […] 

What happened was that after I finished shooting a little movie called 'The Harvest', both 'Sólo con tu pareja/Love in the Time of Hysteria' and 'Como agua para chocolate/Like Water for Chocolate' were invited to screen at the Toronto Film Festival. "

"After that, agents started calling me. I didn't even know you needed an agent, and I could barely speak English, but I came to Los Angeles to meet some agents and started getting scripts. Jeanne Tripplehorn saw and liked 'Como agua para chocolate/Like Water for Chocolate'. She was going to perform in a little movie called 'Reality Bites' that was directed by Ben Stiller. She recommended me to him. At that point, my English wasn't good enough to understand the script or the humor, but I liked Ben and Jeanne, and he wanted me to do the movie. 

Around the time that I started shooting films in Los Angeles, the money from the government for producing movies in Mexico was drying up. I moved to San Francisco for 3½ years, but during that time, I only shot one commercial there. I spent a lot of days flying to and from Los Angeles. When an airline stewardess recognized me, I decided that it was time to move back to Los Angeles. I still shoot commercials in-between movies. I find that that's the best workshop to keep you from rusting, and for trying new equipment and experimenting.' 

-Emmanuel Lubezki 

[From interview by Bob Fisher on the KODAK OnFilm website.]

Lubezki has worked with many acclaimed directors, including Mike Nichols, David Fincher, Michael Mann, Joel and Ethan Coen, and frequent collaborators Terrence Malick, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Lubezki has been nominated for eight Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, winning three, for Gravity (2013), Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), and The Revenant (2015). He is the first cinematographer in history to win three Academy Awards in a row.

"Every time you start a movie is to explore with a director and if you can with the actors and with the other collaborators and try to figure out what's the best way to tell the specific story."

-Emmanuel Lubezki

"The problem with lightning is that it really affects the editing of the movie. If it’s really fast paced in one cut, and you go to a shot where the lightning doesn’t match, you start to feel this lack of freedom. It took us a while to learn how to keep it constant without obliterating the images with lightning. It looks really interesting when you’re shooting it, but you have to control yourself!”

– Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC

"The approach to shooting the movie( To the Wonder) is connected to the kind of movie he (writer-director Terrence Malick ) wants to make — the form and content are fundamentally connected. For example, when we talk about using natural light, it’s not because we don’t want to have a truck with lights, but because what we want to capture can only be captured accidentally as it happens in front of us."

– Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC

MEET JOE BLACK

CHILDREN OF MEN

THE LITTLE PRINCESS

SLEEPY HOLLOW




TREE OF LIFE

Push play if you wish 

to see examples in motion of what 

Lubezki does 
with camera, color, light and motion.

One of the reasons i joined instagram was to see his photographs on his account just amazing.

@chivexp

To me Lubezki is inspiration not only because he is mexican, but because talent has no country, no specific university or type of human. He is the reference to a very  specific and hard craft in one of the hardest mediums which i love, movies. I´ve seen his work in a lot of films and it literally drops my jaw every movie i see photographed by him. He is trully a master.

"…act like a documentary filmmaker and come onto the locations and capture these ideas we’ve been talking about."

– Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC