Of all cinemas illustrious martyr figures, none is more romantic than Jean Vigo, poet maudit of 30s French cinema, dead at 29 after a long struggle with tuberculosis, leaving a filmography that can be screened in just over three hours and which, during his lifetime, showed every sign of vanishing into oblivion. But the ethereal beauty and earthy anarchism that permeate his two masterpieces Zero de conduite 1933 and LAtalante 1934 are still enveloping audiences in their hypnotic atmosphere today and leaving them sure in the knowledge that Vigo was more than a filmmaker he was a moment in film history that will never be repeated.The son of noted militant anarchist Miguel Almereyda, who died in prison in suspicious circumstances in 1917, and Emily Clero, Vigo was born in an attic that was constantly swarming with cats like the barge LAtalante in his 1934 film. The ill health that plagued him throughout his short life was already evident in childhood. His fathers anarchism exerted a lasting influence on his artistic sensibility. Due to his fathers reputation, however, he grew up under an assumed name, Jean Sales, often staying with family friends and at boarding school. In 1922 he rejoined his mother in Paris, attending the Lycee Marceau in Chartres and subsequently the Sorbonne under his real name. In 1926 he met and later married Elisabeth Lydou Lozinska, the daughter of a Lodz manufacturer.Already entertaining cinematic ambitions, Vigo was briefly employed by the Franco Film studio as a camera assistant. A gift from his fatherinlaw allowed the destitute filmmaker to purchase a secondhand camera and begin work on what would become his first movie, the satirical film essay A propos de Nice 1930. It was around this time he met his close collaborator Boris Kaufman, a Russian cinematographer. The brother of both cameraman Mikhail Kaufman and director Dziga Vertov real name Denis Kaufman, whose masterpiece Man with a Movie Camera 1928 influenced A propos de Nice, Boris Kaufman later enjoyed a distinguished career in Hollywood, shooting On the Waterfront 1954 for Kazan and several of Lumets early films.

Address: RMIT University, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne VIC 3001, Australia
Website: http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/vigo.html