THE CINEMATOGRAPHER HAS MADE EIGHT FEATURES WITH DE PALMA; SCHRADER TO BE HONORED AT VENICE
![https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/stephenburum1.jpg](https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/stephenburum1.jpg)
Variety and The Hollywood Reporter both reported late last night/early this morning that Stephen H. Burum will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's 30th anniversary EnergaCamerimage festival, which focuses on films and cinematography and runs Nov. 12-19 in Torun, Poland. Variety's article by Peter Caranicas mentions that "Burum will be on hand at Camerimage, where some of his films will be screened." Caranicas also mentions a fun film that Burum shot that I like very much: Ken Kwapis’ and Marisa Silver’s He Said, She Said (1991). In fact, I believe the "cheesecake" scene that Burum shot for Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way two years later has some roots in a scene from He Said, She Said.
In any case, here's an excerpt from the Hollywood Reporter article by Carolyn Giardina:
The California native attended at the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television and gained his first professional experience working behind the camera in 1964 on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. In the Army, he worked on training films. Early work included Little House on the Prairie, for which Burum shot MagiCam inserts. He shared a technical craft Emmy Award for the visual effects on 1980 PBS science program Cosmos.In 1976, Burum worked as the second unit cameraman and director on Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, whom he met at UCLA, and then on the second unit of The Black Stallion, directed by UCLA colleague Carroll Ballard. Burum’s first feature as a DP was 1982’s The Escape Artist, directed by Caleb Deschanel.
In the early ’80s, Burum again joined Coppola on The Outsiders and Rumble Fish. He also lensed Uncommon Valor, St. Elmo’s Fire and 8 Million Ways to Die. Burum went on to work with Danny DeVito, for whom he shot The War of the Roses and Hoffa.
The DP is best known for his collaboration with director De Palma, with whom he made eight films, including The Untouchables, Body Double, Casualties of War, Raising Cain, Carlito’s Way, Mission: Impossible, Snake Eyes and Mission to Mars.
A member of the American Society of Cinematographers, Burum received an ASC Award for Hoffa and additional nominations for The Untouchables and The War of the Roses. He was feted with the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.
More recently, Burum returned to his roots by conducting film classes as part of the Kodak Cinematographer-in-Residence program at the UCLA Film School.
The news about Burum comes one day after it was announced that Paul Schrader will be honored with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at this year’s Venice Film Festival, which runs August 31- September 10. On that note, here's a bit from Nancy Tartaglione's article at Deadline:
In accepting the award, Schrader said, “I am deeply honored. Venice is the Lion of my heart.”Schrader was last in Venice in 2021, with crime drama The Card Counter which he also directed and which starred Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish. Prior to that, his 2017 First Reformed, starring Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried, debuted on the Lido and was later nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Schrader’s other directing credits include Cat People and American Gigolo. He also wrote such films as Obsession, The Yakuza and The Last Temptation Of Christ.
The decision on the Golden Lion was made by the board of the Biennale di Venezia, which embraced the proposal of the Festival’s Director, Alberto Barbera.
Commented Barbera, “Paul Schrader is a key figure of New Hollywood who, from the late 1960s on, has revolutionized the imagination, aesthetics, and language of American film. It is not an exaggeration to affirm that he is one of the most important American filmmakers of his generation, a director who is deeply influenced by European film and culture, and a stubbornly independent screenwriter who nonetheless knows how to work on commission and confidently move within the Hollywood system. The daring visual stylization that informs all his movies puts him among the most up-to-date exponents of a type of cinema that is unreconciled and subtly investigates contemporaneity. Schrader measures himself against this contemporaneity not only with tireless intellectual and compassionate curiosity, but also with a surprising ability to navigate film’s technological evolution, as well as its production and distribution systems. Thanks to this daredevilry (which not many filmmakers of his caliber are willing to attempt, in the mature phase of their careers), Schrader not only continues to work but in recent years he has also given us some of his most beautiful films.”