The Greek cinematographer and director, who has two Oscar nominations on his resume and great collaborations with directors like John Cassavetes, Alexander Payne, Michael Mann, James Mangold and many others, spoke to the English newspaper regarding how he sees the cinema nowadays but also the work he is doing now in New York, in the new biography of Bob Dylan starring Timothée Salame, entitled “A complete unknown” by James Mangold.
“Dylan was a kid in the beginning who wrote lyrics as if God dictated them,” comments Papamichael, adding: “He was a kid who left his family, made a new family, and then left it too,” he says regarding the master musician and his evolution from the folk of his early career to the “electrification” of his sound from 1965 onwards.
Born on February 10, 1962 in Athens, Phaedon Papamichael grew up in Munich and as a child watched John Wayne movies on TV and spaghetti westerns.
Then he discovered the European cinema of the 60s. “German cinema embarrassed me. French cinema fascinated me the most. I remember taking the train to Paris on the weekends just to sit in the Gare du Nord and look at Citroëns on the streets,” he says.
His favorite actor was Jean-Paul Belmondo, but Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt was the film that changed his life. “That’s when it clicked in my mind with cinema and I understood what I wanted to do with my life,” he points out. He initially started working as a photojournalist, but in 1983 he was invited to New York by his cousin, John Cassavetes, and took over as director of photography on his film “Love streams”. “Your photographs reflect an entire generation, Cassavetes had told me when we met in New York,” says Papamichael.
Since then the great director of photography has signed more than 40 films with important creators of the big screen. “Film sets are sometimes like microcosms of different countries. In America, the sets sometimes resemble the army and sometimes the circus. Balkans prefer quality of life and work less. The British treat work as if it were factory hours. Someone shouts end and immediately the lights go out.”
In 2021, he filmed the last adventure of Indiana Jones in England and immediately following that he filmed his own movie, “Light Falls”, in our country. “In Greece you have more freedom and there are no restrictions when you want to try other creative avenues,” he says.
“The world has get tired of the sequels”
He is not particularly satisfied with American cinema. “The American films that interest me every year at the Oscars can be counted on the fingers of one hand. People are tired of Avengers sequels and want to see something else,” he emphasizes.
He adds that “the best days of filmmaking are behind us, but there are interesting changes happening right now. Along with technology, our work also evolves. We will travel less and digital media will give us more and more options. We used to run all over the place for the needs of a movie. We were kind of like magicians,” he argues and concludes by advising his colleagues: “Don’t touch all your goals in Hollywood.”
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