Director’s spotlight: Mark Romanek
In
2003, the Directors Label, a branch of Palm Pictures Productions,
released the first three volumes of a series of DVDs focusing on
notable music video directors. The series was created by directors
Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry, the subjects of
the first three volumes. Four new volumes were released in 2005,
this time featuring Mark Romanek, Jonathan Glazer, Anton Corbijn
and Stéphane Sednaoui.
Several
of these directors made the move to feature films shortly, and in
some cases before, the release of said DVDs. Spike Jonze directed
Being John Malkovich
(1999), Adaptation
(2002) and, more recently, part-animated, part-live action feature
Where the Wild Things
Are (2009).Michel
Gondry is the acclaimed directorof Human Nature (2001), Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind (2004), The Science of Sleep
(2006) and Be Kind
Rewind (2008).Anton
Corbijn paid a vibrant tribute to late Joy Division vocalist Ian
Curtis in Control
(2007), while Jonathan Glazer directed Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast (2000) and
Nicole Kidman in Birth (2004).
Mark
Romanekspent
his formative years in the film industry writing screenplays,
before deciding to focus on music videos. Nowadays, his works are
regarded as among the best of the medium. He has worked with many
top-selling recording artists from different genres of pop music,
including Johnny Cash, Beck, David Bowie, Keith Richards, R.E.M.,
Lenny Kravitz and Madonna, to name but a few. These videos have
received numerous awards, and two of them have become part of the
permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art.
Romanek's
first film, Static,
was released in 1986. It was co-written with and starred Keith
Gordon as a man who claimed he had invented a television set
capable of showing a live picture of Heaven. The film had achieved
something of a cult following in London, and led to Romanek's first
job directing a music video, for British New Wave band The
The.
In
2002, Romanek wrote and directed his second feature, One Hour Photo, with
Robin Williams in the lead role about a department store photo
processor who becomes obsessed with a family through their
snapshots.
In Never Let Me Go, Romanek and writer Alex
Garland adapt a novel by renowned author Kazuo Ishiguro, who is
perhaps best known for The
Remains of the Day. The writer's sixth novel consists of a
deceptively simple tale, set in a private school in the English
countryside, where nothing is as it seems, and an unsettling truth
is slowly revealed.