Giulio Biccari started out in the movie business tearing tickets. These days he captures some of the most startling images in South African film. Andrew Worsdale reports
You saw Zola Maseko’s The Life and Times of Sara Baartman on TV a couple of weeks ago, but do you know who gave you its luscious images? It was the same dude who shot the Africa Dreaming series screened earlier this year; Rhythm and Rights – an innovative education series for television; Oliver Schmitz and Brian Tilley’s brilliant documentary Johannesburg Stories; my own movie Shot Down and many other local gems.
Giulio Biccari is a truly gifted and versatile cinematographer. For the educational series Rhythm and Rights he went against the conventional wisdom used by most who shoot studio television. The series was very dark, the video looked like film – unlike shows like Generations which is so bright and overlit you want to squint.
For Johannesburg Stories he and the directors chose to contrast the people’s lives with the city’s architecture, so we had a floating camera in the streets and a warmer colour temperature on the buildings versus the people.
For Aldo Lee’s The Double Life of Ermelinda, Biccari filmed a liberating interview with a conman, Makavel (who tried to rip off Lee’s grandmother’s fortune), in home-movie style. This was balanced against the more stately visuals of the decaying Maputo.
In the Africa Dreaming series, for which he shot all three Southern African episodes, he photographed Palesa Letlaka-Nkosi’s Mamlambo, the tale of the friendship between a young boy and a Chinese prostitute, as if the camera was on acid – lots of filters and effects. Joao Ribeiro’s mystical Mozambican tale The Gaze of the Stars was swathed in blue light – delightfully sensuous. Richard Pakleppa’s The Homeland evoked a high-contrast, sun- dripping Namibia.
For The Life and Times of Sara Baartman the cameraman had to deal with a lack of visuals other than talking heads. The solution he found was to have this subjective floating hand-held camera moving through empty spaces – the landscape, the Paris museum and the courtroom -creating a point of view that was eerie and investigative.
The first movie that ever made an impression on Biccari was The Blue Angel which he saw at The Victory in Johannesburg aged 12. This was Josef von Sternberg’s mesmerising tale of a sleazy nightclub artiste (Marlene Dietrich) who seduces and eventually decimates her ageing middle- class school teacher.
Biccari worked as an usher at The Picadilly in Yeoville where they used to buy their uniforms –green velvet bow ties, cream dress shirts and green bellbottoms – from a store in Hillbrow called Snobs and Slobs.
The Picadilly’s manager was a Mr Polanski (believe it or not), and Biccari recalls seeing the maudlin skiing paraplegic picture Window to the Sky “700 times”. Biccari confides: “I had my first snog in the projection room.” Mind you, before pitching up to work in the hallowed halls of celluloid darkness he had to go to catechism.
His father Ciro, was captured in 1942 while fighting in Abbysinia and was a POW in Kenya before moving here with Biccari’s mom Carmelina, the most perfect Italian mama you ever met. Her son even made a Super 8 movie about her and home life called Fagot e Verdure (beans and vegetables – her most accomplished dish).
Ciro Biccari was a morse code operator and used to read the Italian daily La Voce by tapping morse in the kitchen most days. “We were never a literary family, the only books in the house were Encyclopaedia Brittanica which my dad bought from a salesman – I remember them having tea in the lounge,” says Biccari.
Durban-based director Junaid Ahmed, for whom Biccari shot the documentaries The Zanzabaries, The Zulu Messengers and the short film, The Vow, says about him: “I learnt most about the art of film-making from Giulio – and this education continues every time we work together … His rare generosity, his willingness to impart knowledge and skills, his creativity, rapier wit and his passion for the world of cinema makes him an invaluable and formidable role player in the growing local film industry. But more importantly, not only is he a reservoir of film lore, but an enchanting storyteller – weaving, crazy, fascinating and funny tales.”
A little wordy perhaps, the quote came via e-mail, but Ahmed, no bad dude himself, qualified it by saying: “This may sound over the top, but this is what I sincerely feel.”
Trouble is everyone loves him but he never gets to shoot the big movies or the commercials. “I deal very well with low budgets,” he says, “but when the big stuff comes around they get the fancy guys.”
Maybe that’s because (and Jesus, I’ve got to put in a bit of criticism) Biccari has never made a showreel. He pitches up to meetings with a box of 13 different video cassettes in a Spar packet.
His favourite cinematographers are the old school – John Alonzo (Chinatown), Michael Ballhaus (most of Fassbinder’s movies, then The Colour of Money and Goodfellas) – and he professes a love for finding perfect black in the frame like another of his mentors Gordon Willis (who shot The Godfather). He quotes Willis by saying that a lighting cameraman “should actually take the light away to find that perfect darkness”.
Recently though, Biccari has been shooting more on video than film, and says: “There’s a kind of sanctity missing when you shoot on tape, that sacred moment of celluloid exposure.”
In the early days he even tried news but found he was very bad at it. “I couldn’t get my head around it. I wanted to film the other crews, the spectacle of the news event was more overwhelming to me than the news itself.”
Perhaps Biccari’s cinematographic talent comes from being blind in one eye. “I remember my frequent visits to the eye specialists at the children’s hospital when I was a kid,” he says, “sitting in a chair in darkness with incredible contraptions over my face. In this dark space I had to identify a bunny or something. Maybe that’s why I wanted to shoot movies. I saw pictures as a kid because of my eye, but the machine was like a camera looking at me while I was looking at it.”
The final kudo comes from Jeremy Nathan – now an industry heavyweight: “The thing I want to know is why the SASC (South Association of Cinematographers – an elitist club you have to be invited to join) have not recognised him? They’re an over-the-hill gang who’re not recognising young talent. Giulio has shot some of the finest stuff in South Africa – be that on film or tape.”
Oh, and one final thing, perhaps the major criticism: why do all his lovely girlfriends desert him? Too much movies I guess.