02 · 05 · 14

The work of Alfonso Cuarón and Emmanuel Lubezki

The most recent collaboration between Alfonso Cuarón and Emmanuel Lubezki, Gravity, premiered worldwide at the Venice Film Festival in 2013, it was screened in Mexico for the first time as the opening film of the 11th FICM and, after its commercial release, it has been celebrated by the audience and by the critics, harvesting multiple awards on its way.

Among other recognitions, Alfonso Cuarón received the Golden Globe for Best Director from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association; Gravity was named one of the 10 best films of the year by the American Film Institute (AFI); the Directors Guild of America (DGA) named Cuarón Best Director; and Emmanuel Lubezki was granted the award by the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) for the third time in his career. On March 2, the list of awards for Gravity is sure to increase, since the film is nominated to the Academy Awards in ten categories, including Best Director and Best Photography.

Gravity is the most recent example of what Cuarón and Lubezki can accomplish together, but their history working as a team is long and impressive. Here we present an overview through the films they have made as director and photographer respectively:

- In 1983, when they were studying together at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos (CUEC), they made the English spoken short film Vengeance is mine, co-directed by Carlos Marcovich.

- Alfonso Cuarón’s opera prima, Sólo con tu pareja (1991), was photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki. This romantic comedy, starring Daniel Giménez Cacho, tells the story of how playboy Tomás Tomás finds true love.

- In 1994 the duo adapted Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book A Little Princess to the big screen. Cuarón and Lubezki managed to translate this moving stories in unforgettable images.

- Three years later, in 1998, Cuarón directed another literary adaptation, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow, and photographed by Lubezki.

- In 2001 they made a film that became a turning point for contemporary Mexican cinema: Y tu mamá también. Since then, it’s difficult to not think of Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal as charolastras.

- Children of Men, a dystopian film directed by Cuarón and photographed by Lubezki premiered in 2006. Children of Men is distinguished, among other things, by it’s spectacular long takes.

- Finally, in 2013 Cuarón and Lubezki showed of their extraordinary talent in Gravity.