One of my great rewards was shooting in Delhi’: Oscar-winning Oz filmmaker

Cannes: Oscar-winning Australian cinematographer Dion Beebe has received the prestigious Pierre Angénieux Award for excellence in cinematography at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, a year after Indian cinematographer-director Santosh Sivan won the same honour, reports Dynamite News correspondent.

The award was presented Friday night at a gala ceremony attended by the world's leading image experts, filmmakers and industry professionals.

Ahead of the awards ceremony, the Brisbane-born Bebee acknowledged Sivan's skills and knowledge in cinematography. "Santosh (Sivan) won the Pierre Angénieux Award last year. He has an incredible body of work as a cinematographer and, of course, as a director as well," said Bebee.

"It was funny. I was communicating with (Indian-origin filmmaker) Mira Nair about the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and I was saying we need more diverse membership in the cinematography branch, because I am one of the governors in the cinematography branch. And she writes back with one name: Santosh Sivan," he added.

Bebee also recalled shooting in India for New Zealand director Jane Campion's 'Holy Smoke!' as one of the highlights of his long career.

"One of the great rewards of my career was shooting in Delhi for 'Holy Smoke!' with Jane Campion," said Bebee, who won the Oscar award for Best Cinematography for 'Memoirs of a Geisha' in 2006.

"It was my first trip to India. I was a little bit nervous because it's such a big, bustling place and I'm like, how are we going to shoot in the streets of Delhi?" said Bebee about his work in India for the production of 'Holy Smoke!' in 1999.

Praising the Indian crew of the film, the story of an American arriving in India to join a new age cult, Bebee said, "It was an amazing experience, such a great crew of people we worked with. I was really touched by India, and I've been sort of wanting to go back and do a project there for some time."

"Among the locations for the shooting of Campion's 'Holy Smoke!' were Delhi and Rajasthan. It was all on the streets mostly. We had one big interior shot that was supposed to be a temple. We stayed in Rajasthan in an amazing village. I remember every night at the end of each shooting day, we would go onto the roof of our little hotel and do yoga," he said.

Bebee's cinematography works include 'Chicago' (2002), 'Collateral' (2004), 'Miami Vice' (2006), 'Green Lantern' (2011), 'Mary Poppins Returns' (2018) and 'Gemini Man' (2018).

Kolkata-born cinematographer Madhura Palit had earlier won the Pierre Angénieux Special Encouragement Award for emerging cinematographers at the Cannes festival in 2019.

Bebee, the cinematographer credited with using the digital camera technology for the first time in cinema for the making of 'Collateral' starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx, said the purpose of technology is to "serve the story".

"I had an interesting relationship with technology because you know, when I worked with Michael Mann on 'Collateral', it was really one of the first digital movies, really the first sort of big studio movies to be shot digitally. I really had to embrace technology. Subsequent to that I worked with (Taiwanese director) Ang Lee on 'Gemini Man' which was a high frame rate 3D 4K production," he explained.

"But my position on technology has always been that, you know, it really is there to serve the story. So if you're going to engage with technology, just make sure it's serving the story and you are not serving the technologies, because sometimes you take on these technical challenges and they can just dominate, dominate the process, you," said Bebee.

"We definitely had our struggles on both 'Collateral' dealing with digital cameras for the first time and again on 'Gemini Man' because it was such a new technology. You are doing a better battle with the technology a little bit in order to make it serve you rather than, you know, you serve it, you. That's always going to be the challenge when we push things," he said.

"Who knows what technology that young filmmakers will have to engage with in five or ten years? It's such a changing landscape in terms of, you know, there's so much sort of talk around Artificial Intelligence (AI), the impact of AI on image making in storytelling," he added.

"So I think, you know, filmmakers have been telling stories, we've been engaging with different ways to tell those stories. I see new technology as new opportunities, not something to be afraid of."