Oscar-winning cinematographer worked on Kes, The Killing Fields and The Reader among others.

Chris Menges

British cinematographer Chris Menges is to receive a lifetime achievement award at Camerimage (Nov 14-21), the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography.

Menges will attend the 23rd edition of Camerimage in the Polish city of Bydgoszcz to accept the award, introduce screenings of his films and will meet with the festival’s audience.

Across a 50-year career, Menges has won two Academy Awards for Roland Joffé’s The Killing Fields in 1985, for which he also won a BAFTA, and The Mission in 1987.

More recently, he was Oscar-nominated (with Roger Deakins) for his work on Stephen Daldry’s The Reader in 2010.

Menges began his career in the 1960s as camera operator for documentaries by Adrian Cowell and for films like Poor Cow by Ken Loach and If… by Lindsay Anderson.

He returned to work with Loach on Kes, which marked his first film as cinematographer. He was also behind the camera on Stephen Frears’ first feature film, Gumshoe, in 1971.

After several documentaries and feature films including Black Beauty (1971), Bloody Kids (1978), The Game Keeper (1980), Babylon (1980) and Angel (1982) he moved on to more ambitious works, including Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, on which he was director of photography for studio second unit.

In 1983, he received his first BAFTA nomination for the Bill Forsyth film Local Hero and won his first Oscar for Cambodian genocide drama The Killing Fields. He continued his work with director Roland Joffé and won his second Oscar in 1986 with historical drama The Mission, starring Robert De Niro.

He made his directional debut in 1988 with A World Apart, which played in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and won the grand jury prize.

He moved back behind the camera in 1996 to shoot award winning film The Boxer, directed by Jim Sheridan. He received his third Oscar nomination with Michael Collins in 1997.

Menges immersed himself in Western imagery for Tommy Lee Jones’ The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) and supported Stephen Daldry on The Reader, sharing the credit for cinematography with Roger Deakins, and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

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