Anatole Dauman (7 February 1925 in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

– 8 April 1998 in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

) was a French film producer. He produced films by Jean-Luc Godard,

Robert Bresson Robert Bresson (; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director. Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson contributed notably to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, ellipses, and sparse use of scoring have l ...

, Wim Wenders,

Nagisa Oshima NaGISA (Natural Geography in Shore Areas or Natural Geography of In-Shore Areas) is an international collaborative effort aimed at inventorying, cataloguing, and monitoring biodiversity of the in-shore area. So named for the Japanese word "nagisa ...

, Andrei Tarkovsky, Chris Marker,

Volker Schlöndorff Volker Schlöndorff (; born 31 March 1939 Friday) is a German film director, screenwriter and producer who has worked in Germany, France and the United States. He was a prominent member of the New German Cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s ...

Walerian Borowczyk Walerian Borowczyk (21 October 1923 – 3 February 2006) was an internationally known Polish film director described by film critics as a 'genius who also happened to be a pornographer'. He directed 40 films between 1946 and 1988. Borowczyk set ...

, and

Alain Resnais Alain Resnais (; 3 June 19221 March 2014) was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included ...

. He was a principal figure in Argos Films, a company that was a very important vehicle in creating opportunities for the "

Left bank In geography, a bank is the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as ''banks'' in different fields of geography, as follows. In limnology (the study of inland waters), a stream bank or river bank is the terra ...

" filmmakers to emerge from the overall

Nouvelle Vague French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconocla ...

Early life and career

Anatole Dauman was born in

in 1925 to a Russian Jewish family and later emigrated to France. In 1951, he formed Argos Films with Philippe Lifchitz. It was a niche production company with the aim of making films on art which were inspired by the work of the Italian documentary filmmaker

Luciano Emmer Luciano Emmer (19 January 1918 – 16 September 2009) was an Italian film director. He was born in Milan, but most of his childhood lived in Venice. He started as filmmaker at filming Giotto's frescoes in Padua in 1938. Screenwriter Serg ...

. Dauman produced the first films of

Pierre Kast Pierre Kast (; 22 September 1920, Paris20 October 1984, Rome) was a French people, French screenwriter and film and television director. Biography A member of the ''Cahiers du cinéma'' in the 1950s, Kast created many short films and documentarie ...

Jean Aurel Jean Aurel (6 November 1925 in Rastolita, Romania – 24 August 1996 in Paris) was a Romanian-born French film director and scriptwriter. Notably, he co-wrote ''La Femme d'à côté'' (''The Woman Next Door'') with François Truffaut and Suzann ...

and Chris Marker. In 1953, they gained an advance from a distributor that enabled them to produce Alexander Astruc's ''Crimson Curtain'', which received a ''prime a la qualite''. After that they produced

' ''

Night and Fog ''Nacht und Nebel'' (German: ), meaning Night and Fog, was a directive issued by Adolf Hitler on 7 December 1941 targeting political activists and resistance "helpers" in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, who were to ...

'' and two films by Chris Marker, '' Sunday in Peking'' and '' Letter from Siberia''. In 1959, Argos initiated the production of Resnais' ''

Hiroshima mon amour ''Hiroshima mon amour'' (, lit. , ), is a 1959 romantic drama film directed by French director Alain Resnais and written by French author Marguerite Duras. Resnais' first feature-length work, it was a co-production between France and Japan, an ...

''. They also produced Resnais' ''

Last Year at Marienbad ''Last Year at Marienbad'' (french: L'Année dernière à Marienbad; released in the United Kingdom as ''Last Year in Marienbad'') is a 1961 Left Bank film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet. Set in a palace in a p ...

''. They also produced ''

Chronique d'un été ''Chronicle of a Summer'' (French original title: ''Chronique d'un été'') is a 1961 French documentary film shot during the summer of 1960 by sociologist Edgar Morin and anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch, with the technical and aesthetic ...

'' (''Chronicle of a Summer'') by

Jean Rouch Jean Rouch (; 31 May 1917 – 18 February 2004) was a French filmmaker and anthropologist. He is considered one of the founders of cinéma vérité in France. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker, for over 60 years in Africa, was characterized b ...

and the sociologist

Edgar Morin Edgar Morin (; ; born Edgar Nahoum; 8 July 1921) is a French philosopher and sociologist of the theory of information who has been recognized for his work on complexity and "complex thought" ( pensée complexe), and for his scholarly contributio ...

, a documentary which pioneered

cinéma vérité Cinéma vérité (, , ; "truthful cinema") is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or ...

. Morin wrote an article describing the film as neither a documentary nor sociology in the January 1960 France-Observateur, he explained that it wasn't intended to describe, rather it is an experience lived by its authors and actors. Marie Michel. 2003. The French New Wave. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp 63-64. Dauman went on to produce two films for Jean-Luc Godard - '' Masculin, féminin'' (1966) and ''

Two or Three Things I Know About Her ''Two or Three Things I Know About Her'' (french: Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle) is a 1967 French New Wave film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, one of three features he completed that year. As with the other two ('' La Chinois ...

'' (1967). Argos also produced two by

, ''

Au Hasard Balthazar ''Au Hasard Balthazar'' (; meaning "Balthazar, at Random"), also known as ''Balthazar'', is a 1966 French drama film directed by Robert Bresson. Believed to be inspired by a passage from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1868–69 novel ''The Idiot'', the film ...

'' (1966) and ''

Mouchette ''Mouchette'' () is a 1967 French film directed by Robert Bresson, starring Nadine Nortier and Jean-Claude Guilbert. It is based on the novel of the same name by Georges Bernanos. Bresson explained his choice of the novel saying, "I found neithe ...

'' (1967).

References

1925 births 1998 deaths European Film Awards winners (people) French film producers 20th-century Polish Jews Film people from Warsaw {{France-film-bio-stub