Marc Caro
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Marc Caro (born 2 April 1956) is a French filmmaker and comics artist, best known for his projects with Jean-Pierre Jeunet.


Biography

Marc Caro was born in
Nantes Nantes (, ; ; or ; ) is a city in the Loire-Atlantique department of France on the Loire, from the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast. The city is the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, sixth largest in France, with a pop ...
, the native town of
Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...
, who made a great impact on him, influenced his love for
science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
and his artistic style. During the 1970s he worked as an editor and designer at '' Métal hurlant'', drew comics for '' L'Écho des savanes'' and '' Fluide Glacial'' along with Gilles Adrien who would also join Caro on his movie projects.Ezra, Elizabeth (2008).
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
'. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, p. 3
Together they directed two animated shorts, ''L'évasion'' (The Escape, 1978) and ''Le manège'' (The Carousel, 1980) which was awarded the César Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 6th César Awards in 1981. Same year they wrote and co-directed a short
art film An art film, arthouse film, or specialty film is an independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made prima ...
''Le Bunker de la dernière rafale'' (The Bunker of the Last Gunshots) where the pair also worked as cinematographers, editors, set decorators, costume designers, even actors. Caro also produced shorts, ads and music clips on his own. In 1991 they directed their first feature film, a dark comedy '' Delicatessen'' which launched their careers: the film won the Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival and Tokyo Gold Prize at the
Tokyo International Film Festival The is a film festival established in 1985. The event was held biennially from 1985 to 1991 and annually thereafter. According to the FIAPF, it is one of Asia's competitive film festivals and the second largest film festival in Asia behind the ...
in 1991, César Awards for Best Debut and Best Writing at the 17th César Awards (1992) and the Best Director award at the
Sitges Film Festival SITGES - International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia () is an annual film festival held in Sitges, Catalonia, Spain. It specializes in fantasy film, fantasy, Horror film, horror and Cult film, cult films. Established in 1968, the festiva ...
(1993). As Caro described their working process,
"Jean-Pierre handles direction in the traditional sense of the word, that is, the direction of the actors, etc., while I do the artistic direction. Beyond that, in the day-to-day workings of the shoot of preproduction, it's obviously much more of a mixture. We write together, film together, edit together. According to each of our specialties, sometimes we'll be drawn to what we do best. There's a real complicity between us.
The success of ''Delicatessen'' allowed them to return to their early project — a
science fantasy file:Warhammer40kcosplay.jpg, Cosplay of a character from the ''Warhammer 40,000'' tabletop game; one critic has characterized the game's setting as "action-oriented science-fantasy." Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction ...
film, ''
The City of Lost Children ''The City of Lost Children'' () is a 1995 science fantasy film directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, written by Jeunet and Gilles Adrien, and starring Ron Perlman. An international co-production of companies from France, Germany, ...
'', which they conceived in the early 1980s, but were not able to produce due to the lack of funding. It was released in 1995 and entered the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. The friends were then suggested to direct the fourth '' Alien'' installment, '' Alien Resurrection'', and while Jeunet agreed, Caro refused to work on a film over which he lacked creative control, although he was persuaded to spend three weeks in Hollywood working on costume and set design. This movie marked the end of their creative partnership.


Solo career

During the next 10 years Caro contributed to various projects as an art director, character designer and actor, often collaborating with Jan Kounen on his films. In 2008 he released '' Dante 01'', his first
feature film A feature film or feature-length film (often abbreviated to feature), also called a theatrical film, is a film (Film, motion picture, "movie" or simply “picture”) with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole present ...
as a solo director which went almost unnoticed. In 2009 he directed a 53-minute documentary ''Astroboy à Roboland'' based on the
Astro Boy ''Astro Boy'', known in Japan as , is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka. It was serialized in Kobunsha's ''Shōnen'' from 1952 to 1968. The 112 chapters were collected into 23 volumes by Akita Shoten. Da ...
franchise. He returned to directing only in 2018 with a 5-minute short ''Loop''. In 2011 he became one of the initiators of the joined French-
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
ese 3D animated movie ''Windwalkers: Chronicle of the 34th Horde'' working as an art director and visual effects supervisor, with Kounen attached as a director. The movie was based on the top-selling French novel ''La Horde du Contrevent'' by Alain Damasio and received a budget of €18 million ($23.4 million), but after American distributors requested to " marvelise" the script which they found "indigestible and too complicated", Caro and Kounen left the project which was eventually frozen in 2015.Mathias Averty.
Windwalkers: The crazy story of la Horde du Contrevent adaptation
' article at Premiere, 4 March 2015 (in French)


Filmography


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Caro, Marc French comics artists French film directors French illustrators French male screenwriters French screenwriters Living people 1956 births