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| Dominique Benicheti holding the rare 9.5mm Pathe-Baby movie camera |
Lawrence Kaufman, president of the National Stereoscopic Association, wrote this article about the late Dominique Benicheti. I was fortunate to meet Dominique at Futuroscope in 1994 and see some of his films there. He was a brilliant, lively person who instantly engaged people in deep, fascinating conversation. --J.R.
Dominique Benicheti
I
was saddened to hear of the passing of Dominique Benicheti last year. I
received the news very late, when a friend of a friend passed it along.
Dominique had worked on "iDance Machine - Nothing Personal" with Bruce
Austin. I recently saw this music video at 3D-Con, which is planned to
be turned into a feature film. Director Dan Harris said Dom was a
pleasure to work with. He storyboarded the entire video for 3-D.
Director Harris also said that on the shoot, he had at least three
stereographers, which he was likely not to do again. Dominique was
always trying to get more depth and one of the other stereographers was
always trying to decrease the depth. I have not been able to find too
much about Dominique's life or passing. There seems to be very little
information in the Internet about Dominique.
I
did find out from French Film director and producer Pascal Vuong,
through Olivier Cahen that Dominique died of a violent and sudden
cancer. He was buried at "Pere Lachaise Cemetery" in Paris
at the end of July 2011. “During the ceremony, many testimonies and
tributes from all over the world have been gathered and told, all
telling how great was Dominique, not only professionally but humanly.”
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| La Revole, French Musical, A Fairy Tale |
I met Dominique Benicheti in 1999 when he visited the United States of America trying to find releasing for his 3-D short "La Revole." Dominique
was very lively, interesting, fun and excited about 3-D, so we became
fast friends. I was able to see this film at a private screening at the
Sunset Screening room following the Large Format Cinema Assn. (LFCA)
annual conference, which Dominique was attending. He visited again in
2000 with a 5/70 mm print of "La Revole," which was shown at the Academy of Television Arts
and Sciences Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre during the LFCA annual
conference. La Revole is the popular term for the feast of the last day
of wine harvest in the Beaujolais region. “La Revole,” was
called the first French 3-D musical. Running 18 minutes, it was shot
with the Stereovision lens. I had recently visited Futuroscope,
Dominique had worked there and on many films. He told me to look him up
when I returned, but I never did make it back.
Bruce Austin, Eric Kurland and Ray Zone are planning a tribute to French 3-D cinema perhaps featuring "Pina" and a tribute to Dominique.
What I know about Dominique:
Dominique
was a producer, writer, director and technician, he directed and/or
produced more than 40 films; documentaries, scientific and animation. He
may best be remembered for his very first film, a 1972 feature film "Le
Cousin Jules (Cousin Jules,)" which won the Special Jury Prize and The
Ecumenical Jury - Special Mention Prize at the Locarno International
Film Festival and the Interfilm Award at the Mannheim-Heidelberg
International Filmfestival. The Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) only
lists that film: http://www.imdb.com/name/
nm0071165/
He
studied at the National School of Applied Arts, National Superior
School of Fine Arts and High Cinematographic Studies in animation film.
He had taught documentary film making at Harvard University
for two years and was there for three more years as research associate
in engineering at the Jefferson Laboratories for experimental physics,
developing a human-appearance robot for television.
Dominique had written and directed at the Harvard Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics, producing a 30 minute video “Light Games: 5
Experiments About the Inverse Square Law” to initiate the teaching of
astronomy in US high schools and colleges. He also wrote screenplays for
"Little Lady Chip," which had been planned for a 3-D feature and a
treatment for a planned large format 3-D fairy tale musical "A Double."
La Revole Photo Strip:
1) It's us, the Grape Pickers!
2) I'm Ceres, Goddess of Wine Harvests...
3) Blackberry, violet, cherry, cassis Moulin-a-Vent year eighty-six...
4) Take the cluster in your hand, but you don't crush the fruit!
5) And when the baskets are full, we have to call up "Jarlot!"
6) Oh! This Bocuse pumpkin soup!
7) I would happily give two months of my lifetime, to have this Beaujolais in my glass right now.
8) I was holding my word, you were so impatient...
9) Do not drink milk tonight!
10) In a pretty country, All embroidered with vines...
He
went into special format films with Futuroscope (or Parc du
Futuroscope,) the French theme park based on multimedia, as director,
writer or consultant on 3-D movies and large format films. He wrote and
directed “The Price of Freedom,” a 20 minute, 360o film about the
Normandy Allied Landing of June 1944 for the 50th anniversary, shown at
International Space Theatre Consortium (ISTC) in September ’94, held in Poitiers, France; it is currently at the Museum of Arromaches in Normandy.
He worked on a 20 minute double 70mm 3-D ride in pixilation about the 34,000 year old Chauvet Cave. He directed the documentary part of a 70mm 48 frames-per-second film about Poitou
and he worked on the production of “Pathe-Baby,” a 3-D feature mixing
fiction and reality, filming at least half of it with the Stereovision
lens.
Dominique
was preceded in death by his sister; Dom never married and had no
children, so he left no heirs. Cedric Thomas is Dominique’s ‘spiritual’
son and is the executor of his estate.
His Special Format Films include:
- “Safari 3D” Opticals; double 35mm 3-D, post-production
- “Peugeot 3-D” Storyboard, stereography, post-production, opticals; 15 min., 3-D commercial
- “Miko 3-D” post-production, opticals
- “The Price of Freedom” Writer/Director; 20 min., 360o - Arromaches Musee du Debarguement
- “Poitou” co-director; 20 min., 70mm 48 fps
- “La Revole” Writer/Direcotr 3-D musical short
- “Pathe-Baby” Writer/Direcotr; 3-D feature (completed?)
- “La Grotte Chauvet” Writer/Director; 3-D ride, double 70mm, (completed?)
- "iDance Machine - Nothing Personal" stereographer, music video, planned feature.
More about the French Film “La Revole”
In
the opening shot of the film, a sixty-ish traveler has fallen asleep
reading a newspaper in the compartment of a train. A headline of the
front page of the newspaper reads that a wind vane in the design of
Ceres, ancient Greek Goddess of the grape harvest has mysteriously
disappeared the night before in a famous village in Beaujolais.
While
the train comes to a stop in the sunny countryside for apparently no
reason, a beautiful young woman appears magically in the compartment and
sits in front of the traveler. The train takes off and the traveler
awakes startled. He sees the young lady, apologizes for having fallen
asleep and introduces himself. He is Christian Marin, a well-known
actor, invited to Beaujolais to share supper of the La Revole, prepared
by Paul Paul Bocuse and presided by Bernard Pivot, his pals and very
famous French figures.
He
is very surprised to learn from the young woman that she is no less
that Ceres, the real Goddess of harvest and that every year she comes
down from her wind vane to check on the grapes and help humans to make
the wine good. Charmed, the traveler invites Ceres to join him and his
friends for supper of La Revole, fearing nonetheless that “They will
never believe you’re a Goddess!” “Well then, we will tell them that I’m
only your niece!” She answers back to him.
Meanwhile,
a group of you grape-pickers are going to the vineyards, signing,
laughing and having fun, as well as a young kitchen helper coming back
from market, singing with his horses. Then in the kitchen of Paul
Bocuse, Ceres mischievously gives a blind-tasting wine lesson to these
knowledgeable older men, who are very surprised. But later she will be
the one to take a lesson from Paul Bocuse himself, to prepare his famous
Poularde a la Bocuse with a recipe read in verse by Bernard Pivot.
The
last day of work completed, the grape[pickers come back for the famous
supper. While waiting for Paul Bocuse, Christian the actor, Bernard
Pivot, Ceres and others play riddles. Impatient, Bernard Pivot expresses
his feelings.
“I would have very willingly,
Given up two months of my lifetime,
To have in my glass right now
A sip, a taste of Beaujolais Nouveau!”
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| Lawrence Kaufman |
