21/02/2005

Last Saturday, the French Alexandre Desplat was honoured for the first time as a major composer and was granted the Silver Bear for the music of Jacques Audiard’s The Beat That my Heart Skipped [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. This award is probably the beginning of a new phase in the career of the 43-year-old flute player known for his melodic inventivity and his refined instrumental arrangements.
Alexandre Desplat has already tried all genres since his first feature film in 1985 (Ki lo sa? by Robert Guédiguian) , and was nominated last year at the Golden Globes, the Baftas, and the European Film Awards for his work in La jeune fille à la perle [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Peter Webber. His partnership with Jacques Audiard has already been fruitful in the past, since he was a finalist twice at the French Cesars with Audiard’s films Un héros très discret in 1997, and Sur mes lèvres [+see also:
trailer
film profile] in 2002. His cinematic career is already rich of 70 films and TV films amongst which Reines d’un jour (2001), Les corps impatients (2003), Inquiétudes (2003), Stormy weather [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2003), L’Enquête corse (2004), and Birth(2004). His filmography definitely puts him amongst today’s most fashionable composers, as his frequent travels to Hollywood last year revealed.

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By winning an award in Berlin, he continues the lineage of French composers involved in cinema (Eric Serra, Georges Delarue...) and gives the Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC) an opportunity to announce that a new fund for feature film music was created last October. This budget (300 000 euros every year) is meant for films with small budgets (under 4 million euros) 1,5% at least of which must be dedicated to music. This subvention of 15 000 euros maximum, aims at encouraging the creation of original music for the cinema ; it will probably help a new generation of talented composers to emerge.

(Translated from French)