Isabelle Weingarten

Isabelle Weingarten is both an actress and photographer by profession. She was born in Paris where her father’s name already figures, as a dramatist and poet, in the annals of the history of the theatre. Although Isabelle was not sure what she wanted to do in life, fired with a burning enthusiasm and a stong sense of independence, she plunged into the world of fashion photography, posing for the great Guy Bourdin at the beginning of the 70s. So excited was she by the world of fashion, that she decided to move over to the other side of the lens and began working as a fashion photographer herself. Nevertheless, she continued to model for Sarah Moon, Deborah Turbeville, Serge Lutens and Sam Haskins. Robert Bresson was to see a nude portrait of her in Vogue Magazine and offered her the main role in his Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (The Four Nights of a Dreamer, 1981) thus launching her on a career in the world of film.

At about the same time, she began to work on the stage, combining her acting between theatre and film. She starred in the films of Eustache (La maman et le putain or The Mother and the Whore, 1983), Benoit Jacquot (Les enfants du placard, Closet Children, 1987), Raoul Ruiz (Le territoire, The Territory, 1981), Wim Wenders (L´État des choses, The State of Things, 1982) and Manuel de Oliveira (Le soulier de satin, The Satin Slipper, 1985) among others. Meanwhile, she continued to take photographs and to experiment in her photo lab. Her first commission in screen photography was for Robert Bresson in Le diable probablement (The Devil Probably, 1977). In the mid 80s she began to work more in the realm of photography and produced portraits for the film review, Les Cahiers du Cinéma. She was to abandon her activity as an actress and has since worked as a film photographer in some twenty films, combining her time with her work as a portrait artist until around 2005.

Festival Internacional de Cine de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria