Gerald Calderon

Gerald Calderon, French film director, (1926 -2014), worked for more than forty years in the cinema industry both as a company director and as a documentary film director. He was also a producer and actor. He has been member of the Cannes Film Festival jury in 1987. He was the elder half-brother of Michael Lonsdale. Employed by the Worms bank as a proxy and passionate about insects of all kinds, Gérald Calderon began directing in 1958 with a series of animal short films produced by Pierre Braunberger: Terre d’insectes, which won the Golden Bear for short films at the Berlin Film Festival, Terre d’oiseaux and Terre sous-marine, which were both selected for the Venice Biennale, as well as Le Vivarium in 1959. In 1960, he switched to the world of the cinema industry by taking over the management of the Studios de Billancourt, while continuing his career as filmmaker. In 1961, his first feature film, Le Grand secret, a documentary on the search for the origins of man with the voice of Pierre Fresnay, won the Lion of Saint Mark at the Venice Festival. He then directed Le Bestiaire d’amour, adapted from the work of biologist Jean Rostand, which tells the story of the sex life of animals with humour and fantasy. The two films met with a certain success with the critics, who praised the intelligence of the subject and the originality of the form. Gerald Calderon has just rejuvenated the genre of the animal documentary. He continued with Le risque de vivre in 1978, which won the Prix de la Commission Supérieure Technique (CST) at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar in 1981.