Sunday Profile: Dion Beebe
By Peter Thompson

Australia has a long tradition of producing great cinematographers: Andrew Lesnie, who won an Academy Award last year for Lord of the Rings, joined previous Oscar winners, Dean Semler (Dances with Wolves) and John Seale (The English Patient), among many others honoured over the years.

The latest candidate is Dion Beebe, who this year won an Oscar nomination for Chicago and is now in the front rank of world cinematographers. He's been deluged with scripts but Beebe is one who chooses his work carefully and is more attracted to the art-house films than the mainstream.

His most recent film, soon to be released, is In the Cut, starring Meg Ryan and directed by Jane Campion. He and Jane had worked together before on Holy Smoke so Campion knew what she was getting.

"When the chips are down, the light is failing, you've got to get the shot, he will never yell but you will just see Dion moving very fast and grabbing the camera, shooting it, doing it," said Campion.

Born in Brisbane, Beebe spent his formative years in South Africa. There was no television but his parents screened movies at home on Sunday nights.

"We'd watch anything we could, whatever was available, so it wasn't about being nurtured on Bertolucci or French new wave ? we watched whatever we could," explained Beebe.

Emulating his father, who was an amateur photographer, Beebe started out shooting stills but soon moved on to film school. It was at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School where he first shone, shooting some memorable short movies. The Space Between the Door and the Floor, directed by Pauline Chan, won Beebe an Australian Film Institute award.

Immediately on graduating from film school, Beebe was employed on his first feature, a New Zealand film called Crush. Since then, he's gone on to shoot 12 feature films, including What I Have Written, Praise and Holy Smoke, with Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel.

He explains his role as director of production, "It's like you are carving something out of chaos quite often ... My analogy has often been you are heading out to sea on a boat, you pull this crew in and head out and whatever happens, whatever storms you come across, you have to get through it ... it's easy to get adrift. There are so many elements you are managing, so many people you are dealing with. And I certainly respond to that aspect of film-making where you have to be inventive, anticipate things and find solutions."

It's also important that the cinematographer can make the actors feel relaxed, especially if they are in revealing roles.

"I felt really safe with Dion," says actress Rose Byrne, who played the lead role in Clara Law's The Goddess of 1967. "I had to expose myself physically and emotionally and I felt in his hands very protected, and kind of beautiful."

As recently as three years ago, Beebe was not known outside this country and director Gillian Armstrong met resistance when she insisted on using him for Charlotte Gray, starring Cate Blanchett.

"My English producers said that was an additional expense, they hadn't heard of him. Holy Smoke hadn't opened in Britain and at the end of the film they said, 'That boy is a genius, he is incredible'," Armstrong says.

And then one night while Beebe was driving to a West End production of Chicago, he got the call inviting him to shoot the film version for director Rob Marshall.

"I think if someone says you can do it, you say damn right I can do it!" Beebe says.

For Beebe, long a fan of Bob Fosse, who created Chicago as a Broadway musical, it was a chance to show what he could do with a big team and even bigger expectations.
Then came the Oscar nomination and the world was turned upside down for Beebe.

"I was so proud to see Dion lauded by cinematographers who for us had been legends, whose names we had seen on the screen and we had studied as students," recalls Beebe's wife, director Unjoo Moon. "And suddenly they were admiring his work."

"In Los Angeles now I'm the guy who shot Chicago," says Beebe. "No-one knows anything else I have done, practically. In Australia, it's a little easier because people know these small art-house Australian films that I've done but over there it's, 'Oh yeah, you're Dion Beebe, the guy who shot Chicago' and that's it."

Beebe's next film is still under wraps but director Jane Campion thinks nothing will hold him back.

"I do think he is going to be one of the remarkable cinematographers of our time," says Campion. "I can't help comparing him to all the great people and I think Dion is of that calibre because he chooses projects that resonate with him."