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French-Canadian director and cinematographer who pioneered handheld camera techniques

Michel Brault, who has died of a heart attack aged 85, was one of the great unsung heroes of cinema. The French-Canadian director and cinematographer could have claimed, in all modesty, to have pioneered handheld camera techniques, leading to cinéma vérité in France (and thus to the Nouvelle Vague) and Direct Cinema in the Us.

It all began in 1958 with Les Raquetteurs (The Snowshoers), which Brault co-directed with Gilles Groulx and shot in 35mm with a relatively lightweight camera carried on his shoulder. The 15-minute film, which explores life in rural Quebec, was seen by Jean Rouch, the French anthropologist film-maker, who invited Brault to France to be chief camera operator on Chronicle of a Summer (1960), in which a cross-section of Parisians are asked to respond to the question: "Are you happy?"

Rouch and his co-director, the sociologist Edgar Morin, were not...

Reel-Important People is a monthly column that highlights those individuals in or related to the movies who have left us in recent weeks. Below you'll find names big and small and from all areas of the industry, though each was significant to the movies in his or her own way. Michel Brault (1928-2013) - Pioneer of the Direct Cinema style in Canada, specifically Quebec, who codirected the classic documentaries Les Raquetteurs [watch below], Pour la Suite de Monde and L'acadie, l'Acadie as well as the historical drama Les Ordres, for which he was named Best Director at Cannes in 1975. As a cinematographer, he also shot Jean Rouch's landmark documentary Chronicles of a Summer and the dramas Mon Oncle Antoine and No Mercy. He appears in the documentary...

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