This Cinematographer Is an Old Hand at the Expatriate Game

Among expatriate Mexican filmmakers, cinematographer Gabriel Beristain is the veteran in the crowd.

Unlike other Mexican filmmakers in Hollywood, Beristain left Mexico in 1975, opting for Europe rather than the United States.

“Instead of landing in El Paso, I landed in Southampton,” he says. “In Mexico there was such a lack of creativity in filmmaking. Unfortunately there is still a terrible crisis.”

But after 16 years in Europe as a filmmaker, Beristain returned to his Mexican roots. He is embarking on a new career as a producer. Splitting time between Mexico and Los Angeles, the 45-year-old Beristain has founded Beret Films, a production company in Mexico to make independent films.

One of the company’s films, a short called “El Espejo del Cielo” (The Mirror in the Sky), has won 15 international festival awards, including first place at the 1998 Palm Springs International Film Festival and best short at the 1998 Cuban Film Festival.

But producing films in a country without a financing infrastructure has proven to be challenging. In addition, finding U.S. distributors for the films has been difficult. Still, Beristain is determined to push forward.

“Right now in Mexico, we need producers and filmmakers,” Beristain says. “It’s very important to me that Mexico’s film industry recover the greatness it had in the past.”

Still, Beristain is not ready to abandon his career as a cinematographer entirely.

In England, Beristain worked with some of the country’s noted directors, like Derek Jarman and Ken Russell.

Beristain received the most international attention with the 1986 film “Caravaggio,” directed by Jarman. That film, which was hailed by critics for capturing the subtleties of the Italian Renaissance painter’s tortured life, won Beristain a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1987 for best cinematography.

But it was Beristain’s cinematography in the 1990 Scottish film “Venus Peter” that caught American director Taylor Hackford’s eye. A few years later, Hackford asked Beristain to work on “Bound by Honor,” which was released in 1993.

Having studied film in London and living as an expatriate for so many years, Beristain has a very unique view of the world that at once employs the discipline of Anglo culture with a Latin sensibility, says Hackford.

“Gabriel carries a Mexican heart but was forced to go someplace else,” Hackford says. “He built an interesting vision that has its roots in Mexico, but his breadth and intellect are much broader than Mexico.”

Since “Bound by Honor,” Beristain has found steady work in Hollywood, having filmed 1995’s “Dolores Claiborne,” David Mamet’s “The Spanish Prisoner” in 1998 and most recently “Molly,” with Elisabeth Shue, due out this spring.

He sees film as an important educational tool that can be used to dispel myths about Latinos. As a Mexican Jew of Basque descent, Beristain says he is an example of the tremendous intermixing of people within the Latin world.

“There is an extraordinary diversity in our culture that many Anglos don’t understand,” he says. “I want to tell Latin American stories that cross borders so that the English-speaking world will say, ‘Ah, this is a world that lives among us and I want to understand it.’ ”