Serge Silberman, 86; Independent French Movie Producer

Serge Silberman, 86, an independent French film producer whose credits include Akira Kurosawa’s “Ran” and Luis Bunuel’s Oscar-winning “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” died of undisclosed causes on July 22 in Paris.

Born in Lodz (now Poland), Silberman survived the Nazi concentration camps and arrived in Paris in 1945. He launched his producing career in 1953 and founded the Greenwich Film Co. in 1966.

Bunuel’s 1964 movie “Diary of a Chambermaid” was the first of five films Silberman produced for the Spanish director over the next 13 years. They also include “The Milky Way,” “The Phantom of Liberty” and “That Obscure Object of Desire.”

Among Silberman’s other credits are Nagisa Oshima’s “Max, Mon Amour,” Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Bob le Flambeur” and Jacques Becker’s “Le Trou.”

“Studios with a lot of overheads have to make many pictures, but the movie business should not be a factory,” Silberman once said.

“That’s why I became independent and remained independent,” he said.

“Every picture I wanted to do was refused by others, at the start, but I made them anyway. A great chef does not prepare food to the taste of the clients, but to his own taste.”