50+ Photography Related Movies ~ Photography News

50+ Photography Related Movies

August 15, 2012 /Photography News/ There may be no better treat on a weekend than pulling down the shades and watching a movie. Here is a list of 50+ movies about photography we compiled for you. Enjoy!

1. Rear Window (1954)

A voyeuristic Alfred Hitchcock film about a wheelchair bound photographer who spies on his neighbours from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.

2. City of God (2002)

Brazilian crime drama film telling the story of two boys growing up in a violent neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro take different paths: one becomes a photographer, the other a drug dealer.

3. Memento (2000)

A man, suffering from short-term memory loss, uses notes, photographs and tattoos to hunt for the man he thinks killed his wife.

4. Amélie (2001)

French whimsical depiction of contemporary Parisian life, set in Montmartre, that tells the story of a shy waitress who decides to change the lives of those around her for the better, while struggling with her own isolation. This is a film about love, dreams, traveling gnomes, photo booths, photographs, and the strangeness of life.

5. Shooting the Past (1999)

Television drama focused around a photographic library threatened by closure, and the lives of its eccentric staff.

6. La Dolce Vita (1960)

Written and directed by Federico Fellini, La Dolce Vita is follows a week in the life of a philandering paparazzo journalist living in Rome. The term "paparazzi" gained popularity after Fellini was inspired to name one of the photographers in his film Paparazzo.

7. The Killing Fields (1984)

British drama film about a photographer trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody "Year Zero" cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million "undesirable" civilians.

8. Before the Rain (1994)

A three-part story of the violence and political chaos tearing apart the newly independent nation of Macedonia (former Yugoslavia).

9. Blow-Up (1966)

A film about a photographer who believes he may have witnessed a murder and unwittingly taken photographs of the killing.

10. Distant (Uzak) (2002)

The story of two men, young dreamer Yusuf and photographer Mahmut, who are struggling to cope with the loneliness and transience of modern urban living.

11. Salvador (1986)

A war drama film which tells the story of an American journalist in covering the civil war in El Salvador. While trying to get footage, he becomes entangled with both leftist guerrillas and the right wing military.

12. Everlasting Moments (2008)

Set in Sweden in the early decades of the 20th century, in a time of social change and unrest, war and poverty, the movie tells the story of a young working class woman, Maria, who wins a camera in a lottery. The decision to keep it alters her whole life.

13. The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

American romantic drama film based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Robert James Waller, the film tells the love story between Francesca (Meryl Streep), the lonely Iowa farmer's wife, and Robert (Clint Eastwood), the photographer from National Geographic who is in the area to photograph the bridges along Iowa's rural roadways.

14. Proof (1991)

Martin, a blind photographer, takes pictures as "proof" that the world really is as others describe it to him.

15. Closer (2004)

A story about the chance meetings, instant attractions, and casual betrayals of four people: Anna, a photographer who specializes in portraits of strangers; Dan, a writer struggling to become a novelist; Alice, an American stripper freshly arrived in London after a bad relationship; and Larry, a dermatologist who finds love under the most unlikely of circumstances.

16. Polisse (2011)

A French drama centred on the Child Protection Unit in Paris, and a photographer who is assigned to cover the unit.

17. Flags of Our Fathers (2006)

American war film about the Battle of Iwo Jima, the five Marines and one Navy Corpsman who were involved in raising the flag on Iwo Jima, and the aftereffects of that event on their lives.

18. Shutter (2004)

A young photographer and his girlfriend discover mysterious shadows in their photographs after a tragic accident. They soon learn that you can not escape your past.

19. The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

The story is about a love affair set in Indonesia during the overthrow of President Sukarno. It follows a group of foreign correspondents in Jakarta on the eve of an attempted coup by the 30 September Movement in 1965. The movie was banned from being shown in Indonesia until 1999.

20. Harrison's Flowers (2000)

Sarah embarks on a perilous journey to find missing-on-assignment Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Harrison (who is also her her husband and colleague), while he is presumed dead by his associates and his editor.

21. Under Fire (1983)

This story of a roving photographer's transformation from a man with a camera to an involved human rights activist begins in Chad, travels to Nicaragua in the early 1980s, and ends when the Nicaraguan dictator Somoza takes off for the palm trees and beaches of Florida.

22. Funny Face (1957)

American musical film staring Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, and Kay Thompson, where Astaire plays Dick Avery, a still photographer, who is based in part on photographer Richard Avedon. Avedon designed the opening title sequence and consulted on the film.

23. The Photograph (2007)

Sita is an escort at a karaoke bar who struggles to raise money to send her daughter out of the city to live with her grandmother and settle her debts with her pimp. She moves in with aging photographer Jan and helps him fulfill his last wishes.

24. Photographing Fairies (1997)

Photographer Charles Castle is numbed with grief following the death of his beautiful bride. He goes off to war, working in the trenches as a photographer. He attends a meeting of the Theosophical Society where he voices scepticism over a photo taken by two young girls that supposedly shows fairies. Under closer examination, Castle realizes the photo may not be a hoax after all. His search for the truth leads him to Burkinwell, a seemingly peaceful village seething with secrets where he becomes drawn into a web of passion, romance and violence. Based on the 1912 Cottingley Fairies Hoax.

25. One Hour Photo (2002)

Psychological thriller about Semour "Sy" Parrish, working at the photo processing department at a large discount store, who is watching one particular family as they progress from newlyweds to young parents, imagining himself as part of the family, carrying on a twisted secret life wrapped around his make-believe involvement in their lives.

26. Calendar (1993)

The film portrays a photographer who brings an array of different women to his apartment. Every time one of the women makes a phone call, the character notices a calendar consisting of photographs he took while in Armenia. The film flashes back to the time he took each of the photos.

27. The Bang Bang Club (2010)

Based on real life. The Bang Bang Club was the name given to four young photographers, Greg Marinovich, Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek and Joao Silva, whose photographs captured the final bloody days of white rule in South Africa and the final demise of apartheid.

28. The Notorious Bettie Page (2005)

Bettie, a Christian girl from the outskirts of Nashville, arrives in New York City in 1949 with dreams of becoming an actress. The movie presents her as a traditional girl, caught in a society that runs on men's whims, with a free spirit locked deep inside her. One thing she truly knows, for all her modesty, is that she's pretty, so when a man on the beach asks her to model for some photographs, she thinks "Why not"?

29. The Photographer (1974)

A famous photographer uses his models for more than taking pictures. He needs them as victims to satisfy his blood-lust. Each murder becomes more bizarre than the next.

30. High Art (1998)

This lesbian-themed drama tells the story of a female photographer who once had it all going for her in her career and turned her back on it for no real reason other than that she didn't want to do it anymore. Now addicted to heroin and living with her heroin addicted female lover, she's suddenly smitten by a younger woman, an ambitious photography magazine associate editor, whose own career could get a sudden boost if she could lure the legendary photographer out of retirement.

31. Pretty Baby (1978)

Pretty Baby tells the story of a lonely photographer's obsession with a precocious twelve-year old prostitute (Brooke Shields) in New Orleans' Storyville district at the turn of the century.

32. I fotografia (1987)

Ilias, a young furrier who has had a hard time under the dictatorship, leaves Castoria in 1971 to emigrate to France, where he hopes to join Gerassimos, a distant relative of his, who has been living there since 1950. With him, he takes nothing from his homeland but a photograph he finds on the pavement.

33. Triage (2009)

The wife of a photojournalist sets out to discover why he came home from a recent assignment in the war torn Kurdistan without his colleague.

34. Delirious (2006)

An offbeat drama focused on a homeless youth, a pop music star and a member of the paparazzi.

35. Pecker (1998)

A comedy-drama that examines the rise to fame and potential fortune of a budding photographer, a Baltimore sandwich shop employee who becomes an overnight sensation when photographs he's taken of his weird family become the latest rage in the art world.

36. A Lot Like Love (2005)

Oliver and Emily meet on a flight from California to New York. They spend a day together taking photos in the park, and two years later Emily becomes a successful photographer.

37. We'll Take Manhattan (2012)

A BBC drama set in the 1960s about the fashion photographer David Bailey and his first muse, model Jean Shrimpton.

38. FairyTale: A True Story (1997)

Two children in 1917 take a photograph, believed by some to be the first scientific evidence of the existence of fairies. Another movie loosely based on the story of the Cottingley Fairies.

39. The Public Eye (1992)

An American neo-noir film about a 1940s photographer who specializes in crime and in not getting involved... until this time. The character is loosely based on famed New York Daily News photographer Arthur "Weegee" Fellig.

40. Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)

This film starring Nicole Kidman as iconic American photographer Diane Arbus, tells the story of a once-shy woman who becomes one of her generation's most strikingly original visual artists. Arbus is torn between a bizarre relationship with Lionel, a neighbor suffering from hypertrichosis, and a conventional life with her husband Allan, a photographer. An incident with a clogged drain leads her to a relationship with Lionel and entry into a netherworld populated by transvestites, dwarves and others living on the fringes of society.

41. The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

A horror film that follows a photographer who attempts to track down a serial killer dubbed the "Subway Butcher" and discovers more than he bargained for under the city streets.

42. Gentlemen's Relish (2001)

Early 20th-century London. Rejected artist Kingdom Swann receives the life-changing gift of a camera. Forging a new career in photography, he applies his artistic flair in ever more lavish portraits of nudes in classical settings and thus lands himself in the spotlight of scornful notoriety.

43. The Wedding Photographer (2009)

When the factory in Molkom shuts down, Robin leaves his beloved hometown to try his luck in Stockholm as a wedding photographer. This experience changes not merely his outlook on life but also his hairstyle.

44. Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

Laura Mars is a glamorous fashion photographer who specializes in stylized violence. Amid controversy over whether her photographs glorify violence and are demeaning to women, Laura begins seeing, in first person through the eyes of the killer, real-time visions of the murders of her friends and colleagues.

45. The Weight of Water (2000)

Jean Janes is a photographer working on a project that would document surviving evidence of a multiple murder that occurred a hundred years ago, when a man brutally killed two immigrant women from Norway with an axe, only to discover a third woman witnessed the mayhem and survived to identify him in court.

46. Palermo Shooting (2008)

After the wild life-style of a famous young German photographer almost gets him killed, he goes to Palermo, Sicily to take a break. He meets a young woman there and a completely different way of life.

47. War Stories (2003)

Cynical American war correspondent in Uzbekistan Ben Dansmore recoils from being assigned a new photographer so soon after the newcomer's predecessor was literally blown to bits while covering a hot story.

48. Guinevere (1999)

A twenty-something upper class pre-law student becomes involved with a much older bohemian photographer.

49. Paparazzi (2004)

The film chronicles the life of a popular Hollywood movie star in the aftermath of a tragic car accident caused by four paparazzi.

50. Baby Yaga, Devil Witch (1973)

Strange things have been happening to Valentina, a young and beautiful professional photographer, ever since she made the acquaintance of Baba Yaga, a mysterious older woman who gave her a lift home late one night. For one thing, Valentina has been having weird, kinky nightmares. For another, one of Valentina's cameras seems to have acquired a deadly curse.

51. Friday Foster (1975)

Friday Foster, an ex-model magazine photographer, goes to Los Angeles International airport to photograph the arrival of Blake Tarr, the richest black man in America. Three men attempt to assassinate Tarr. Foster photographs the fight and is plunged into a web of conspiracy involving the murder of her childhood friend, a US senator, and a shadowy plan called "Black Widow".

52. Cherry Crush (2007)

Jordan Wells, the privileged son of a successful man, gets kicked out of an exclusive prep school after his interest in photography and girls leads him to taking nude snapshots of classmates. Soon he meets a poor but attractive girl who traps him in a web of murder and lies.

53. No Small Affair (1984)

16 years old Charles, who is essentially a loser when it comes to women (and just about anything else except photography), accidentally takes a photo of Laura, an aspiring rock singer, and falls in love with her.

54. The Photographer (2000)

A photographer has a single evening to find ten magical photographs or else he stands to lose everything that is important to him.

55. Shutter (2008)

A newly married couple discovers disturbing, ghostly images in photographs they develop after a tragic accident. Fearing the manifestations may be connected, they investigate and learn that some mysteries are better left unsolved.

56. The Woman That Dreamed About a Man (2010)

The story of a successful photographer who practically wrecks her life because of a romantic obsession with a man whom she meets while on a fashion shoot in Paris.

What is your favorite photography related movie? Share your pick and be sure to mention any that is missing from this list in the comments section below.

You may also like: 50+ Photography Related Documentary Films