Born: 1949, Paris, France.

Education: École du Louvre, Paris [Art History]; École Vaugirard [now École Louis Lumière], Paris [Cinematography].

Career: 'I was born and raised in Paris and lived there until I moved to Los Angeles about six years ago. I'm a child of the French Cinémathèque. I started watching films when I was in medical school. In two years I saw about 1,000 films. I didn't do a lot of studying. After I dropped out of medical school, I thought seriously about becoming an English teacher in a high school. One day, my mother asked me, what are you going to do? I said I was thinking about studying English. She asked, if cinema is your passion, why don't you do that professionally instead of just your hobby? That opened a whole new world. I went to the Vaugirard film school. I wanted to be a director. I had no interest at the time in cameras, lighting, framing or techniques. After I finished school, I had to work and somebody suggested the camera department. I became a very bad camera assistant. After about three years, I was 27, and decided that I wasn't doing well as a focus puller. I decided to become a lighting cameraman. On my first job, I had 400 feet of film in the camera and a few lights. I was alone. I drove to a very small town in the morning and shot about 60 meters of film in a curtain shop, editing in the camera. In the afternoon, I drove to a music shop and shot the rest of the film. It was for local commercials that ran in one cinema in this little town. During the early 1980s, I started to do corporate movies. I had an opportunity to work with a director-producer who was a former cinematographer. The crew was three people. I was the cinematographer, electrician and focus puller. On my first day - we were working in a factory - I set up my lighting, running the cables myself. This director turned to me and said, "But Denis, it's flat." It was like opening a new world for me: light could be flat or non-flat! I started thinking about lighting, and studying my colleagues' work. Lighting became a passion for me. I still remember the first time that I realized light was not an immaterial, invisible concept but actually fluid photons that I could throw across a room like paint or water from a bucket and watch it bounce along the ground and against the walls. I realized light was something that I could physically manipulate, shape, bend. Suddenly, I could feel the light. It had taken me a while to learn the pleasure of switching on lights.' [From the KODAK OnFilm website, 2002.]

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Was c.asst working with doph Bernard Lutic.

Ph music videos [a: Julien Clerc, Céline Dion, Amina, Texas, David Byrne, a.o.] and commercials [dir by Stéphane Sednaoui, Andrew McPherson, a.o.].

Was co-founder of the AFC. Member of the ASC since 2001.

Co-authored the book 'John Cassavetes' [1986].

Appeared in the doc 'Cinematographer Style' [2005, Jon Fauer; ph: J. Fauer, Jeff Laszlo, Brian Heller & David Morgan].

Awards: AFI [Aus] Award nom [1991] for 'Dingo'; ASC Award [2002] & 'Emmy' Award nom [2002] for 'Uprising' ['Emmy' for 'Part 2']; Camerimage 'Bronze Frog' Award [2002] for 'Demonlover'.

Website: Denis Lenoir

1976        Sotelo [Raúl Ruiz] 16mm/c; doc/15m

1977        Colloque de chiens/Coloquio de perros/Dog's Dialogue [Raúl Ruiz] c; short/22m; cph: Patrice Millet

1982        Eros de conduite [Robert Millie] b&w-c; short/7m; cph: R. Millie

1982        Laissé inachevé à Tokyo [Olivier Assayas] b&w; short/22m

1983        Les veufs [Patrick Dewolf] c; short/14m

1983        Vivre dangereusement [Marie Sauvanet] c; short/6m

1984        Electra [Alain Guesnier] c; short/11m

1984        Winston Tong en studio [Olivier Assayas] 16mm-35bu/b&w; mus doc/10m

1984        Destino crudele [Roy Lekus] 16mm/c; short/20m

1985        L'amour propre... ne le reste jamais très longtemps [Martin Veyron] c

1985        Dressage/Éducation perverse [Pierre B. Reinhard] c

1986        Désordre/Disorder [Olivier Assayas] c

1986        Le rescapé/The Survivor [Okacha Touita] c

1987        Le professeur Taranne [Raúl Ruiz] c; short/52m

1987        Eux! [Ann-Gisel Glass] c; short/8m

1987        La lumière du lac [Francesca Comencini] c

1987        Tandem [Patrice Leconte] c

1987        Ville étrangère/A Foreign City [Didier Goldschmidt] c

1988        Tocsin [Solange Martin] 16mm/c; short/12m

1988        L'enfant de l'hiver/Winter's Child [Olivier Assayas] c

1988        Monsieur Hire [Patrice Leconte] p/c

1989        Question de peau [Alain le Breton] c; short/6m

1989        Le bal du gouverneur [Marie-France Pisier] c

1989        Dingo [- Dog of the Desert] [Rolf de Heer] p/c

1990        Daddy nostalgie/Daddy Nostalgia/These Foolish Things [Bertrand Tavernier] p/c

1991        Jeux d'hiver [Alain Le Breton] b&w-c; short/10m

1991        Paris s'éveille/Paris at Dawn [Olivier Assayas] c

1991        Farewell to Paradise [Alexandra von Grote] announced; status unknown

1992        Drôles d'oiseaux/Bilan provisoire [Peter Kassovitz] c

1992        Beau fixe/Set Fare [Christian Vincent] c

1992        Une nouvelle vie/A New Life [Olivier Assayas] p/c

1993        Decadence [Steven Berkoff] c; 2uc: John Ward

1993        L'éau froide/La page blanche/Cold Water [Olivier Assayas] c; 92m; ed version (67m) was ep of 9-part tv-series

                    'Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge'

1993        La partie d'échecs/The Chess Game [Yves Hanchar] p/c; cph: Rémon Fromont

1994        La séparation [Christian Vincent] c

1994        Carrington [Christopher Hampton] c

1994        Le géographe Manuel [Michel Sumpf] b&w/silent (1st part) & c/sound (2nd part); cph: Renato Berta, William

                    Lubtchansky, Pascal Marti, Jacques Loiseleux, Dominique Chapuis, Agnès Godard, Raoul Coutard, Romain Winding, a.o.

1995        Clubbed to Death/Lola [Yolande Zauberman] c

1995        [Joseph Conrad's] The Secret Agent [Christopher Hampton] c

1996        Since You've Been Gone/Dogwater [David Schwimmer] c

1996        Food of Love [Stephen Poliakoff] c; cph: Wit Dabal; (Lenoir: 'I worked 9 days on this film. Actually I left on the first day

                    of the shooting, but stayed another 8 days waiting for the Polish doph to replace me.')

1997        Un air si pur/An Air So Pure [Yves Angelo] c; cph: Edward Klosinski

1997        Thursday [Skip Woods] c

1998        Fin août, début septembre/Late August, Early September [Olivier Assayas] s16-35bu/c; 2uc: Yorick Le Saux

1998        Steal This Movie/Abbie! [Robert Greenwald] b&w-c

1999        The Old Man Who Read Love Stories [Rolf de Heer] c

2000        Dragonfly [Thierry Fassioti] - Lenoir: 'I didn't film 'Dragonfly'; at some point I was supposed to film it and, with my

                    permission, the director used my name in the trade papers.'

2001        Demonlover [Olivier Assayas] s35+s16-to-s35/c; 2uc: Yorick Le Saux; aph: Santiago Navarrete

2002        The Clearing [Pieter Jan Brugge] c; 2uc: Monty Rowan

2003        Intent [Mary Ann Marino] c; short/14m

2003        Control [Tim Hunter] c; 2uc: Andrej Certov & Emil Topuzov; uwph: Stefan Todorov

2004        Entre ses mains/In His Hands [Anne Fontaine] c

2005        Paris, je t'aime [seg '14th arrondissement' dir by Alexander Payne] c

2005        88 Minutes [Jon Avnet] s35/c; addph: Uta Briesewitz & Francis Kenny

2006        Angel/The Real Life of Angel Deverell [François Ozon] c

2007        The Moon and Sixpence [Christopher Hampton] announced; status unknown

2007        Righteous Kill [Jon Avnet] s35/c; 2uc: Luke Geissbuhler

2008        The Vintner's Luck [Niki Caro] scope/c; inserts ph: Sébastien Tran

2009        Carlos [, le film] [Olivier Assayas] ts/c; cph: Yorick Le Saux; comp of 3-part tv-miniseries