As I reflect upon the life and work of Lenny Borger, I am deeply moved by his remarkable dedication to the world of cinema, particularly French cinema. His journey from Brooklyn to Paris, abandoning academia for the silver screen, is a testament to the power of passion and curiosity.
Lenny Borger, who functioned as the film critic and Paris representative for EbMaster during the 1980s and tirelessly advocated for French cinema through his research and subtitling work on numerous movies, including Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” passed away in Paris on December 23. He was 73 years old.
Producer Serge Bromberg reported that he died after a long illness.
Born in Brooklyn, Borger later moved to Paris in 1977 to pursue his doctoral studies. However, he gave up on his academic pursuits and instead started covering the French movie industry for ‘EbMaster’. From 1978 until 1990, he served as their correspondent and film critic.
At this period, he additionally started working on creating English subtitles for French movies. It was Bertrand Tavernier who offered him his initial subtitling task, which was for the film “A Week’s Vacation” in 1980.
Film critic and Amazon executive Scott Foundas described Borger as a “medium,” able to breathe new life into films by embodying their linguistic essence for English speakers around the globe.
Borger crafted entirely fresh or extensively updated title descriptions for films directed by the likes of Jean Renoir (“The Grand Illusion”), Jean-Luc Godard (“Breathless,” “Contempt,” “A Woman Is a Woman”), Jules Dassin (“Rififi”), and Jean-Pierre Melville (“Army of Shadows,” “Le Doulos”).
I played a crucial role in unearthing elusive and long-lost French films. Among my discoveries was the nitrate camera negative of Raymond Bernard’s “The Chess Player,” which I found buried in the East German Film Archives. This relic had been concealed by the Nazi occupiers of France during World War II. In Prague, I unearthed Czech distribution prints of Henri Fescourt’s “Monte-Cristo.
Known for his expertise in French cinema, both as a scholar and historian, he arranged seldom-seen French movies for the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy, and collaboratively crafted an overview on Julien Duvivier at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 2015, he was bestowed with the Jean Mitry Award at Pordenone and the Mel Novikoff Award, which recognizes efforts to foster a greater understanding and admiration of global cinema, from the San Francisco Film Festival.
Rachel Rosen, the San Francisco Film Society’s director of programming, noted that the craft of translating dialogue into subtitles is a crucial yet often overlooked art form. It significantly influences an audience’s enjoyment and understanding of a movie. Lenny Borger’s exceptional ability to bring French cinema to life for English-speaking viewers, coupled with his fervor for resurrecting forgotten masterpieces, truly earns him the title of a hidden champion in the realm of global cinema.
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2024-12-23 19:46