Peter Suschitzky

Maps to the Stars marked Peter Suschitzky eleventh film with director David Cronenberg, four of which have won Suschitzky Genie Awards for Best Cinematography: Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Crash and Eastern Promises. Their other collaborations to date are Cosmopolis, A Dangerous Method, A History of Violence, Spider, eXistenZ and M. Butterfly.

The son of cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky, Peter Suschitzky was born and raised in London. Although music was his passion, he decided that cinematography would become his profession. After studying his trade in Paris at IDHEC, he became a clapper boy at age 19 and a cameraman at 21, spending a year in South America shooting documentaries before shooting his first feature film at age 22 – making him the youngest cinematographer ever to lens a feature picture (Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's It Happened Here) in Britain.

Since then, Suschitzky has worked with filmmakers all over the world as director of photography on such memorable movies as Irvin Kershner's The Empire Strikes Back; Jim Sharman's The Rocky Horror Picture Show; and Peter Watkins' Privilege and The Peace Game. In addition to David Cronenberg, Peter Suschitzky has enjoyed multiple collaborations with John Boorman (on Leo the Last and Where the Heart Is, which earned him the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Cinematography) and Ken Russell (on Lisztomania and Valentino, which earned him BAFTA and British Society of Cinematography Award nominations), among other directors.

Among the other notable films that he has shot are Albert Finney's Charlie Bubbles; Ulu Grosbard's Falling in Love; Howard Franklin's The Public Eye; George Sluizer's The Vanishing (1993); Bernard Rose's Immortal Beloved; Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!; Randall Wallace's The Man in the Iron Mask; and Anand Tucker's Shopgirl.

Suschitzky is a keen stills photographer and had shows as part of the Lisbon Estoril Film Festival in 2011 and Paris in 2010.

Starmaps Productions