1968 in Paris renewed my options. There was suddenly a desire of inventing new things, and I while I was working as an editor, the assistant editor thought I had a gift, and when he shot his own film, he hired me as his assistant camera, and I trained myself to do the light for him.
Babette MangolteWhat interested me in film was the image-making aspect of it. So, I went to school in cinematography. I was really convinced that image was what I wanted to do, and I think it came from the fact that I lived in a small town my whole life, but my mother was very interested in painting, so she would bring us to Paris for two weeks. So, we're going to the Louvre and to the museums and to see shows. In the evening we were seeing theater. Painting is basically what led me. I think the image was key.
Babette MangolteWhen the cinematography school told me I would have no chance to get a job, I said, "It's irrelevant." My mom was a feminist in the '20s. She taught me to be on my own, to be independent, to do what I wanted to do. I did not believe it would be difficult. It was difficult. In '66, I almost starved for a year and a half, and the only way I did not starve was because I could not find a job in camera, but I found a job in editing.
Babette MangolteIn the '60s when I started to see everything I could see, you could see pretty much everything which was still available from the '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, and therefore I had an education which was really large and vast in different cinema. That's probably the reason I did not fall for the New Wave. It's really the love of the movies that made me want to become a cameraperson, definitely. I was really a film buff.
Babette MangolteWe had been affected by the fact that the film world was a man's world in Europe as much as here, in America actually.
Babette Mangolte