Lara began his professional career in Paris, France as a journalist for
Le Figaro, a French daily
newspaper. As of 1973, he turned film-maker, directing his first movie,
Jeu de dames (en:
Dames play), starring
Georges de Caunes. That same year, following a then Parisian trend for
erotic films, Lara directed
Les Infidèles (en:
The unfaithfulls), from a screenplay written by French
erotic films director Daniel Daërt (born Jacques Godaert). The two men renewed their collaboration a year after, Lara working as
camera operator on Daërt's ninth porn film,
Cours du soir pour monsieur seul (en:
Night classes for lonely men). Lara produced a more personal project with French actor
Jacques Weber and newcomer
Anne Parillaud:
Un Amour de sable (en:
Sandy Love), released in 1976. Aware of the lack of visibility of his fellow
Creole people on French movie screens, Lara soon engaged in creating a truly
Antillean cinema. In this, he was following the advice legendary
cinematographer Ingmar Bergman once gave him, at the time of a three-month stay in
Sweden:
"Only film what you truly know!" For the first feature of his series of
Guadeloupean films, Lara wrote a storyline set during election time in his home island, calling upon
Guadeloupean actors
Greg Germain (at the time the new star of
Médecins de nuit, a French
medical drama television series) and
Robert Liensol (an experienced movie actor) to star in the film. Overcoming ambient scepticism and the many difficulties attached to its production,
Coco la Fleur, candidate was released on 14 February 1979, and received acclaim both in continental France and its
overseas dependencies. Several films followed, among them
Mamito, the portrayal of a grandmother caught in the social inadequacies of a former
French overseas colony that became a full-fledged
department of France. Released in 1980, the movie was already raising issues that would be brought up 30 years later during
Guadeloupe's 2009 general strike. as is apparent from Christian Lara's subsequent historical
feature films. First, in
Vivre libre ou mourir (en:
Live Free or Die Hard), Oruno Lara is credited as original screenwriter. Secondly, Lara himself acknowledges his grandfather's heritage in 1998 when
Sucre amer (en:
Bittersweet) is released; and again in 2004, when ''
1802, l'Épopée guadeloupéenne premiered in France on 10 May, the very day of the National Celebration of the Abolition of Slavery. Several of his recent films, such as The Legend
and Summer in Provence'' feature French actress
Mi Kwan Lock in the leading roles. Lara died on 9 September 2023, at the age of 84. == Filmography as a director ==