Dany Boon

Dany Boon (French pronunciation: ​[dani bun]; born Daniel Hamidou; 26 June 1966) is a French comedian and filmmaker who has acted both on the stage and the screen. He takes his stage name from the television show Daniel Boone.

Life and career

Dany Boon, born to an Algerian Kabyle father and a French mother from the north of the country first started his career dubbing cartoons and performing as a mime in the street. In 1992, he was given his first break as a comedian by French television personality Patrick Sébastien, who invited him on his show. From then on Boon began to achieve notoriety with his sketches and his one-man shows.

He was then offered several roles in movies, notably in the film Joyeux Noël that made it on the international scene in 2005.

Boon is deeply attached to his native region, Nord-Pas-de-Calais. In 2003, he made a whole show in the local dialect of ch'ti, also known as Picard. Despite the use of dialectal language, 600,000 copies of the DVD (which included French subtitles) were sold. No previous DVD featuring a one-man show had sold as well in France. In February 2008, he released a film called Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, a comedy based on prejudices held about the region, which went on to break French box-office records. Two weeks after its release the film had already been seen by five million people. After its fourth week this figure had risen to 15 million, and by 11 April, the film had surpassed the viewing audience of La Grande Vadrouille, having been watched by more than 17.4 million people.

Film

A film, also called a movie, motion picture or photoplay, is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images due to the phi phenomenon. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession. A film is created by photographing actual scenes with a motion picture camera; by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques; by means of CGI and computer animation; or by a combination of some or all of these techniques and other visual effects. The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to the industry of films and filmmaking or to the art of filmmaking itself. The contemporary definition of cinema is the art of simulating experiences to communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty or atmosphere by the means of recorded or programmed moving images along with other sensory stimulations.

The process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry.