ELEPHANT by GUS VAN SANT : An Avant-Garde Approach to Cinematography Elephant (2003) is a movie based on Columbine High School massacre which occured on April 20, 1999. Directed,written and edited by Gus Van Sant and won the Palme D’or at 2003 on Cannes Film Festival. It emphasises on the last minutes of the students who got killed as well as the last hours of the killers. Gus Van Sant is an American independent movie director best known for My Own Private Idaho on 1991 , Good Will Hunting on 1997 and Milk on 2011. He is a director ‘’[..] who is capable of crafting both deeply unconventional independent films and mainstream crowd- pleaser. ‘’ (Rebecca, 2010) 1 He claims that there are ‘’six golden rules’’ of film making on his interview with ‘’Movie Maker’’ 2 which are ‘’ producers, stand up for your ideas , money paranoia, actors , script and photography’’ . He says that ‘’ you need to be strong’’ against producers, that ‘’ they wont understand until the film is finished’’ as well as how you should stand up for your ideas, that you can control the money issues and be direct as a director and be confident about your film. His ideas about ‘’ actors, script and photography’’ gives a direct link to the core of his filmmaking. He takes actors as ‘’ helpless people’’ and just like the ‘’ the script’’ and ‘’ photography’’ he gives them all a free space to improvise and get involved on the film not just as actors but also as actors who can contribute to the film with their own ideas. The movie elephant is a death triology which includes, Gerry (2002) , Elephant (2003) and Last Days (2005). All those tree movies are not easy to watch and embrace death in a very unique and minimalist way. In the article ‘’ Nothing Happens to Noone’’ by Holly Myers she explains why director’s death triology is that mysterious. ‘’ Like the two subsequent films —Elephant (2003), based on the 1999 Columbine High School shootings, and Last Days (2005), a fictionalized account of the death of Kurt Cobain—Gerry cuts through the shock, the bafflement, the extravagant displays of empathy and moralistic hand-wringing that invariably characterizes Hollywood and the media’s treatment of death-stories by dispensing with the basic conventions of narrative and character. Van Sant does not sensationalize. Instead, in each film we see plot distilled to a single, profound arc: the slow, strange transition of a body from being alive to not being alive. Taking the silence, the mystery, the 1 New York Times / Movie and Television : hp://www.nymes.com/movies/person/1548269/Gus-van-Sant/biography 2 hp://www.moviemaker.com/arcles-direcng/gus-van-sant-6-golden-rules-of-moviemaking/ Wrien by Gus Van Sant as a part of the interview.