Kurant began as a documentary cameraman[2] before establishing himself as a director of photography for such filmmakers as Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Orson Welles, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jerzy Skolimowski, Chris Marker, Maurice Pialat, and Louis C.K.
Kurant lived in Liège until the age of eight, when, due to World War II, he was forced to move to the Belgian countryside with his older sister and her husband.
[3] Kurant began his career as a cameraman in 1954, when he spent six months in the Belgian Congo as part of a documentary film crew.
There, he worked as first assistant cameraman to English cinematographers Geoffrey Unsworth (on A Night to Remember), Harry Waxman (on Innocent Sinners) and Jack Hildyard (on The Gypsy and the Gentleman).
In the 1980s, he worked on two films with director Maurice Pialat: A Nos Amours, from which Kurant was fired after two weeks of shooting,[3] and the Palme d'Or-winning Under the Sun of Satan.
[2] Later in his career, Kurant shot a handful of films in the United States, including The Baby-Sitters Club and Pootie Tang.