The 30th edition of the Camerimage Film Festival, Europe’s premier cinematography event, will welcome a host of celebrity guests to the gothic Polish city of Torun, including Adam Driver, Sean Penn and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences CEO Bill Kramer.
Driver and Penn will screen their latest films, the high-octane biopic “Ferrari” and the portrait of Eastern Europe’s most remarkable wartime president, Volodymyr Zelensky, “Superpower”.
As regular visitors to the festival have learnt, the screening calendar is as important to study as the schedule of panels, seminars and masterclasses. That’s because, for the time being, Camerimage, with its limited space, strategically holds filmmaker talks after the screenings, often in the same auditorium of the Jordanki cinema.
This means that opening night audiences who linger after Camerimage’s screening of Robbie Ryan’s ‘Poor Things’, Yorgos Thanthimos’ Frankenstein-esque tale starring Emma Stone, will be able to ask the cinematographer himself how he shot this visually arresting film.
Similarly, audiences attending the next day’s screening of Pablo Larrain’s dark fantasy based on the life of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, “El Conde”, will hear from two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Ed Lachman in the same room.
“Saltburn’s cinematographer Linus Sandgren will also discuss shooting the Emerald Fennell-directed black comedy in the Jordanki.
Of course, the panels in the lecture halls will also address the most pressing concerns of the cinematography profession. “Some will talk about AI,” says festival organiser Kazik Suwala, “while others will address larger issues such as the importance of film culture centres. This topic, which Kramer will address, will draw on lessons learned from the massive new AMPAS museum project that will open its doors in Los Angeles in 2021. Kramer’s talk will address the issue of audiences with less and less time to spend with film, and strategies for providing experiences that offer multiple forms of engagement in one venue.
It’s a lesson that Camerimage is already acting on, says Suwala, with its ongoing investment and development of the European Film Centre, which he will direct. The project is planned around a similar approach to that advocated by Kramer.
Further opportunities to inspire Camerimage’s many emerging filmmakers will be provided by guests Rebecca Miller, writer, actor and director of “She Came to Me” and “The Ballad of Jack and Rose”, and director Floria Sigismondi, who is to be celebrated for her outstanding work in music videos – a field the festival has long honoured with competitive awards.
Provocative director Jeff Gibbs, whose YouTube-released climate change documentary Planet of the Humans, produced by Michael Moore, rocked boats in 2019, will also speak, encouraging filmmakers to go beyond the traditional conventions of the genre.
Gibbs promises to coach filmmakers on how to create work “that will be seen by millions and just might change the world”, while Oscar-winning cinematographer Peter Biziou will share insights from a career spanning “Bugsy Malone”, “Pink Floyd – The Wall” and “The Truman Show”.
Other talks by luminaries such as Walter Murch, editor of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and sound designer for Apocalypse Now (often credited with coining the term), are also expected to fill the halls, while events hosted by camera, lighting and filmmaking technology companies will bring cinematographers of all stripes up to date with the latest offerings.
