"Cameflex Amiens" Festival, first edition

In a context where the current shift towards digital cinematography has raised a lot of questions from a technical and aesthetic point of view, we believed it was important to provide perspective on a profession that is largely unknown to the public. The Amiens Festival began addressing this topic a few years ago with its homage to Haskell Wexler (ASC) and Guillermo Navarro, for example, and with its broad retrospective last year on Mexican cinematographers (from Gabriel Figueroa to the present).
The AFC’s membership is composed of many cinematographers and in many different ways, contributes to informing the public on the great art of light. This is why we have decided to join forces to create “Cameflex Amiens,” which we intend to be an annual event.

Every year, “Cameflex Amiens” will honour the work of a cinematographer by organizing a retrospective on his or her major films. This homage will involve a number of events, such as a “master class” directed by cinema schools and open to the public. The featured cinematographer will invite other cinematographers of his choice for a discussion of their respective work.
For its inaugural event, “Cameflex Amiens” has honoured Ricardo Aronovich (AFC, ADF), an aesthete of light, who—from the Latino New Wave of the 1950s to his work with the most prestigious directors of world cinema (Alain Resnais, Raoul Ruiz, Ettore Scola, Andrej Zulawski)—has been recognized as one of the great masters of his art. Ricardo Aronovich has enhanced the retrospective with a dozen of his best films and has led a discussion with his guests Georges Lechaptois (Belle épine, Augustine, The Passenger) and Gérard de Battista (AFC) (La Petite Lili, Venus Beauté Institut, Thérèse Desqueyroux).

Fabien Gaffez
Artistic director of the Amiens International Film Festival