Festivals, Screenings and Awards

Extending rather than recreating the cult film by Nicholas Roeg, The Man who Fell to Earth – in which David Bowie plays an alien on Earth looking for a way to save his own planet – the eponymous TV series is a readaptation of the original novel that introduces a good dose of modernity. The impeccable British actor of Nigerian origin Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things, 12 Years a Slave...) lends his features to the visitor from another galaxy, while Noémie Harris (the mother in the film Moonlight) plays the Earthling who will be forced to accompany him on his mission. The screenplay by Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet of course seizes the opportunity to show the social reality of present-day America, like an echo of the science-fiction short story that centers the theme of the foreigner.
Tommy Maddox-Upshaw ASC is the mind behind the images. He discusses with us the challenges involved in filming this series, a Spanish-British coproduction, which has been broadcast since April 2022 on Showtime. (FR)

In making the decision to produce a new adaptation of the greatest classic of Swedish literature, Norwegian filmmaker Erik Poppe (Utoya: July 22) had his work cut out for him. Because Jan Troell already made a screen adaptation in 1971 starring Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman, then the two most famous Swedish and international film stars, it’s not an easy thing to make a contemporary remake… However, when you watch the film, you have to admit they’ve done a pretty good job in proposing a modern version of a classic tale in which the currently relevant themes of migration, women’s rights, and religion infuse each scene. John Christian Rosenlund, FNF, was in charge of the lighting on this saga, with an often-minimalistic staging.

Selected in the “Director’s debut” competition, The Quiet Girl, by Colm Bairéad, is a drama set in rural Ireland in the 1980s, which depicts the life of a young girl whose troubled parents send her to spend the summer with a couple of cousins. This film plays a lot on the unspoken and on a false appearance of distance to better reveal the many secrets at the heart of the story. This very touching portrait of early adolescence is played by the young Catherine Clinch, who radiates talent on screen. It is also the second Gaelic-language film for the Irish director of photography Kate McCullough; the first was the very beautiful Arracht, by Tom Sullivan (at Camerimage in 2020). Note that Kate also has a special link with Poland, since she attended the Łódź film school... (FR)

A good music video is often based on a director’s idea. For “Other Side”, the title of the Austrian electronic music duo Camo & Crooked, director Rupert Höller decided to portray the strange adventure of a young woman aboard her motorhome, which she has parked at the edge of the forest.
In this music video, the lighting plays the same role as an actor in the scenography, offering some quiet fantastic nocturnal atmospheres. Austrian cinematographer Matthias Helldoppler tells us about his method for creating these plays of light... (FR)

Set almost exclusively in a dilapidated and dark apartment, Lorenzo Bianchini’s L’angelo dei muri (The Angel in the Wall) is a strange story mixing present and past, featuring a lonely old man threatened with eviction and new tenants. The result is particularly evocative of, both in its form and its staging, The others, by Alejandro Amenabar (2001). Austrian cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger was behind the camera on this film with few shots a very decisive choreography between actors and camera. A staging of space above all. (FR)

A tribute to Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar, EO, by Jerzy Skolimowski, took everyone by surprise on the first day of competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. At the end of the Fortnight, he won a deserved award from the jury and gave a hilarious speech in which the 84-year-old director thanked his equine actors. To mark the occasion of the screening of this film at Camerimage this year, the film’s cinematographer, Michał Dymek, aged 32, sat down with us to discuss this extraordinary collaboration situated between a road movie, a visual poem and an animal fable. (FR)

Ernst Leitz Wetzlar GmbH is one of the world’s leading premium cine lens manufacturers with their brand of ‘Leitz Cine Lenses’. At Camerimage, Leitz will be displaying the newest Full Frame primes and the Leitz team will welcome you on its booth.

An initiative of the University of Marburg (Germany), the Marburger Kamerapreis is an annual prize that highlights filmmakers’ work by recognizing exceptional cinematography. Claire Mathon, AFC, will receive the prize this year in recognition of her exemplary and innovative work.

Entries open on 1 May 2022, with new category to celebrate unsung talents. Following a hugely successful debut in2021, nominations are now being invited for the FilmLight Colour Awards 2022. This year’s awards, which will again be presented at EnergaCamerimage in November, include a new category celebrating the work of colourists on lower budget, independent and international features.

“No Man of God” is a behind-closed-doors look into a cell where an FBI agent is interrogating a serial killer. It is an adaptation of authentic recordings made by Bill Hagmaier during his interviews with Ted Bundy. Director Amer Sealey and her DoP Karina Silva implemented directorial and cinematographic strategies to portray these sequences, which are all alike on paper, in order to impart rhythm to the film. “No Man of God” is in competition this year at Torun in the “Cinematographers’ Debuts Competition”. (FR)

Presented in the “Contemporary World Cinema” selection, As In Heaven is the first feature film by Danish director Tea Lindeburg. She worked on this film alongside cinematographer Marcel Zyskind, DFF. This film—starring mainly children, shot in film, low-budget, and dealing with a taboo topic—was, despite all these challenges, a total success, revealing the Marcel Zyskind’s admirable gaze, at once modest and grandiose, in a grainy and sun-filled 35mm. The film navigates between dream and reality, confining itself strictly to a child’s view on events whose scope is beyond her ken and that will nonetheless deeply change her life. The cinematographer, a regular at the festival, and the director were in attendance on Monday to answer the audience’s questions after the film’s first screening. (MC)

From the family of films about the Knights of the Round Table, I choose… The Green Knight! A new variation on the quest theme, that sheds light on the lesser-known character of Sir Gawain (played by Dev Patel, the British actor of Indian descent, who had his breakout role with Slumdog Millionaire). Andrew Droz Palermo, Californian cinematographer, seconds his faithful collaborator, David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, A Ghost Story), in filming this mysterious story that draws as much from the universe of chivalry as from fantasy.

Cinematographer Xavier Dolléans, AFC, partnership with director David Hourrègue is long-standing, and the two have worked together on several series, such as "Cut" (France Ô) and "Skam" (France TV Slash). The duo has built a certain reputation on the back of the success of these programmes, and they attacked their first big-budget project with the same production crew. This project is a new, six-episode adaptation of Zola’s novel Germinal, shot with a 12-million-Euro budget. This series will be broadcast on public television by France Télévisions and is expected to be one of the public service broadcaster’s main attractions of October 2021. This is also a major event for Xavier, who has been selected in competition at Toruń for Best Television Series Image. (FR)

This year, students from the ENS Louis Lumière, La Fémis and CinéFabrique attended the Camerimage festival. Therefore, the AFC has offered them different opportunities of participating in the articles published on this website. In his second article, Clément Colliaux, a 3^rd-year student at the Ecole nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière, takes a look at the tribute entitled “Remembering the Masters” * that was dedicated to Allen Daviau, ASC and Michael Chapman, ASC, in presence of Lawrence Sher, ASC, Seamus McGarvey, BSC, ASC, and Amy Vincent, ASC.

A rare filmmaker, director Jane Campion, is back 12 years after her last film, Bright Star. This time, she has chosen to adapt Thomas Savage’s novel The Power of the Dog, a rivalry between two brothers in which isolation and nature — a ranch in Montana in the 1920s — play a preponderant role. Following in the footsteps of Stuart Dryburgh, ACS, ASC, and Greig Fraser, ACS, ASC, it is now the turn of young DoP Ari Wegner, ACS, to accompany the Australian 1994 Oscar-winning director. Produced by Netflix, The Power of the Dog will be released online on the company’s platform on 1^st December.

For her first film, filmmaker Ameen Nayfeh chose to plunge her viewers into the Kafkaesque experience of daily life in Palestine. Separated from his wife and children by 200 meters (she lives and works on the other side of the wall, in Israel), Mustafa has no choice but to communicate with them every evening by a childish game of turning the lights on and off. But when his son is the victim of an accident, he tries to gain access to the Jewish State by any means possible. Elin Kirschfink, AFC, SBC, was the cinematographer of this audacious testimony, which already received the Audience Award at the Venice Film Festival this year. (FR)

In 2019, the AFC hosted several screenings of a comparative test of lenses designed for standard 18 × 24 format. Presented in Paris at the Cercle Rouge and the Louis-Lumière school, in Poland at the Camerimage Festival and in Los Angeles at the E-Film laboratory, the test examined lenses currently available on the market for sale or rental and was, of course, presented without bias or preference of any kind, regardless of the manufacturers or partners participating in the project.

Along with an exhibition of his photographic work at Toruń’s Center of Contemporary Art, from November 13 to 25, Camerimage will host a "Meeting with Bruno Nuytten," on Wednesday the 17^th at the Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej (CSW) at 6:15 PM.