Kasia Taras
Alchemy. About the Art of Cinematography
Nostalgia and Servitude
As far as the festival of the art of cinematography is concerned, I am a true senior, if not a veteran. I still remember the first, and thus the closest to the heart, edition. The one in Toruń.

Precisely out of this enriching, although sometimes painful experience of "being a veteran", and out of the fact that people whose films I admired like ... umpteen years ago both in Toruń and Łódź, are renowned cinematographers or directors too busy for interviews, an idea was born to reminisce together on the occasion of the 20th edition of the festival. To talk about people's associations with Camerimage, or rather Plus Camerimage now, to ask what films, workshops, meetings in the foyer and the festival club they remember till the present today.

Festival posters
One of the most significant values of this festival (maybe even the most significant one) was brilliantly, although descriptively summed up by one of my interlocutors: “I came first to Toruń as an ordinary man, then I came to Łódź as a student, and in Bydgoszcz my film was in the competition for the second time." And why did I write that my experience had been painful from time to time? Apart from the new experience - realizing that time passes by and spares nobody. Not even those, who deal with film - a mean to embalm time.

At the festival in Toruń I was a student; to hospitable, yet not as red-brick Bydgoszcz I brought my seminar students. Twenty years is not just anything. And how is it possible not to be nostalgic? I know, it's about generations again, but this festival is connected exactly with an initiation into a cinema of a certain generation. Cinematographers, critics, film scholars, and ordinary-extraordinary viewers. To make it less teary, a little bit of maliciousness - my interlocutors started to get grumpy when I made them realize it's already the 20th edition; thus, not only women react bad to the ticking of the clock.

This pain attacking me every year at the turn of November and December was connected with the necessity to make decisions - what to choose (I hope my student won't read that): a test in the history of language or a festival screening? Should I go to the festival club to finish the conversation about what I had just seen? Or should I stay, as Sven Nykvist is about to come or a new Ken Loach's film will be shown? I was always ending in the assembly hall of Nicolaus Copernicus University. It was more mature in Łódź - I didn't have to play truant.

If there was a plebiscite for a film which impressed my interlocutors most, Lars von Trier'sBreaking the Waves, presented in 1997, with Robby Mueller's cinematography would be unbeatable. I still have goose bumps when thinking about this film. It's not that frequent to feel as united as we did while watching the credits until the very last letter; then, probably still in darkness, thunderous applause broke out. Never again have I experienced anything like this. But what did we love this film for? We probably loved Robby Mueller and von Trier a bit less. Nevertheless, meetings with Mueller were mentioned most often when I was asking about the most important festival discussion. I'm not surprised about it as I gave in to his charisma and modesty myself. Even the conversation with Hoyte van Hoytema about cinematography in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by Tomas Alfredson (oh, this marvelous film grain, this stylization for ORWO photographic film) ended in our admiration and paying homage to Robby Mueller.

Still from "Breaking the Waves"
We fell in love with Breaking the waves not only for the accompanying, almost breathing together with the characters camera. My interviewees say it's a standard today but back then we saw it for the first time. (And how is it possible not to be nostalgic - avant-garde then, classic trick nowadays...) We fell for this extraordinary servitude of cinematography in the presence of an unusual story.

Exactly, servitude. That's the notion I didn't come up with last year in the article initiating the present cycle while trying to explain what “good cinematography" means. Good cinematography needs to serve the story. And the character. Not only my peers, encouraged by me to reminisce, took notice of this, but also people with whom I talked at last year's festival, people who were lighting up Elisabeth Taylor or Jack Nicholson. Servitude is an integral part of being a cinematographer. And also humility, not to be confused with the lack of awareness of own value, it's not about that at all. Those most experienced drew my attention to humility when I asked them at which moment manipulating a camera and lamps becomes art... And it must have been Michael Mann's (but also Olmi's and Tornatore's) associate who replied: “What art?"

Still from "Cyclo"
But let's go back to the festival memories. The second frequently mentioned film was Anh Hung Tran'sCyclo" with Benoit Delhomme and Laurence Tremolete's cinematography, shown in 1995. This film is unforgettable due to misleading a viewer: we can see grass, so we expect a meadow, it turns out, though, that the characters' conversation takes place on a terrace. It also tells in a poetical and visually alluring way about the bad world filled with violence. The third mentioned film was Mathieu Kassovitz'sHate with Pierre Aim's cinematography, presented in the same year with one of the craziest transfocation I've ever seen. Finally Thomas Vinterberg'sFesten with Anthony Dod Mantle's cinematography, the first certified “Dogma" presented as a premiere (!) in Poland. Some just walked out from this screening, others couldn't believe what they saw, yet others fell in love with the controlled transgression of the cinematographer's workshop. I guess I don't have to add that different generations comprised the audience.

Still from "Hate"
I don't know whether it can be said that the abovementioned titles imprinted in the films of cinematographers my age? Future theorists of the art of cinematography will most certainly check it. I only wanted to make you realize what we became imbued with and what shaped us. Good films with visual intensity and moving stories in common; films whose authors still had something important to say.

I finish my article missing the 90s again but this is what that cinema was like. And isn't such portion of nostalgia forgivable in the face of the festival's 20th edition approaching?