Kasia Taras
Alchemy. About the Art of Cinematography
Films survived...
The 20th edition does not so much provoke memories as it forces them. I have already written about the generation of cinematographers. Yet I have not written enough about films, while the festival is, above all, about films. And the audience, though it is not polite to write about oneself even if there is a lot to cover. How we integrated, quarreled, undermined one another's competence and attacked sensitivity. Never had I been scorned harsher than for not admiring the film with an opening sequence remarkable for all cinematographers I know. I am not a cinematographer, though. The choice mentioned below is extremely personal, as usual, but being the festival's veteran I am entitled to it. The text will not treat of all films, not even of all awarded ones - it will be about those films with which I associate the festival, about those which give credit to people adding flesh and blood to movies, about titles I can enumerate woken up in the middle of the night after climbing Świnica. Everyone has his or her own Camerimage, or Plus Camerimage, which value consists also in its offer, which could never be treated indifferently.

The questions: “What films do you associate Camerimage, later Plus Camerimage, with?" and “did anything change in the art of cinematography over the past years?" are interconnected. Maybe some new technology became popular? Or maybe the members of the jury pointed out something we would not notice alone? Or maybe we remember some films without their suggestion, or even contrary to it?

Golden Frog at the 1st edition of the festival went to Stuart Dryburgh for his cinematography to The Piano by Jane Campion. It was a lesson of excellent cinema! Few words spoken due to the main character's distinctness and because of the fact that good cinema does not need talking. Jane Campion, Stuart Dryburgh, Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel proved to be masters in creating the mood of not intrusive yet convincing eroticism. They confirmed that imagination is a viewer's most significant organ, thus skillfully framed hole in a stocking on which somebody is drawing a finger, can be more impressive than a bunch of naked people running to and fro.

Still from "The Piano"
Dick Pope, however, reminded us that the evidence for the individual character and uniqueness of the film art is - I will quote a classic again, although inaccurately - “a naked face in the motion of feelings". It seems to be the main idea of this outstanding British cinematographer who has a documentary background and likes to operate the camera himself. And it is not surprising - if he focuses on faces, then he wants to be close to the characters, he wants to react to all nuances of their behaviour, and the camera treated as additional part of body enables it. In 1996 Dick Pope was awarded with Golden Frog for cinematography to Secrets and Lies by Mike Leigh. The fact they are a dream team was confirmed in 2004 when the same duet was awarded for Vera Drake.

In 1997 Rogier Stoffers received Golden Frog for Character (directed by Mike van Diem), the film in which the impossible was obtained: the reconstruction of lighting conditions from the epoch turned into psychological illumination, thanks to which the story about the competition between the father and the son transformed into a biblical parable about a vengeful, yet wise, patriarch. It is also worth mentioning Gary Oldman's debut as a director, namely Nil by Mouth, awarded in the same year with Bronze Frog, with neurotic cinematography by Ron Fortunato which inspired as many etudes as Breaking the Waves by Lars von Trier - the film most strongly associated, and not only by me, with Camerimage (I have already written about it). (I hate the notion “cult film" as it became a key-word rendering everything infantile). This story of violence within a family, or rather about the reasons of violence, about this “nil by mouth", that is not communicating to others that we love them, could not be told differently, more peacefully. The camera had to be freed as stability would falsify the taken up problem.

Still from "Secrets and Lies"
Elizabeth (cinematography by Remi Adefarasin, directed by Shekhar Kapur), awarded in 1999 with Golden Frog, can be (and it is for my students) a model example of a movie in which light, the way of manipulating colour, and, above all, the work of the camera, serve the female character. The camera dances together with Elisabeth (Cate Blanchett), when she is a girl in love, it slows down, though, when she learns how to be a queen; eventually, it the finale, it points out the character's majesty. It is the most touching sequence in the film: we can hear “Requiem" and the woman ceases to be a human being - she turns into a Madonna. As beautifully written by Grażyna Stachówna in an essay “Elisabeth I - the Woman and the Queen" (“Kwartalnik Filmowy" 45/2004), Adefarasin showed in such a moving way the process of losing (against one's will, out of duty) all that is human. 1999 is also the year when Golden Tadpole (we shall remember that not only masters, but also adepts struggle for awards) was given to Bogumił Godfrejow for cinematography to Claire, one of the two etudes I cannot forget till today.

The year 2000, however, was a triumph of vibrating, hallucinatory, so intensive that perceived not only with eyes but with the whole body, Amores Perros (directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu). This film let viewers notice that Rodrigo Prieto is a master of creating images replete with emotions, passion and desperation. Lust, Caution only confirmed this feeling.

Still from "Amores Perros"
Finally the year 2002, a breakthrough (almost a shock), although a well-deserved award. It was then when “the digit" was introduced as Golden Frog was presented ex aequo to Conrad L. Hall for his substantial and beautiful tribute to film noir, that is to Road to Perdition (directed by Sam Mendes), and to Krzysztof Ptak for his inconspicuous Edi (directed by Piotr Trzaskalski). The awards given in the past two years are a perfect evidence that “the digit" feels good among “high society" - both Venice (Golden Frog for Artur Reinhart in 2010) and In Darkness (Golden Frog for Jolanta Dylewska last year) were shot with RED camera. The discussions taking place in the 90s and at the beginning of the third millennium in the foyer of the hall of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, in the Grand Theatre in Łódź, or in the festival clubs, did not foreshadow anything like that. One meeting in particular engraved in my memory, or rather a person who kept repeating like a maniac (yet with certain charm) that film reel is crucial.

When in 2009 Golden Frog was given to Lebanon (cinematography by Giora Bejach, directed by Samuel Maoz), I wondered how far people experimenting with limiting space will go. Much of the action was taking place in a tank, the inside of which I could not perceive as particularly photogenic, but... we did not have to wait long for one step further - in 2010 Bronze Frog was given to Eduard Grau for Buried, the film with action located in a very claustrophobic, yet cleverly illuminated, inside.

Still from "Buried"
In the present article I omitted on purpose most of the successes of Polish cinematographers as I owe them a separate text. Likewise, I owe an article to all my interlocutors as the festival is also a place of disobliging yet truly creative meetings. I only fear the fact it would all get too personal. That is boring.