We have the great pleasure to announce, that in 2009 the Cinematographer - Director Duo Award goes to Vittorio Storaro - Carlos Saura.

On the set of Goya in Bordeaux


THE GREAT DUO

Carlos Saura and Vittorio Storaro are genuine masters of their craft. Saura (born 1932) reinvigorated Spanish cinema after years of stagnation. Storaro (born 1940), an Italian cinematographer, is acknowledged as one of the three greatest contemporary cinematographers, awarded the Camerimage Golden Frog in 1994. What is it that makes the results of their artistic collaboration so stunning and unique?

Before they first collaborated on a documentary film Flamenco, Saura had often demonstrated his extraordinary sensitivity to the visuality of cinema. He was born in an artistic family with his mother a pianist and his older brother, Antonio, an eminent painter, and he wrote of his admiration for such artists as Hieronymus Bosch and Francisco Goya. He became known through a series of masterpieces rooted in the fate of Spanish society. Because he was working under the strict censorship of the Francoist regime, he had to develop an allusive and figurative style (like Wajda in Poland), where one character could be seen to represent Spain and others the traditional plagues of militarism, feudalism and clericalism. After the death of General Franco, when he could have expressed himself freely about social reality, he surprised his fans by making a radical move towards the problems and dilemmas of the individual. His friendship with the great dancer and choreographer Gades yielded three dance films, Bodas de sangre, Carmen, and El amor brujo, where the composition of the frame is one of the films’ best assets.

Vittorio Storaro is the son of a projectionist and as a young boy he discovered the world of film in his father’s cinema. After studying photography, he decided to move into cinematography, appreciating the integral closeness of the two arts. He developed his talent under Bernardo Bertolucci, filming his Strategia del ragno and The Conformist. His control of the camera’s movements and the nuances of colour is masterly. Using these skills, he endeavoured to bring a picture of the fascist epoch to the screen remaining historically faithful but in a way that would long remain in the audience’s memory. Similarly in Last Tango in Paris (Ultimo tango a Parigi) and Apocalyse Now (for which he received an Oscar), it was not so much the action itself that was important to him as finding the most telling images of it.

When in 1995 they first collaborated on the film Flamenco it was evident to the critics that they had the same attitude (not as common as might be expected) that the art of cinematography is the basis of cinema, that a film is what you see. Flamenco, the first of five collaborations so far, has no plot, but is an unrivalled demonstration of the brilliance of the Spanish dance, an ideal marriage of choreography and film. The feature film Tango raised the level even higher. Filmed in Argentina, the home of the dance, it could have been over-sentimental. However, the love story was treated with amusing irony, while Storaro’s shots showed how many genuine tremblings of the heart can be expressed through the rhythmic movement of the tango, the movement at the heart of cinema. After the less characteristic anti-fascist Taxi, Goya (1999) was tangible evidence of the admiration in which Saura held the artist. Even so, Goya’s death and the retrospective of his reminiscences were so dominated by Storaro’s cinematographic style that the film about the painter became a pictorial film in the fullest sense.

Director – cinematographer. A relationship which can work well or not so well. Even the relationship between two distinguished practitioners can fail when their qualities differ or contradict each other. In this case they match perfectly, hence the results.



Vittorio Storaro and Carlos Saura have presently been collaborating for the sixth time on the film Flamenco Flamenco.


Filmography:

• 2009: I, Don Giovanni
• 1999: Goya in Bordeaux
• 1998: Tango
• 1996: Taxi
• 1995: Flamenco