"Recently, television equipment tycoons have announced that they are discontinuing the production of television sets supporting 3D. Films in this technology are still but a small fraction of the entire body of films which are produced worldwide. Why is there a 3D block at Camerimage?

Cinema has undergone a number of technological revolutions. Many new inventions and technological innovations were rejected by the public or dubbed threats to film-making. The first screenings by the Lumière brothers were rather discouraging, since they were treated as yet another form of unsophisticated entertainment. It seemed that it had no chance of appealing to artists. Nowadays people have the same doubts about 3D technology. There are some who are still enthusiastic about the future of 3D cinema, and there are those who have discarded it as unbearable on the eyes.

The beginnings of the three-dimensional illusion date back to late 16th century (the work by Giambattista della Porta). However, the origins of 3D cinema are in stereoscopic photography and anaglyph graphics, which appeared in mid-19th century (Charles Wheatstone, Luis Arthur Duclos). The first significant attempts at making use of this invention in film-making date back to the early-20th century - screenings of one-act films in 1915 in New York, the Power of Love from 1927, the feature films Nozze Vagabonde by Sante Bonaldo (Italy, 1936), Robinson Cruzoe by Aleksander Andrzejewski (USSR, 1946) or Dial M for Murder by Alfred Hitchcock (USA, 1954). Nowadays we have IMAX and 3D television technologies.

The 3D Competition at the Camerimage festival is an invitation to our guests to discuss the future of this technology. We would like the artists and engineers to sum up and evaluate selected 3D films and talk about the future perspectives of this technology. We want to ask questions and, perhaps by reaching a bit further into the future, present our vision of cinema and television or, in even broader terms, the broadcasting of 3D films on the internet.

Is the future about expanding the boundaries of visual illusion to entirely surround the viewer, even from all angles? Will film characters, avatars or holographic phantoms pass by or through us, taking part in the action of the film in which we, the viewers, will also be in the middle of, or which we might even take part in? There is plenty of space for being imaginative and what a challenge for the engineers! Will there be 3D or holographic cinema? Interactive cube-3D cinema and television (let me suggest cube-cinema and cube-TV)? Let us talk about the primitive yet promising beginnings of 3D cinema we are witnessing today!"

Marek Żydowicz, Camerimage director

Here is the line-up of 3D Competition at Camerimage 2013:

• Avatar, cin. Mauro Fiore, dir. James Cameron
  
  
• Cave of Forgotten Dreams, cin. Peter Zeitlinger, dir. Werner Herzog
  
  
• Life of Pi, cin. Claudio Miranda, dir. Ang Lee
  
  
• Gravity, cin. Emmanuel Lubezki, dir. Alfonso Cuarón
  
  
• Oz: The Great and Powerful, cin. Peter Deming, dir. Sam Raimi
  
  
• Great Gatsby, The, cin. Simon Duggan, dir. Baz Luhrmann
  
  
• Pina, cin. Hélene Louvart, dir. Wim Wenders
  
  
• Storm Surfers 3D, cin. Dave Maguire, dir. Christopher Nelius