A trust between director and cinematographer is one of the key aspects of the process of filmmaking, both on and off the set. This relationship influences not only the way film would be lit and the overall visual coherence of a given project, but also using the potential of other departments to its fullest - giving costumes the proper color treatment, making the intricacy of production design more visible, showing the richness of props, etc. History of film knows many such high-valued duets whose collaboration resulted in countless memorable scenes and brilliantly told stories. From its earliest editions the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography CAMERIMAGE awards the greatest cinematographer - director duets, honoring both their creativity and passion, and their ability to reach compromise and realizing their joint vision. We are very pleased to inform that this year's Cinematographer - Director Duo Award will be handed over to Roberto Schaefer and Marc Forster. During over a decade of collaboration they have made eight diverse but always well-thought and superbly realized films.

Roberto Schaefer and Marc Forster;
photo by Karen Ballard, and Phil Bray
They know each other so well that they could work in silence, but they always invest their time and imagination in several weeks long preparation period during which they think about the given project's visual style and draw up the schematics of each single scene, with all the camera angles, filters to consider and lenses to be used. On the blueprint of a location, I'll draw in the camera position and direction, specifying the lens and the shot number. Next to that will be a list describing the shot from beginning to end, said Roberto Schaefer in an interview for "American Cinematographer." It's a very good way of working because we communicate to the crew exactly what we want. Our first assistant director can use the pages to do a lot of the logistical planning, and that gives me time to work with the actors, added Marc Forster in the same piece. Having such an abundance of ideas considering the film to be made, they enter the set with readiness and flexibility - if a scene needs to be modified to become a better part of the whole film, they are not afraid of changing what has been previously written.

Still from "Monster's Ball"
Their collaboration began with Everything Put Together (2000), a tale of a once happy family's emotional disintegration after losing a child. Shot on early digital cameras, the film is raw and harrowing, which only accentuates the emotional honesty with which the story is told. Next came Monster's Ball (2001). Set in the American South, this story of an unexpected romance between a racist prison guard and the Afro-American wife of the last prisoner he executed, displayed a wide range of the filmmakers' skills in emotionally complicated storytelling and their incredible sensitivity. The film's success made Forster and Schaefer recognizable within the film industry which lead to the creation of Finding Neverland (2004) - a semi-biographical story about the playwright J.M. Barrie while writing the original "Peter Pan." It did not avoid poignant moments and difficult themes, but above all, it gave the duo the possibility of demonstrating the power of human imagination - both through careful use of colors and light as well as staging and shot composition. For their work Roberto Schaefer was nominated to BAFTA and Marc Forster to BAFTA and Golden Globe.


Still from "Finding Neverland"
Year after Finding Neverland's success Forster and Schaefer made a thriller called Stay, a surreal journey into the darkest corners of the human mind. The filmmakers used the golden opportunity and created a labyrinthine game of illusions, intricately designed to play with the perception of the viewers who have no idea of what is real and what's only a figment of their imagination. It was such a mind-bender that many movie lovers watched it several times to understand what was happening on the screen and to feast their eyes on the perfectly realized visuals. Stranger Than Fiction (2006) was very similar in the way Schaefer and Forster balanced on the line between reality and fiction. Its main character suddenly becomes a protagonist of a novel written with much difficulty by a certain writer - he is a slave of her unlimited imagination. Next year the duo made the more realistic The Kite Runner, based on Khaled Hosseini's novel. It was a tale of an Afghan boy and the hardships and positive moments of his life. Machine Gun Preacher (2011), the true story of an ex-criminal who becomes an activist fighting for the better future of children in Sudan, was also shot with reality in mind.

Still from "Quantum of Solace"
Before that, in 2008, the duo took their biggest challenge - making Quantum of Solace, the second James Bond movie with Daniel Craig in the main role. Forster and Schaefer made a film that was fast on action, impressive on visual effects and eye-catching in terms of exotic locations used, but at the same time they imprinted their own style on the series. Their Bond movie is a mixture of old elegance and modern style, with some unexpected lyricism added to some of the scenes. Eight films, eight masterly told stories, eight wonderful projects in terms of cinematography. We are proud that Roberto Schaefer and Marc Forster will soon come to Bydgoszcz to accept the Cinematographer - Director Duo Award and join the ranks of great filmmakers that took this distinction in the past.