The 31st edition of the Camerimage Film Festival, Europe’s top cinematography event, will welcome a host of stellar guests to the Gothic Polish town of Torun, including Adam Driver, Sean Penn and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences CEO Bill Kramer.
Driver and Penn will screen their latest films, respectively, the high-octane biopic “Ferrari” and the portrait of Eastern Europe’s most remarkable wartime president, Volodymyr Zelensky, “Superpower.”
As regular fest guests have learned, the calendar of film screenings is just as important to study as the schedule for panels, seminars and masterclasses. That’s because Camerimage, with limited event space for now, strategically holds filmmaker talks following film projections, often in the same hall of the Jordanki cinema space.
Which means opening-night audiences who linger after Camerimage screens Robbie Ryan-shot “Poor Things,” the Frankenstein-esque fairytale by Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Emma Stone, will be able to quiz the cinematographer himself on how he shot the visually arresting feature.
Likewise, audiences at the next day’s screening of Pablo Larrain’s dark fantasy built around the life of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, “El Conde,” will hear from Larrain and two-time Oscar-nommed lenser Ed Lachman in the same hall.
“Saltburn” cinematographer Linus Sandgren will be talking about the filming of the Emerald Fennell-directed black comedy in the Jordanki, and cinematographer Pedro Luque and director J.A. Bayona will present “Society of the Snow.”
Panels in lecture halls, of course, will be addressing the most pressing concerns in the cinematography profession, as well. “Some will be talking about AI,” says fest organizer Kazik Suwala, while others will address larger issues such as the importance of film culture centers. That subject, to be addressed by Kramer, will draw on lessons gleaned from the vast new AMPAS museum project, which opened its doors in Los Angeles in 2021. Kramer’s talk will take on the issue of audiences with less and less time to spare for film and other arts, and strategies for offering experiences that provide multiple forms of engagement in one venue.
It’s a lesson Camerimage has taken to heart, says Suwala, with its ongoing investments and development of the European Film Center, which he will direct. The project is planned around an approach similar to the one Kramer advocates.
Still more opportunities to inspire Camerimage’s crowds of upcoming filmmakers are guests Rebecca Miller, novelist, actor and director of “She Came to Me” and “The Ballad of Jack and Rose,” and director Floria Sigismondi, who is to be feted for her outstanding work in music videos – a field this fest has long honored with competitive awards.
Provocative director Jeff Gibbs, whose YouTube-released climate change doc “Planet of the Humans,” produced by Michael Moore, rocked boats in 2020, will be speaking as well, cheering on filmmakers to go beyond the genre’s traditional conventions.
Gibbs is pledging to coach filmmakers on creating work “that will be seen by millions and just might change the world” while Oscar-winning cinematographer Peter Biziou will be sharing insights from a career that spans “Bugsy Mallone,” “Pink Floyd – The Wall” and “Truman Show.”
Other talks by luminaries such as Walter Murch, the editor of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and sound designer for “Apocalypse Now” (often credited with coining that term), are also expected to fill halls, while events run by camera manufacturers, lighting and filmmaking technology companies will bring cinematographers of every stripe up to speed on the latest offerings being rolled out.
