Still from Kevin Reynolds' "Hatfields & McCoys", photo: AXN promotional meterials
With cinematography by Polish director of photography Arthur Reinhart, the Golden Globe-nominated, five-time Emmy Award-winning television miniseries Hatfields and McCoys airs on AXN from the 11th of January 2013. Reinhart is nominated for the American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement in CinematographyAward.
Produced by the History Channel and based on the historical family feud in West Virginia and Kentucky, the story dates back to the years after the Civil War in the U.S. The blood feud became part of American folklore and today is a symbol of the perils of family honour, justice and vengeance. What began as a verbal spat between Jim Vance Hatfield (Tom Berenger, awarded Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie at the 64th Emmy Awards) and a McCoy family member ended in the deaths of 12 people. The producers invited descendents of the families to cooperate on the script, in an attempt to remain historically accurate.
Hatfields and McCoys, a series in which Wild West legends meet those historical truths, reached a viewership of 17 million in the U.S. The miniseries is the work of Kevin Reynolds, who had cooperated with cinematographer Arthur Reinhart in 2006 on the production of Tristan and Isolde. Reinhart tells Marjorie Galas, in an interview for LA411, "I tried to carry that into the movie, the crazy dirtiness of the city, the dirtiness of their dress. I didn’t want it to look too pretty. I controlled the soft box as much as possible to get a dirty, soft light, working to get the look from the black and white photos."
Hatfields & McCoys received five Emmy awards from its sixteen nominations. The production received two Golden Globe award nominations, as the best made-for-television movie or miniseries and, for Kevin Costner as Devil Anse Hatfield, a nomination for the best actor in a made-for-television movie or miniseries. The results come in on the 13th of January 2013 during the 70th Golden Globe Awards ceremony.
With his recognisable aesthetic style, Artur Reinhart (born 1965) is one of Poland's leading cinematographers. He is recognised for cooperating with director Dorota Kędzierzawska for many years, on films including Wrony / The Crows, Nic / Nothing, Jestem / I am, Pora umierać / Time to Die, Jutro będzie lepiej / Tomorrow Will be Better and Inny świat / Another World. He has received awards including three Golden Frogs at Camerimage - International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography, held in Poland each autumn, and he is a three-time winner of the photography award at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia (for Nic / Nothing, Jestem / I Am and Jan Jakub Kolski's Wenecja / Venice). He also holds a Eagle Polish Film Award for I Am.
Reinhart works regularly with international production houses. Together with Maciej Dejczer, he took part in the international production of Brute in 1997 with Tim Schweiger in the leading role, and shot Frank Herbert's Children of Dune in 2003. Kevin Reynolds offered Reinhart a job on his Tristan and Isolde, having spotted "the sensitivity and melancholy combined with a dose of murkiness that I would like to see in Tristan and Isolde" (Dziennik, 10.06.2006). For his work on Hatfields and McCoys, Reinhart received a nomination from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) for the organization’s 27th Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography. The winners will be announced on the 10th of February 2013, at the Hollywood & Highland Grand Ballroom.
The first episode of the miniseries airs on AXN on the 11th of January 2013.
Sources: based on the article by Bartosz Staszczyszyn for culture.pl, Huntington News, The ASC, The Guardian, IMDb, LA411, Cinematographers.nl
Editor: Marta Jazowska