Still from the film "Lebanon", source: http://www.pluscamerimage.pl
AWARDS OF THE 2009 PLUS CAMERIMAGE FESTIVAL
Łódź, December 5, 2009
The Golden Frog, the main award at the
PLUS CAMERIMAGE FILM FESTIVAL 2009, went to an Israeli film Lebanon (cinematography: Giora Bejach, directed by Samuel Maoz). Polish films collected the Silver and Bronze Frog Awards.
The awarded film retells an episode from the history of the 1982 Lebanon War from the perspective of Israeli soldiers sitting in a tank. The film's director and cinematographer were both conscripts in Israeli army at that time. In an attempt to give a realistic representation of the events, the action is set entirely within the claustrophobic confines of an armored tank; the only views of the outside world are through the cross-hairs of the gun barrel. The film won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year.
The remaining major awards went to Polish cinematographers:
The Statuette for Best Polish Film went to:
During the closing gala the special Golden Frog Awards were given:
- the award for the outstanding achievement in the art of documentary went to Terry Sanders, the winner of two Film Academy Awards, the director and producer of over 70 feature films and documentaries;
- lifetime achievement Awards went to: Allan Starski (another Oscar winner: for scenography in "Schindler's List"), and Dante Spinotti, the author of the memorable cinematography in the 1992 film "The Last of the Mohicans";
- a cameraman-director duo of Vittorio Storaro and Carlos Saura were awarded a special prize for their film I, Don Giovanni screened at the Plus Camerimage.
At the opening of the Festival, directors Terry Gilliam and Volker Schlöndorff received the PLUS CAMERIMAGE special awards. Other special awards went to Polish cameraman working in Hollywood, Dariusz Wolski, film editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, and the legendary producer, Richard Zanuck (Driving Miss Daisy, Planet of the Apes).
Source:
wiadomosci.gazeta.plPlus Camerimage is one of the biggest international film festivals devoted to the art of cinematography. This year it will be held from 28 November to 5 December. The festival is a competitive event, with an international jury presenting awards to the best cinematographers.
The festival takes place annually and contributes to the growing prestige of cinematographers among other filmmakers. In many countries, including Poland, this profession has been considered a technical occupation. Thanks to the festival, people have begun to notice that the cameraman is a co-creator of a film's visual aspect - an artist, just like the director and the actors. Plus Camerimage is also a forum for discussions on the future of film art. Bringing together many award-winning filmmakers, and helping debuting filmmakers and students, it allows them to discover new areas of artistic interest.
Apart from the Main Competition, this year's programme also includes the Student Etudes Competition, the Polish Film Competition, the Documentary Competition, and the Music Video Competition. There will also be special screenings, premieres, film reviews and retrospectives, meetings, exhibitions, and concerts.
True to the festival's tradition, awards will be presented for Lifetime Achievement, for Lifetime Achievement for a Director, for Outstanding Achievements in Documentary Filmmaking, and for a Production Designer with Unique Visual Sensitivity.
Dante Spinotti
photo: Andrzej Lew
This year's Lifetime Achievement Award will go to cinematographer Dante Spinotti. As a tribute to the artist, the festival organizers will present a retrospective of films for which he was the cinematographer. In keeping with tradition, a book on the award-winner's life and work will be published as well.
Dante Spinotti (b. 1943 in Tolmezzo) shot his first cinematic films in the early 1980s in Italy, and in 1986 was the cinematographer for his first American film, Choke Canyon. After making Manhunter with director Michael Mann, Spinotti became one of the most respected cinematographers in Hollywood. He worked with Michael Mann on The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The Insider, and most recently Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. The long list of directors he has worked with also includes Michael Apted, Bruce Beresford, Brett Ratner, Garry Marshall, Curtis Hanson, Giuseppe Tornatore, Ermanno Olmi, Roberto Benigni, Roland Joffe, Barry Levinson, Lina Wertmuller, and Marcel Langenegger. In his career, Spinotti twice received Italy's Donatello film award, for the photography for La leggenda del santo bevitore / The Legend of the Holy Drinker in 1988 and Il segreto del bosco vecchio / The Secret of the Old Woods in 1993.
Daniel Day-Lewis, "Ostatni Mohikanin"
He was also nominated, in 2002, for this award for his photography for Pinocchio, a film directed by Roberto Benigni. For his work on Michael Mann's The Insider and Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honoured him with Oscar nominations. These two films, and The Last of the Mohicans also directed by Michael Mann, won nominations from the British Society of Cinematographers, the American Society of Cinematographers as well as a BAFTA nomination. Spinotti received two awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, for L.A. Confidential and The Insider.
This year's Lifetime Achievement Award for a Director will be presented to Volker Schlöndorff. The award is granted to directors who make films with great aesthetic sensitivity and intentionally adapt technical and formal means to benefit a story's strong emotional impact.
Volker Schlöndorff and Sven Nykvist, "A Free Woman"
The winner of an Oscar for The Tin Drum was born in 1939 in Wiesbaden. He spent the greater part of his youth in France, where he went on a scholarship as a teenager. As a student, he learned the art of filmmaking from the best French directors - Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville, Alain Resnais. His first film, Der junge Törless / Young Torless, won him the critics' award in Cannes, while The Tin Drum brought him a Palme d'Or and the aforementioned Academy Award.
His films include Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum / The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, Deutschland im Herbst / Germany in Autumn, Un amour de Swann / Swann in Love, Death of a Salesman, Homo Faber, Der Unhold / The Ogre, Der neunte Tag / The Ninth Day, and Strajk / Strike. He has worked with many great cinematographers, including Sven Nykvist, Michael Ballhaus, Jost Vacano, Pierre Lhomme, Igor Luther, Edward Lachman, Franz Rath, and from the young generation: Andreas Höfer, Tom Erhart, and Tom Fährmann.
David Bennent, "The Tin Drum"
Almost all his films are adaptations of world literature. Heinrich Böll, the author of the novel Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum / The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, knowing about the political commitment of Volker Schlöndorff and his partner of the time, the great German film director Margarethe von Trotta, encouraged them to adapt his story for the screen. Schlöndorff's early films were made in the "new wave" period, but he never followed the new trends, remaining faithful to classic models of cinematic storytelling. He stuck to adaptations of literature, achieving artistic as well as commercial success. Despite creating a fictional world, Schlöndorff's films contain some autobiographical elements - from memories of early childhood, through his French upbringing and education, to his political commitment in the 1960s.
A review of the director's films will be shown during the festival. The Volker Schlöndorff retrospective is a joint project of the Tumult Foundation, the Goethe-Institut in Warsaw, and Poland's National Film Archive. The Goethe-Institut in Warsaw and the National Film Archive have already presented a number of great German filmmakers, but so far not Schlöndorff, a director who - during more than forty years of filmmaking - has always readily taken on issues important from both the Polish and the German viewpoint, thus helping to improve Polish-German communication. The Schlöndorff retrospective will be shown in several cities around Poland, including Łódź, Warsaw, and Lublin in 2009. The retrospective will be accompanied by a catalogue describing all of the director's films and many texts by film experts. Volker Schlöndorff's autobiography "Light, Shadow and Movement. My Life and My Films" will be published in Polish in the autumn by the Propaganda publishing house.
As part of its series on film directors, the Tumult Foundation is preparing a picture album on the life and work of Volker Schlöndorff. Volumes on
Krzysztof Kieślowski,
Jerzy Skolimowski, Alan Parker, and Ken Loach have been published so far.
Terry Sanders
The Plus Camerimage 2009 Award for Outstanding Achievements in Documentary Filmmaking will go to Terry Sanders - director, producer and scriptwriter, winner of two Academy Awards. He has directed and produced more than 70 features, documentaries and TV films, including many projects presenting the profiles of leading American writers, musicians, and other creative personalities. Many critics consider him to be one of the best documentary makers today. His documentary output includes pictures such as Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, about the sculptor who made the Vietnam Memorial Wall and the Civil Rights Fountain Memorial; Fighting for Life, about American doctors and nurses on the front line in Iraq, and also the famous Return with Honor, a film about American pilots whose planes were shot down over Vietnam and who were prisoners of war for over eight years. The Legend of Marilyn Monroe and Slow Fires: On the Preservation of the Human Record are also among his best works.
"Lillian Gish: The Actor's Life for Me" (1989)
Sanders is the founder of the American Film Foundation, which he runs with his wife Freida Lee Mock, also a documentary filmmaker. The foundation is a non-profit production company based in Santa Monica; its film projects have won both Academy Awards and Emmy Awards. The foundation is dedicated to the production of films which pay tribute to the arts, humanities, and science. The projects produced by Sanders and Mock's corporation include theatrical documentaries, TV series, and feature films.
Terry Sanders will be a guest of honour at Plus Camerimage, and the organizers will present a retrospective of his films as part of the festival's documentary section "Image of the World - World in Images" organized in association with Discovery Networks Central Europe.
Allan Starski
photo: Lidia Sokal / Fabrykaobrazu.pl
For three years now, Plus Camerimage has presented a special award to outstanding production designers in appreciation for their contribution to the visual and artistic aspect of films. Four designers have received this award so far: Dante Ferretti (Interview with the Vampire, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, Casino), John Myhre (What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Ali, Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha), Lilly Kilvert (The Last Samurai, The Crucible, Strange Days, Legends of the Fall), and Arthur Max (Gladiator, Seven, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, American Gangster). This year, the special guest of Plus Camerimage and winner of the Award for a Production Designer with Unique Visual Sensitivity is Allan Starski.
Allan Starski is an internationally respected Polish production designer. He has won many prestigious awards, the most important being an Academy Award for the design for Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. This production design also received an award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Starski's work for
The Pianist won him recognition in France - a César Award, and in Poland - an Eagle Award. He also received an Eagle for the design for
Andrzej Wajda's Pan Tadeusz. In the filmmaking community, Starski is a recognized specialist in 19th-century set design as well as sets illustrating the period of World War II and the Holocaust.
"Schindler's List", dir. Steven Spielberg (1993)
Allan Starski was born on 1 January 1943 in Warsaw. He graduated from the Interior Design Faculty of the
Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1968 and began working on film sets a year later. His debut as a set designer in his own right came in 1973 with Ryszard Ber's film Chłopcy / Boys. Smuga cienia / The Shadow Line (1975) marked the start of his collaboration with Andrzej Wajda. Starski was the production designer for many of Wajda's films, including
Człowiek z marmuru / Man of Marble, Panny z Wilka / The Maids from Wilko, Człowiek z żelaza / Man of Iron, Danton, Miłość w Niemczech / A Love in Germany, and Korczak. He has worked with many other directors, including Krzysztof Kieślowski (Bez końca / No End),
Agnieszka Holland (Europa, Europa, Washington Square),
Roman Polański (The Pianist, Oliver Twist), Steven Spielberg (Schindler's List), Fritz Lehner (Notturno. Love Has Lied), Jack Gold (Escape from Sobibor),
Tadeusz Konwicki (Lawa / Lava), John Irvin (Eminent Domain), Gonzalo Suarez (El detective y la muerte / The Detective and Death), and recently Peter Webber (Hannibal Rising).
"The Pianist", dir. Roman Polański (1993)
Allan Starski has also designed sets for stage and television plays. His most famous projects include designs for television theatre productions, which won him awards at the Festival of Polish Television Films - Uncle Vanya directed by Aleksander Bardini, The Crucible directed by Zygmunt Hübner, and also the design for Rozmowy z katem / Conversations with an Executioner at the
Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw, a production directed by Wajda.
Photos are from the festival website:
www.pluscamerimage.pl.
Fundacja Tumult
Rynek Nowomiejski 28, 87-100 Toruń
Festival Director: Marek Żydowicz
tel. (+48 56) 621 00 19, 652 21 79, 652 25 95
fax: (+48 56) 652 21 97
www.pluscamerimage.pl