Camerimage Cinematography Festival Maintains Its Appeal in a Challenging Year
variety.comWill Tizard Contributor Like the cinematography sector overall this year, the profession’s prime annual festival, Poland’s Camerimage, has come through major challenges in 2023, says the event’s founder, Marek Zydowicz.
Launching in the historic town of Torun on Nov. 11, the 31st edition of the fest was organized in a time of nearby crises in Europe plus record levels of inflation hitting the region, and fallout from the Hollywood actors strike. “It’s hard to say these things were really helping us,” notes Kazik Suwala, one of the festival’s key organizers and director of its most ambitious project, the construction of the European Film Center, which broke ground in October. “It was a tough year to work,” as he puts it. “The preparations were much harder than usual.
Getting movies programmed involved much more time.” Thus, Zydowicz and Suwala confess to feeling a bit of extra pride in pulling off a Camerimage calendar featuring major work from a dozen top cinematographers, including Micheal Mann’s “Ferrari,” filmed by Erik Messerschmidt, Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” shot by Matthew Libatique, Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” lensed by Rodrigo Prieto, and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon,” with epic camera work by Dariusz Wolski.
The SAG-AFTRA actors strike meant the festival could not have any firm commitments from most actors, Suwala points out. “With the strike, there was no way to talk to actors, to most of the productions.
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