AWARDS FOR POLISH DOCUMENTARIES AND SHORT FILMS AT PLUS CAMERIMAGE
This year’s edition of International Film festival of the art of cinematography PLUS CAMERIMAGE has come to an end. Polish filmmakers have been celebrating this especially happy ending as their films were honoured with several awards.
The Golden Frog in the short documentary competition was awarded to Piotr Stasik – director and cinematographer of the film The end of summer. In this cathegory Stasik’s film has been competing with documentaries from all over world – among them quite a large group of Polish productions: Declaration of immortality by Marcin Koszałka, Lovers directed by Rafał Skalski, That’s life by Daniel Zieliński, A piece of Summer by Marta Mironowicz and Paweł Łoziński’s Inventory. The jury members: Ed Lachman, Robert Fischer, Małgorzata Szumowska, Magdalena Szczawińska, Anastas Michos and Vilmos Zsigmond led by Robert Epstein chose to award Stasik’s film because of its sensitively observed and composed cinematography, for its consistency of style and tone, and the intimacy with which the camera approaches its subject matter. The jury also decided to honour Danish film Out of love directed by BirgitteStærmose with the cinematography made by Mark Septimus Wieser while the Discovery Networks Central Europe award was handed over to the Slovakian Arsy Versy directed by Miro Remo and photographed by Jaro Valko. Aside from the short competition there were three Polish films screened in the competition of full lenght documentaries: The edge of Russia (dir. Marcin Marczak, DoP: Radosław Ładczuk), La Machina (dir. Thierry Paladino, DoP. Michał Marczak, Marcin Sauter) and North from Kalabria (dir. Marcin Sauter, DoP. Radosław Ładczuk, Łukasz Gutt). The Golden Frog went to Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger for their film Restrepo, the special mention to Pau Mirabet for Letters from the Desert (Eulogy to Slowness) and Discovery Networks Central Europe award was granted to Andrew Thompson for his Mugabe and the White African.Laszlo Kovacs’s Golden Tadpole for the best student film went to Jakub Giza for the cinematography of Julia Kolberger’s I won’t be here tomorrow. Films were juged by the jury comprised of Andrzej Bartkowiak, Lilly Kilvert, David Kwok, Chris Lebenzon, Jan Macola and Oliver Stapleton chaired by Joel Schumacher. The number of 22 student films were competing for the Tadpole award, among which – apart from the laureate – four films representing film schools in Katowice and Łódź: Barbakan (DoP. Ernest Wiczyński, dir. Bartłomiej Żmuda), Above the ground (DoP. Patryk Jordanowicz, dir. Arkadiusz Biedrzycki), Last train (DoP. Paweł Chorzępa, dir. Weronika Tofilska), Eclipse (DoP. Grzegorz Hartfiel, dir. Paweł Maślona). The Silver Tadpole was handed over to Phillip Haberlandt and Jens Hallman for their film St. Christophorus: Roadkill while Bronze Tadpole to Johan Holmquist for the film Bekas.
What is also worth mentioning, Grand Prix of the festival – The Golden Frog in the main competition – was presented to Artur Reinhardt in recognition of his cinematography for Venice directed by Jan Jakub Kolski.
More information can be found at: www.pluscamerimage.pl