The 32nd Camerimage Film Festival has come to an end. The festival’s Golden Frog went to the Danish film, The Girl with the Needle. Cate Blanchett presented not only the main competition section’s top three prizes but also the Lifetime Achievement Award to cinematographer, Ed Lachman.

Cate participated in a panel discussion, a conversation moderated by fellow jury member Anna Higgs, and Q&A with Ed Lachman and another fellow jury member Sandy Powell after the screening of CAROL during the festival.

Cate Blanchett, Mandy Walker, and More Headline Last-Minute Diversity Panel at Camerimage

The continuing fallout over Camerimage CEO Marek Zydowicz’s Cinematography Today column has forced the festival into damage control. A hastily assembled panel November 19 took on diversity and inclusion in the movie industry, a sore subject when only an estimated seven percent of cinematographers are women.

Moderated by Anna Higgs, a producer and Chair of the Film Committee at BAFTA, the Widening the Lens: Inclusion and Excellence in Our Industry panel held at the Toru?, Poland gathering featured several festival guests: Actor and producer Cate Blanchett; costume designer Sandy Powell; director of photography Mandy Walker (“Elvis,” “Snow White”); director of photography and, with “Pedro Páramo,” director Rodrigo Prieto; director of photography and British Society of Cinematographers president Chris Ross (“Shogun,” “The Day of the Jackal”); and director Maura Delpero (“Vermiglio”).

Higgs insisted they weren’t there to discuss Zydowicz’s words. But she added immediately, “The idea that inclusion dilutes excellence is not up for debate.”

Maura Delpero, whose “Vermiglio” is in the Main Competition, said that she made round tables like this a condition of her attending the festival.

“Is quality an objective parameter?” she asked. “Or is it just the result of the tastes of the people who came before us?”

Delpero’s films focus on the complexities of motherhood, a subject rarely covered in mainstream films. “The movie story’s always about the sister, or the wife of the protagonist who happens to be pregnant,” she said. “It’s not central to the storytelling.”

As an actor, Cate Blanchett used to follow the progression of workers in the camera department from film to film.

“You start at the bottom. You carry the cases and then you become an operator or gaffer and then cinematographer. Three films down the line the person who was carrying the cases is now the focus puller.”

“I left the film industry [for a time] to run a theater company. When I came back to film it was a huge awakening for me. I didn’t see any of the female clapper holders I used to, but the guys who were carrying the cases were now operating, or in some cases, the DP.”

Blanchett is in a position to make a difference. When preparing “Mrs. America,” a series about the women’s movement for FX, she and her partners wanted to use female directors. They started a list, and within three hours had 70 potential names.

After Higgs noted the disparity of women cinematographers working on big-budget films, she asked Blanchett to talk about Proof of Concept.

“We developed it with Dirty Films, the Annenberg Inclusion Effort, and Netflix to help emerging filmmakers, people who are ordinarily and traditionally on the margins, get into the mainstream and get their features made,” she answered. “It was a way of addressing the failure of imagination and the fear of risk from producers, studios, streamers.”

Working from 1200 submissions, Proof of Concept chose 11 projects supporting the work of female, trans, and non-binary filmmakers. They were able to make short versions of their features rather than working with Pitchdeck or paper.

Blanchett pointed out that even when features are completed, those outside the mainstream have difficulty getting their work promoted. Her comments led to a debate about the role of festivals in introducing new talent.

“The curatorial power of showcasing needs to be broader,” Ross said. “An advisory panel that spreads the eye, searches for talent hidden behind closed doors. Art is not a competitive subject. I can’t imagine that any of us could do a celebrity death match between Rembrandt and Van Gogh.”

“Both men,” Blanchett remarked, drawing laughs from the audience.

“Film festivals tend to go for the names,” Prieto acknowledged. “To attract an audience, to become more high profile, a festival has to have name people. I think that’s something that needs to break. People are interested in new stuff.”

Higgs argued that stars at a festival might draw attention to debut filmmakers who share the same stage. “It’s about sharing the platform more equitably, rather than switching that massive bulb off and just having a bunch of smaller ones.”

“Too much money can actually be a deadener to your level of invention,” Blanchett said. “You can do amazing things on low budget films that are ‘award worthy.’ I hate that term, it’s awful.

“As an audience and practitioners, we are all part of the conversation,” she continued. “We can’t walk away from it. We have to be part of the change. Change in the way we approach the work, in the way we include people beside us, in the way we talk about the work, the way we talk about each other’s work, and the way we assess whether it’s a failure or a success.”

After dismissing box-office talk as “irrelevant,” Blanchett said how important was “for us as an industry and for us as a species that we find what connects us. Homogeneity is the absolute enemy of art. The more diverse, the more exciting it is. The more perspectives we have, the healthier the industry will be for practitioners, for artists, and for audiences.”

Full article on Indiewire

Jurors at the EnergaCamerimage cinematography fest say the Golden Frog main competition films have been remarkably varied and inspiring in the event’s 32nd edition.

Juror Cate Blanchett said it’s clear cinematography has no crisis of creativity currently.

Instead, there’s a different issue: “The pickle is how one gets access and is able to see these films in the way that they’re intended to be seen.”

Technology advances in the field are also helping storytelling onscreen evolve, she added, rather than distracting from it. “Sometimes you can see there’s been huge technical advances made, or there’s been big innovations, and they haven’t yet been integrated into the stories that they’re being applied to. Whereas I thought there were so many films here that have really integrated the technology and in a completely adventurous and inventive way that was not pretentious. It was very interwoven and enmeshed with the performances and the stories.”

Blanchett added, “It’s very rare that you go to a festival where every single person in the auditorium sits right through the credit roll to the very end.” She noted “the respect that is shown to every single crewmember.”

Blanchett described the close proximity of students and top international lensers as a unique strength of Camerimage, praising “the mentorship that goes on, how you’ll champion the works of other people.”

“I think that’s why it’s so vitally important that there’s an increased level of female participation. Because of the networking and mentorship opportunities and championing the work. The conversations and the opportunities that arise from those conversations are really important.”

Full interview with other jury members on Variety

Camerimage Closing Ceremony

In presenting the main competition winners, jury president Cate Blanchett urged festival goers to turn “these conversations, which have been really vast and interesting, into action.” She also encouraged producers and studio heads, among others, to take such steps. “To say that you can’t take a risk on a woman in just insanity,” she said to applause.

Blanchett commended all of the films in the competition, admitting that it was difficult for the jury to compare such a range of films and those that were selected for prizes “have been risks that paid off.”

This year’s main competition jury, led by Blanchett, included cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, cinematographer and documentary filmmaker Jolanta Dylewska, producer/columnist Anna Higgs, costume designer Sandy Powell, and cinematographers Rodrigo Prieto and aforementioned Zal.

Three-time Oscar nominated cinematographer and festival regular Ed Lachman (“El Conde,” “Carol” and “Far From Heaven”) received two lengthy standing ovations as he accepted the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Blanchett warmly presented the award to the cinematographer, saying that he “elevated” her work and everyone’s work.

“This has been my spiritual, cultural and cinematic home for 22 years since I was here with ‘Far From Heaven’ in 1997. … This is such a special place for all of us,” Lachman said of Camerimage, adding that it “may not be perfect but this is our lives” and the festival offers a rare opportunity to gather to explore the art.

Main Competition Golden Frog: MICHA? DYMEK for “The Girl with the Needle,” Special mention to director Magnus von Horn

Main Competition Silver Frog: LOL CRAWLEY for “The Brutalist,” directed by Brady Corbet

Main Competition Bronze Frog: PAUL GUILHAUME for “Emilia Pérez,” directed by Jacques Audiard