Full focus on cinematography at IDFA

IDFA has always focused on the creative documentary: Films of high cinematographic quality that clearly bear their makers’ signatures. During post-screening discussions, the ten directors of photography will talk in-depth about their visual choices. The program will be moderated by Nicolas Rapold (editor-in-chief of Film Comment) and Eric Hynes (film critic and curator of the Museum of the Moving Image in New York). 

The films: Classics

• Wolfgang Thaler, regular cameraman for Ulrich Seidl and the late Michael Glawogger will talk about his camerawork on Glawogger’s film Whores’ Glory (2011), which won the Austrian Film Awards for both Best Documentary and Best Cinematography. 
• Pierre Lhomme will discuss Le joli mai (1963), for which he took to the streets of Paris with director Chris Marker and a lightweight camera – the result was an innovative feat of cinéma vérité.
• The camerawork in Wim Wenders’ classic Tokyo-ga (1985) will be discussed by the American cameraman Ed Lachman, whom Variety called one of the most adventurous cameramen of the moment, owing to the great variety displayed of his body of work. 
• The much-lauded Finnish filmmaker Pirjo Honkasalo will talk about the camerawork in her film Atman (1996), shot on 35mm film, for which she won the IDFA Award for Best Feature Length Documentary in 1996. 
• The fifth title is the music documentary Depeche Mode:101 (1989). Directed and shot by D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus and never before screened during IDFA.

The films: New talents

• Talal Khoury will give us an insight into how he worked on the film Taste of Cement (2017, Ziad Kalthoum), the big winner at the Nyon film festival. Poetically and in an almost Cubist style, Khoury tells a story of building up and breaking down.
• Arseni Khachaturan shot impressive, calm images of a post-apocalyptic ghost town in Georgia for City of the Sun (2017, Rati Oneli). This award-winning documentary was made with support from the IDFA Bertha Fund.
• Filmmaker Tala Hadid will talk about her direction and camerawork on House in the Fields (2016), a visual study of a traditional community in Marocco. The documentary was made with support from the IDFA Bertha Fund.
• Mila Turajlic’s intimate camerawork will be the focus of her discussion of her film The Other Side of Everything (2017), for which she filmed her own family.
• Manuel Abramovich will talk about his highly visual film Soldier (2017), which received praise for its camerawork from The Hollywood Reporter.