Dear friends and colleagues in IMAGO

The IMAGO administration has had a very active year so far in 2017. Not only the IMAGO Board has been active, but also our Committees. IMAGO´s Committee for Creative Technologies in Cinematography has been successfully working to establish closer collaboration with the ASC Technical Committee on issues of common importance, IMAGO´s Educational Committee arranged the largest and most extensive Educational Conference so far in our history in Munich in March, and our Authorship Committee is working intensely to collect information about the authorship situation for cinematographers in all member Countries to determine the road ahead.
Still, much remains in this important year, where IMAGO celebrates its 25th anniversary.
Here is a sum-up of other recent and future important activities in IMAGO in 2017.

The main IMAGO anniversary celebration will be during
The IMAGO International Awards for Cinematography 2017

in Helsinki on October 28th.
All IMAGO´s Member Societies have been invited and are currently working to nominate and submit films to the IMAGO Awards, a grand black-tie event with more than 250 cinematographers, related film colleagues, partners and media present.
The IMAGO Awards is in 2017 presented by ARRI, and with many other partners as RED, Sony, Panasonic and more, it will be the first International Awards where Cinematographers honour colleague Cinematographers on such a high level.
The Award is designed by award winning Swedish glass artist Asa Jungnelius, and we believe it will be a grand and valued trophy and recognition from International Colleagues.
The nominations from Societies has a deadline on 15th of July, and the IMAGO juries will start their work to decide the finalists in August.
Three cinematographers will receive final nomination in each category, which are:

The Award designed by Swedish glass artist Asa Jungnelius

Best Cinematography in Feature Films
Best Cinematography in TV Drama
Best Cinematography in Documentary Films
In addition, Awards will be given in these categories:
The IMAGO Honorary Member´s Award
Lifetime Achievement in Cinematography
Lifetime Contribution to the Art of Cinematography
IMAGO Award for Technical Excellence.

In addition, ARRI will together with IMAGO present the ARRI Award to a young aspiring Cinematographer. IMAGO us looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible there!

The IMAGO Amsterdam Inspiration Master Classes

Some of the cinematographers who participated in the IMAGO Amsterdam Master Classes.

IMAGO´s Master Class Committee arranged a very successful session of master classes in Amsterdam in May. More than 130 cinematographers attended the master classes and many came from far away: Australia, Japan, Brazil, Egypt, USA, Turkey and from most European Countries. The cinematographers giving the master classes were the award-winning cinematographers Phaedon Papamichael ASC GSC, Jeanne Lapoire AFC, Luciano Tovoli ASC AIC, Anthony Dod Mantle DFF BSC ASC, Martin Gschlacht AAC and Elen Lotman ESC.

Perfect moderation was executed by Andreas Fischer-Hansen DFF, Peter Verstraaten, Richard Andry AFC, and Volker Gläser BVK. IMAGO´s warm thanks goes specially to the Netherlands film Fund, the Netherlands and Belgian Societies of Cinematographers NSC and SBC with it´s Presidents Richard van Oosterhuit NSC and Willy Stassen SBC for their great help and very valuable support. And of course, not least to Astrid Heubrandtner AAC, Jan Weincke DFF and Herman Vershuur NSC for their perfect organizing.

ZFS Symposium on the restoration of our film heritage, Ljubljana

Ruined film strip

The Slovenian Society of Cinematographers ZFS organised a very valuable symposium on restoration and archiving in the beautiful city of Ljubljana April 11th and 12th. Speakers and audience gathered from archives and film institutions all over Europe, and important topics where discussed and debated by experts. Among the experts were Annike Kross from the Eye in Amsterdam, Benjamin Lerena from INA, France, David Walsh, Imperial War museum and FIAF, and Retro Kromer, previous head of film preservation in Switzerland.

The lecturers and experts at the ZFS Ljubljana Synposium.
IMAGO President Paul René Roestad underlined that cinematographers and archivists and restorers needs to collaborate, not only to work together to increase maximum picture quality of restored films, but also to gain acceptance on national and international levels for the need of more financing to proceed with the preservation of our film heritage at an acceptable and necessary speed. Film is an organic material that deteriorates, however well stored, and from when this work was started until now only a small fraction of our film heritage has been satisfactory restored, digitized and made available to present and future generations. More funds are required, and not least more acceptable training facilities for new archivists and restorers that will be needed to do this important work. Today, for every 100 Euros invested in the film industry, less than 3 Euros is used for preservation. There are more than a million hours of films waiting to be preserved and digitized so they can be made available to the public. In many major countries in Europe, during the last 15 years, only 2 percent of this has been satisfactory restored and digitized.
Paul René Roestad underlined that a wider collaboration between the films creators, amongst them cinematographers, and the restorers/archivists, not only will help secure the quality of the image restored more in line with the creator´s intentions, but IMAGO believes such collaboration will benefit us all.
IMAGO´s gratitude goes to the organizers of this important event, Simon Tansek ZFS and Jure Cernec ZFS, President of the Slovenian Society of Cinematographers, and to the Slovenian Cinemateque, the Slovenian Minister of Culture and the Slovenian Film Centre.

Oslo Master Class with Roger Deakins ASC BSC CBE
IMAGO collaborated with the Norwegian Society of Cinematographers FNF to arrange a master class with the highly respected cinematographer Roger Deakins on May 27th. Roger Deakins rarely has time to do master classes due to his busy schedule, so this was a highly appreciated event, with more than 200 Scandinavian cinematographers participating. Deakins also enjoys very much talking to students, so film school visits were also on the program, and the students were fully star-struck. The very successful master class were very well moderated by Cecilie Semec fnf and Rolv Haan fnf. FNFs and IMAGO´s special gratitude goes to Roger´s partner and invaluable quality controller, James!

IMAGO/FNF Oslo Digital Cinema Conference
The IMAGO/FNF Oslo Digital Cinema Conference will take place on September 8th to 10th. The Conference has been arranged bi-annually since 2007, and is regarded as one of the most valuable in it´s field in Europe. In addition to numerous expert updates on new developments in the field of cinematography, more than 200 cinematographers from around the World will gather to discuss common challenges and exchange knowledge and experience. In addition, the participants will hear about new developments and future plans from the major camera and equipment producers, and the latest developments on the camera equipment front will be demonstrated. There will be master classes, meetings between cinematographer´s societies and technical committees where the road forward will be discussed. And of course, not least evening parties and social gatherings are important to create valuable networks between cinematographers for the future. Detailed program and information on how to attend will be sent out to all IMAGO members early August.

The Manaki Brothers Film Festival 2017
IMAGO will be well represented at the great Manaki Brothers Film Festival in Bitola, Macedonia, September 23rd to 30th. This year´s edition is the 38th time the festival is arranged, and It is the oldest film festival in the World with special focus on Cinematography. Every year three cinematographers are given the Golden -, Silver- and Bronze Camera 300 Awards for best cinematography. In addition, several highly respected cinematographers are invited for special tribute programs and master classes. With close to 100 screenings, master classes and events we really recommend you to visit this great festival and we look forward to another great event celebrating cinematography in the beautiful Macedonia and the town of Bitola.

Plans for new secure web edition of the IMAGO International Directory of Cinematographers
Until now, we have together with Laws Publishing/British Cinematographer Magazine, published the IMAGO International Cinematographer´s Directory, printed on paper.
The distribution of the paper edition has been a challenge not only because of the costs, but also the security, as cinematographer´s contact addresses are included in the Directory.
The intention with the Directory is that Cinematographers visiting foreign Countries shall find all she or he needs, companies for camera and equipment purchase and rental, studios, post-production facilities, focus-pullers, DITs, etc, and not least that directors and producers also can find Society member cinematographers to employ on their shoots.

Even if IMAGO´s intention has been to distribute the printed edition of the Directory to Cinematographer members only, printed books are difficult to control where ends up, and even if it has not happened yet, contact information can in the future be misused.
IMAGO therefore plan to launch a new secure password protected interactive web version of the IMAGO International Directory for Cinematographers, and we are discussing a cooperation with our media partner The British Cinematographer Magazine. The new directory shall be accessible by all members anywhere on internet, and the new Directory will have a more extensive overview of services cinematographers may need in each member Country. Listings shall be free for all members of IMAGO, and there will be space for more details on each cinematographer, links to cinematographer´s websites, photographs, links to showreels etc.
Member cinematographers can of course also choose not to have detailed contact information in this password protected Directory, but have contact address to their Society or website instead.
Member Societies can list information about all national sponsors and useful addresses in the directory for free, and local and national companies that are not sponsor partners of the national Society of Cinematographers can also easily list their services, for a small fee. Whether filming in Africa, or Canada, Brazil, Norway or India, IMAGO´s member cinematographers needs easily accessible information about who can supply what they need, equipment or personnel, who or what is recommended by the Country´s Society of Cinematographers, and we believe this will be a future useful tool for all cinematographers.
The Directory internet site will be password protected, and each IMAGO member can access the specified information about themselves, add and/or edit the information listed at any time. More information will follow.

Camerimage 2017
IMAGO will also be strongly represented during the 2017 Camerimage Festival in Bydgoszcz, Poland, from November 11th to 18th. Camerimage and IMAGO both celebrates their 25th anniversary in 2017, and both have done invaluable work to promote the art of cinematography during this period. IMAGO is planning several programs during the Camerimage Festival focussing on special topics of the art of cinematography, and we plan also to arrange a significant still photography exhibition of cinematographer´s photographs, in cooperation with the American Society of Cinematographers. We look forward to participating and cooperating with Camerimage in 2017 to celebrate the immensely valuable work Marek, Kazik and their great team at Camerimage has done for cinematography and cinematographers the last 25 years.

From all of us in IMAGO; We wish you a good Summer!

Contact us:
If there is anything we can do for you, do not hesitate in contacting us through Louis-Philippe Capelle SBC   or our new administrative secretary
Katrin Richthoher