Aims of IMAGO

The European Federation of Cinematographers

The main pur­pose of the Fed­er­a­tion is to cham­pi­on and uphold the high stan­dards achieved by the Cin­e­matog­ra­phy Pro­fes­sion, and via a con­stant exchange of expe­ri­ence to pro­mote the spread of that high­ly-spe­cialised cul­ture on which the long-stand­ing tech­ni­cal and artis­tic qual­i­ty of the Euro­pean Cin­e­ma indus­try is firm­ly based.

One of the things that most con­cerns us, is mak­ing – by using our artis­tic and tech­ni­cal knowl­edge – an even more worth­while con­tri­bu­tion as IMAGO to improv­ing and main­tain­ing tech­no­log­i­cal equip­ment and also the qual­i­ty of screen­ing in cinemas.

Thus ensures that all the work that we, togeth­er with the direc­tors and their col­lab­o­ra­tors, put into mak­ing a film, and the result­ing qual­i­ty, may be ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed by movie-goers who, in many instances, are nowa­days oblig­ed to watch films which, owing to tech­ni­cal inad­e­qua­cies and short­com­ings, do not come up to the stan­dard of the original.

With a view to obtain­ing the legal recog­ni­tion which would per­mit us to more effec­tive­ly uphold this fun­da­men­tal req­ui­site of qual­i­ty, in oth­er words, to defend qual­i­ty in the cin­e­ma, we aim to work simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to have the Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er recog­nised as co-author of the Film, which the Ital­ian AIC and the Span­ish AEC already do in their cred­its with a more appro­pri­ate and cor­rect term that lit­er­al­ly trans­lat­ed means ”Author of the Pho­tog­ra­phy”. Leg­isla­tive bod­ies are also begin­ning to acknowl­edge the legit­i­ma­cy of the Direc­tors of Pho­tog­ra­phy (DoP) right to be recog­nised as co-author, but a great deal of work still has to be done.

Anoth­er impor­tant field in which IMAGO will take action, both by urg­ing gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion and becom­ing direct­ly involved, is the method­i­cal preser­va­tion and restora­tion – which can no longer be delayed – of our vast Euro­pean cin­e­mat­ic heritage.

Oper­a­tions such as these, require a finan­cial com­mit­ment that is way beyond IMAGO’s own pos­si­bil­i­ties. Even, as far as IMAGO’s share is con­cerned, they can­not be under­tak­en with­out the respon­si­ble and cre­ative par­tic­i­pa­tion, on a per­ma­nent rather than casu­al basis, of Cin­e­matog­ra­phers who are often the on-the-spot or sec­ondary wit­ness­es of Cin­e­ma his­to­ry in the making.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the com­plex and many-sided activ­i­ties relat­ed to these pri­ma­ry objec­tives imply extreme­ly high costs, over and above the gen­er­al expens­es of admin­is­tra­tion: the organ­i­sa­tion of Meet­ings on gen­er­al or spe­cif­ic themes con­cern­ing new tech­nolo­gies used in shoot­ing and pro­ject­ing a film and also in film preser­va­tion to be held in the head­quar­ters of the dif­fer­ent nation­al soci­eties in turn,

• the pub­li­ca­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of books and tech­ni­cal magazines,
• the organ­i­sa­tion of spe­cialised work­shops, sem­i­nars and exhibitions,.
• the sup­port of pro­fes­sion­al education,
• the sup­port of pro­fes­sion­al fes­ti­vals like CAMERIMAGE in Łódź / Poland; MANAKI BROTHERS / Mace­do­nia and eDIT Film Fes­ti­val Frankfurt/Germany
• the plan­ning and co-ordi­na­tion of research into the cin­e­mato­graph­ic image, at a Euro­pean level.
• the ini­tia­tive and offi­cial trips under­tak­en by one or more mem­bers of the Man­age­ment Coun­cil to inter­est the com­pe­tent Euro­pean and, at a more gen­er­al lev­el, inter­na­tion­al author­i­ties in this very impor­tant pro­fes­sion of ours, with­out which the cin­e­ma indus­try could not hope to survive.