A resumé of the recent activities  by President. Paul Rene Roestad

The IMAGO International Award for Cinematography

The invitations to Societies to submit films to the IMAGO Awards will shortly be sent out. The next Awards Ceremony will take place in Belgrade, Serbia, on 16th of March 2019. Last year´s IMAGO Awards in Helsinki was a great success, and we welcome you all to the new grand cinematographer´s gala in March next year.
All nominees for the Awards will be presented at a ceremony during the BSC Expo in London, early February.

Working conditions
Together with FERA, the European Federation of Film Directors, IMAGO will strengthen the focus on working conditions for cinematographers, Directors and our other colleagues in the film

Before the EU meeting: IMAGO and FERA delegation in Brussels. From right to left: Fabian Eder, Louis Philippe Capelle, Paul René Roestad, FERA Chief Eexcutive Pauline Durand-Vialle, Peter Carpentier, EU minister Evelyn Regner, Cristina Busch and Kurt Brazda.

business. In September FERA ad IMAGO had meetings and discussions with EU Ministers in Brussels to prepare for a larger conference on Working Conditions in 2019.
More than 20 EU parliament members attended the meeting, and the information level with EU MEPs on European audiovisual artists working conditions were surprisingly high.
Also their understanding of the necessity to look closer into how it can be improved.
But even if the understanding is high, EU is a large institution who moves slowly, so we cannot expect fast legislative results. We will have to count on cinematographers, directors and film worker colleagues, to start take action themselves. Soon, 15 years will have gone since Haskell Wexler and Rod Stevens formed the 12 on 12 off organization. It is soon time we make their dream come through.

Cinematographers and Authorship
IMAGO believes cinematographers are authors of the image. There are many Collective Societies collecting remuneration for IMAGO members, but a significant proportion of what they collect never reaches our members. Many cinematographers are not a member of any Collective Society. IMAGO´s Authorship Committee is working to check possibilities for how more of our members can benefit from what remuneration is collected for secondary use of our images. More and more of us find the fact unfair that still photographers have full authors rights to their images, but cinematographers in too many countries have not.

The BSC have taken the initiative together with other audiovisual players in the UK to set up Scree Craft Rights, a British Collective Society collecting remuneration from (so far) Finland, Germany, Sweden and Norway, and this is a great success.
British cinematographers do not yet have legal authorship rights in Britain, but they still get considerable sums from the use of their images in countries where cinematographers do have authorship rights. IMAGO therefore looks into the possibility to help cinematographer´s societies to establish a collective system that can provide remuneration for the use of their images abroad, also in Countries where cinematographers do not have authorship rights, or to pave the way for cinematographers easier to become members of already existing Collective Societies abroad.
The IMAGO Authorship Committee is working to see how this can be done.
More information will follow.

More and better communication
One of the reasons for IMAGO´s establishment 26 years ago was to establish an effective communication line between international cinematographers, to exchange views and experience, and to transmit valuable news and information between us. IMAGO is these days working to intensify and broaden our communication towards IMAGO members and colleagues. You can expect more news and updates, more informative Newsletters about what is going on around the World, also offers, news and updates about what our sponsors and partners are working with. Our Facebook and Instagram activities will more than double in the months to come.
IMAGO is a world-wide Federation, and many of us live far apart. Good communication is the main tool to strengthen good collaboration between us.

IMAGO at IBC Amsterdam
IBC is far the largest equipment show dedicated not only exclusively to cinema, but also to television, radio, photography markets making it the largest exhibition center for the audio visual business and industry in Europe. Only compared with NAB in Las Vegas. IMAGO was also present being near to our partners and searching for novelties. An excellent report by Lars Pettersson FSF can be traced HERE

IMAGO at Cinec in Munich

While IBC is focusing greatly at equipment for the broadcast industry, Cinec is focusing more specifically at film production gear. Cinec has been in operation for more than 20 years, and it is expanding every year. This year, 172 leading companies from 22 countries showed their latest equipment and solutions in camera equipment, lighting, editing systems, postproduction, dollies, cranes and new drones, to the latest software for digital devices and VR productions. Munich is the “home” of the German Society BVK, so they were naturally strongly present, together with Camerimage and IMAGO. IMAGO was represented with it´s own stand.

IMAGO Board member Rolf Coulanges BVK were holding lectures on visual perception, and IMAGO´s Administrative coordinator Katrin Richthofer was on the Cinec Awards Organizing Committee. In addition, there were many interesting in-depth conference sessions, for instance on VR. One thing international cinematographers would like to ask for, is more lectures in the English language, apart from that, all was perfect.

The IMAGO stand at Cinec in Munich. From left to right: Herman Verschuur NSC, Ron Johansen ACS, Tony Costa AIP, Elen Lotman ESC, Nina Kellgren BSC, Predrag Bambic SAS and Paul René Roestad FNF

IMAGO also held a Board meeting during Cinec where
the road forward was discussed. The meeting took
place in the room gently offered by HFF Munich
Film and Television School

The IMAGO Board meeting Munich: From left front: Nina Kellgren BSC, Paul René Roestad fnf, Katrin Richthofer, IMAGO Office Organizor, back from right: Predrag Bambich SAS, Ron Johansen ACS, Rolf Coulanges BVK, Tony Costa AIP, and Elen Lotman ESC

                                    IMAGO at Camerimage.

IMAGO will again be strongly represented at the coming Camerimage, with planned master classes and seminars on diversity and inclusion, and in cooperation with ASC a panel discussion on how the new global non-linear tv-distributors influences film production and cinematographer´s work. We look forward to seeing you there.

The Education Committee Group preparing next day meeting at a restaurant near RITCS college. Dinner courtesy of SBC. From left to right: Jean-Paul Jarry from France; Janet Tovey from England; Ella van den Hove SBC; Marijke Van Kets SBC; Tony Costa aip and Marc de Backer SBC. We make note that Janet has been joining the group lately all others on the table were the founders of the IMAGO Education Committee and founders of the very first Conference of Cinematography teaching in 2011.

Cinematography in Progress

 A meeting to finalize details for the next conference on «Teaching Cinematography» was held in Brussels at the RITCS where part of the conference will be hosted. The Conference have now dates 4, 5 and 6 of April 2019 in Brussels. 

For this education the Education Committee decided to call for PAPERS on research studies on cinematography and to work on round table discussions about several topics of interest for teachers, educators and cinematographers with interest in the field of education. The conference aim is to work around mythologies of teaching cinematography.