Alec Baldwin's Western Rust had its world premiere on Wednesday at a film festival in Poland with a dedication to cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was fatally shot in an accident on the set three years ago.
Organisers called for a minute of silence before showing the film, which opened (overnight in Australia) to a full house at the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography Camerimage in the city of Torun, and received applause at the end.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer, was pointing a gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, in October 2021, when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer – but not the trigger – and the revolver fired.
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Director Joel Souza, left, and cinematographer Bianca Cline, right, at the world premiere of Rust. Alec Baldwin did not attend. (AP)Souza introduced the film at the festival, a popular industry event dedicated to cinematography. He told the audience that initially after the accident he could not have imagined continuing with the production, or even working on a movie set or writing again.
"It just hurt too much," he said.
But Hutchins' husband, Matthew, wanted the film to be finished, and came on as an executive producer.
"It was important to him that the people who knew and loved Halyna get to see her final work," Souza said. The mission became "to preserve every single frame that I could of hers, and to honour her final work."
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Major accidents on movie and television sets
Rust – which includes scene after scene of shootouts – is the story of a 13-year-old boy who is sentenced to be hanged after he fatally shoots a rancher by accident. He goes on the run with his estranged grandfather, played by Baldwin.
Bianca Cline, the cinematographer who finished the project, said Hutchins established the look and feel of the film, and filmed more than half of it. She studied Hutchins' notes to honour her vision.
Hutchins, 42, was a Ukrainian cinematographer on the rise and a mother of a young son. She grew up on a remote Soviet military base and worked on documentary films in Eastern Europe before studying film in Los Angeles and embarking on a promising movie-making career.
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Ahead of the premiere, Hutchins' mother, who is suing Baldwin and the production, said she was refusing to attend and that she viewed the film as an attempt by Baldwin to "unjustly profit" from her daughter's death. Baldwin was also not present.
"It was always my hope to meet my daughter in Poland to watch her work come alive on screen," said Hutchins' mother, Olga Solovey, in a statement issued by her lawyer.
"Alec Baldwin continues to increase my pain with his refusal to apologise to me and his refusal to take responsibility for her death," Solovey added.
But filmmaker Rachel Mason, a friend of Hutchins who was tapped by Matthew Hutchins to make a documentary about his late wife, told the audience that Solovey told her that she wanted the film to be completed because of how important the project was to her daughter.
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Mason also described all those who continued to work on the film after the tragedy on set as "heroic."
"You could just feel and see the trauma that they had gone through," she said.
"Halyna didn't get the chance to do the biggest films that she was expected to do, that we all knew she would. Rust was that film. Rust was going to change her life but instead it took her life. And the people that feel the pain of that most are the people that made the film," Mason said. "I really hope the world can understand that it was a courageous act to complete this film."
A New Mexico judge dismissed an involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin in the fatal shooting. The case was thrown out halfway through trial on allegations that police and prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense.
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Halyna Hutchins, seen here in a photo placed at her vigil in October 2021, died on the set of the doomed film. (AP)The film armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, received the maximum sentence of 18 months in jail for involuntary manslaughter. A judge found that her recklessness amounted to a serious violent offense. Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of Rust, where it was expressly prohibited, and for failing to follow basic gun-safety protocols.
This year's Camerimage festival, where Cate Blanchett is serving as jury president, has already been beset by controversy.
Blitz director Steve McQueen dropped out of the festival to protest an editorial about female cinematographers written by festival founder Marek Żydowicz in which he argued that greater representation of female cinematographers could lead to mediocrity.
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The 32nd Camerimage International Film Festival has been steeped in controversy, not just because of Rust. (AP)Director Coralie Fargeat pulled her film The Substance due to the comments, which led to protests by several cinematography groups. Żydowicz has since apologised.
Żydowicz earlier said organisers were aware that Rust could "stir emotions."
"However, we wanted to pay tribute to Halyna, who respected our festival and who wanted to show her film here," he said in a statement. "There is no commercial undertone, either from our festival or the filmmakers."
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