Camerimage to Host Meeting With Cinematography Organizations to Discuss Improving Representation

Camerimage Film Festival organizers and representatives of various international cinematographer organizations will sit down on Thursday at the Toruń, Poland-based industry event to discuss the issue of representation in both the industry at large and in film festival programming. The move is a response to the controversy that has engulfed Camerimage this year following remarks made by its founder earlier this month that many in the industry deemed to be sexist. 

Camerimage and the Polish Society of Cinematographers invited several dozen cinematography groups to attend the sitdown. The discussion is expected to address the experiences and concerns of under-represented groups in the film business, with the aim of generating positive changes for both the industry and festivals like Camerimage, a director of photography who was invited to the event tells The Hollywood Reporter. 

In August, the industry group Women in Cinematography launched a petition urging Camerimage to do more to support the work of women cinematographers, who remain drastically under-represented in the trade. Between 2019 and 2023, just 4.5 percent of all movies that earned more than $1 million at the box office had a woman cinematographer on their crew, according to recent research from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. 

Controversy exploded around Camerimage last week when the event’s founder — instead of responding to the petition by committing to improving representation, as the Cannes, Berlin and Tokyo film festivals have done in recent years — published an editorial that seemed to argue that pushing for greater female representation at his event could result in programming of diminished artistic quality. 

The reaction from the international film community was immediate, with several leading cinematography guilds publicly condemning the remarks, and filmmakers Steve McQueen (Blitz) and Coralie Fargeat (The Substance) pulling out of planned appearances in protest. 

Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and her fellow jury members stuck with the event, as did other high-profile industry attendees like Alfonso Cuarón, cinematographer Ed Lachman, Shogun star Hiroyuki Sanada and others. The star of Apple TV+’s Disclaimer and jury president participated in a moderated talk in Toruń on Wednesday night on the issue of gender representation and other challenges facing the film industry. 

When speaking to THR ahead of the panel, Blanchett said the work is never done: “Festivals are an opportunity to unpack that stuff and to have meaningful conversations,” she said of the ongoing dialogue at Cameraimage this week. “Festivals provide a chance to do this in a public-facing way but also privately because they bring us together as an industry. These challenges concern all of us — not just our female DPs, but their trans, nonbinary and male counterparts. So, I think there’s a real opportunity to have meaningful dialog this week, and I’m excited by that.”

Thursday’s talk will be led by Kasia Szustow, a creative process facilitator, and Piotr Śliskowski, a Polish cinematographer. It wasn’t immediately clear who would be attending the gathering on behalf of Camerimage. 

Camerimage famously highlights the work of cinematographers and other craft artists integral to the filmmaking process. For years, the event has been akin to a cult favorite on the festival circuit, attracting hundreds of working cinematographers and film buffs for a weeklong celebration of the art of filmmaking in the historic medieval host city of Toruń.