Gábor Szabó - cinematographer’s masterclass

What does the camera add to the visual design of the film?

12 October 2022, Wednesday, 2:00 p.m.

Accompanying film: Tirza - Dutch film drama, 100 minutes, 2010. Director: Rudolf van den Berg. (16)
12 October 2022, Wednesday, 10:00 a.m.

The Balázs Béle Prize winning Gábor Szabó analyzes the visuals of the Dutch film drama Tirza during his masterclass. The film was the Netherland's Oscar-nominated film in 2010.

The film was shot in the Netherlands and South Africa and provides an opportunity to discuss and illustrate a series of problems that require the close cooperation of the cinematographer, the production designer and the director. Some example:

- Aiding the dramatic arc of the film with visuals.

- Two countries - two kinds of visual worlds.

- The relationship between cameraman and producer.

- A seamless transition between the original locations and the scenes shot in the studio.

- Using a background photo in the scenery.

- Choosing the camera and lenses.

- Unusual use of camera movement equipment in the film.

- Special lens - as a visual effect.

Jeannine Oppewall - art director's masterclass

What does the art department do?

13 October 2022, Thursday, 2:00 p.m.

Accompanying film: L. A. Cofindential - American crime drama, 133 minutes, 1997. Director: Curtis Hanson. (16)
13 October 2022, Thursday, 10:00 a.m.

During Jeannine Oppewall's master class, we can hear about what motion picture designers do.

What ephemeral materials are used, made, thrown away or even kept.

In her presentation, she will show the pictures, drawings and documents that she found during her research she had done before designing the visuals of a film.

We will see photos from the films designed by Jeannine, for example: L. A. Confidential, Pleasantwille, Seabiscuit, etc.

Kristóf Deák - Oscar-winning director’s masterclass

The director's right and left eyes

14 October 2022, Friday, 2:00 p.m.

Accompanying film: The Grandson - Hungarian feature film, 115 minutes, 2022. Director: Kristóf Deák. (16)
14 October 2022, Friday, 10:00 a.m.

In his master class, Oscar and Balázs Béla Prize winning Hungarian film director Kristóf Deák tells the audience about how a less visual-focused director relies on the cinematographer and production designer - and what tools he uses to communicate with them.

In his presentation, we can find out how their trio dream up and make the visual world of the film come true.

Kristóf gives the audience an insight into the director-cinematographer-production designer trio’s collaboration’s difficulties, joint work, and solutions in connection with his two films (The Grandson, Foglyok), and may also reveal many workshop secrets.

Emir Kusturica - Palme d'Or awarded Serbian film director's masterclass

Analysing and modelling reality - The language of film

15 October 2022, Saturday, 3:00 p.m.

Accompanying film: Time of gypsies - British-Italian-Yugoslav drama, 140 minutes, 1988. Director: Emir Kusturica. (16)
15 October 2022, Saturday, 10:00 a.m.

As our life and each of our every day can be separated in sequences based on our personal perceptions, also cinema can be separated in pixels and images that are part of a wider context.

As cinema is the reconstruction of something never existed, the film makers are the ones who have to give the chance to the viewers to enjoy every image and every pixel and in the meantime make them understand the wider context of pixels and show them their correlation to the whole movie.

That’s why sequences are so important in life and in cinema.

Emir Kusturica is a Serbian film director, musician, actor, producer and writer born in Sarajevo in 1954.

He received a degree in film directing at FAMU in Prague in 1978. His first feature Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (1981), won a Best First Work Award in Venice. When Father Was Away on Business (1985) won a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Time of the Gypsies (1988) brought Kusturica the award for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival, while Arizona Dream brought him a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1993.

Kusturica’s Underground (1995) won a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and he got a Silver Lion for his Black Cat, White Cat (1998) at the Venice Film Festival. His documentary Super 8 Stories (2000) won the Best Film award at the St. Petersburg Documentary Festival in 2001. He directed Life is a Miracle in 2004 and Promise Me This in 2007. After this movie, Kusturica directed Maradona by Kusturica. Time of the Gypsies, his punk-opera that was based on the themes of the movie, was first staged in the Opera Bastille in Paris in 2007. He returned to Venice in 2016, when his On the Milky Road was shown and then two years later with his latest film El Pepe, A Life Supreme.

He is the founder and a member of the band, “Emir Kusturica & the No Smoking Orchestra” which performs all around the world.

Emir Kusturica is founder and director of Kustendorf International Film and Music Festival.