The Talent Demo Program is organized every year at Camerimage. It connects students and young professionals with a film project, to experienced cinematographers, directors and producers participating in the festival.
Early October, the submissions opened, and I sent my application to the festival team with the description of a short film I will shoot in Togo in April 2022. “Ativio”, written and directed by Juliette Boucheny, tells the story of Guénolé, a young inhabitant of Agotimé-Adamé, a village three hours north of the capital. Guénolé has an obvious musical sensitivity and dreams of playing the piano. The film is an initiatory tale, expressing the daily reality of a child and the power of his imagination.
My entry accepted, I enthusiastically joined the other participants at the Artystyczna Bistro, this Monday, November 15, and had two meetings, the first one with Rauno Ronkainen, Finnish director of photography and member of the Cinematographers’ Debuts jury, and the second one with Andrea Gatopoulos, Italian producer and director whose film “Slowly Slowly” will be presented in the Documentary Shorts Competition later this week.
Shooting a film in the middle of the jungle comes with many logistical issues: how to ship the equipment, charge the batteries, download footage on drives without any access to power, feed a film crew without running water… Rauno Ronkainen has never worked in Africa but is used to isolated and hostile filming locations in the North Pole, where certain constraints are similar. He advised me to work in natural light, and to use solar panels to charge the batteries. He recommended that we double the shooting days, not only to anticipate unexpected events but also to facilitate the work with the non-professional actors who will be real inhabitants of the village. Rauno also thinks it is necessary to surround myself with local people, whether they are part of the crew or not, because this story is also theirs and because they know the region and its changing climate.
Protecting the equipment against temperature fluctuations and humidity is essential. I learned that there is a spinning filter which instantly evacuates raindrops falling on the lens so that they don’t appear in the image!
Andrea Gatopoulos’s advice concerned my artistic choices. “Slowly Slowly”, his documentary screened at the festival, depicts the journey and thoughts of a young man moving to Zanzibar. According to Andrea, the final cut of this film is very different from the original script because his ideas have evolved during the shoot: the more he worked on his subject, the more his prejudices as a European discovering Africa got in the way. In the case of “Ativio”, Juliette the director, all the actors and the production designer are Togolese or know Togo well. Therefore, the mentality with which I will approach the project, as a foreigner to the country and its culture, is very important. Andrea and I also discussed the place given to magic in the film, the most accurate way to portray it in the image. Showing me a clip from Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Cemetery of Splendor”, Andrea reminded me that very intense scenes shot in a very simple way can have a lot of impact and be totally believable. “A Ghost Story” by David Lowery is also a good example !
“A Ghost Story” de David Lowery
“Cemetary of Splendour” de Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Each meeting is supposed to last only thirty minutes, but both Rauno and Andrea offered to continue the conversation by email or phone as the project progresses. I am going in Togo for the first time in December with Juliette to begin immersing myself in the world of the film. When “Ativio” will be finished, it will be presented in a subsequent edition of Camerimage as part of the Talent Demo Showcase, which screens films made by participants of the Talent Demo Program.
