Baz Luhrmann to Attend EnergaCAMERIMAGE 2022 with ELVIS Cinematographer Mandy Walker

Monday November 7th, 2022

Though film began its journey into the hearts and minds of audiences around the world without sound at its side, it is this bewitching combination of visual and aural stimuli that was ultimately responsible for making it a great art form. An art form in which we at EnergaCAMERIMAGE festival strongly believe, supporting filmmakers and storytellers who use images and sounds not only for their traditionally intended purposes but also as the basis for exhilarating cinematic experimentations that result in memorable experiences. Our mission is to highlight the work of brilliant storytellers who are never satiated with what they had already achieved and endlessly pursue their passions and obsessions to infuse every project they make with who they are.

Director, writer, and producer Baz Luhrmann is most definitely such a filmmaker and an artist whose stories have molded the modern perception of how images and sounds should and could be merged into unique cinematic experiences. It is therefore our immense pleasure to announce that the Academy Award^®-nominated filmmaker and will attend this year's festival in-person in Toruń alongside acclaimed cinematographer Mandy Walker. During EnergaCAMERIMAGE 2022 Luhrmann is going to collect the Special Award for Outstanding Director, whereas together with Walker they will present to our audience the latest audio-visual spectacle on which they partnered – Elvis – which will be screened as a part of this year's Main Competition.

Baz Luhrmann
photo by Hugh Stewart

During the thirty years of his filmmaking career, Baz Luhrmann directed only six features and one series, yet in his case it is quality not quantity that matters as each of the projects awed the audiences with a uniquely Luhrmannesque mix of drama, romance, music, comedy, heightened emotions and lavish set pieces. He debuted in 1992 with Strictly Ballroom (shot by Steve Mason), basing this charming romantic comedy of love and dancing on a stage play he wrote eight years prior during his time at the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney. With the next film, 1996’s Romeo + Juliet (with cinematography by Donald McAlpine), Luhrmann announced himself to the world as a talent to watch, successfully challenging the preconceived notions of how a Shakespeare adaptation should look and feel like and making the everlasting tale of star-crossed lovers more approachable to the young generations of cinemagoers.

To say that 2001’s Moulin Rouge! (shot by Donald McAlpine) had an impact on both the worldwide audience and the filmmaking community would be a gross understatement as this cinematic extravaganza taking the audiences to Paris at the turn of the 20th century changed the way many of us perceived the art of film. Luhrmann used every word, every move, ever gesture, every dance number to reflect on universal themes of love, hate, passion, or constant struggle between how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived by others, making Moulin Rouge! a marvel to watch and experience. With Australia (2008, cin. Mandy Walker), Luhrmann resurrected the old-fashioned Hollywood epic and transferred its melodramatic conventions into his home country, while The Great Gatsby (2013, shot by Simon Duggan) saw the director once again proving he was the master of reinterpreting classics through the modern lens, making poor James Gatz’s transformation into the glamorous, enigmatic Jay Gatsby a riveting watch.

Still from "Moulin Rouge!"

Still from "The Great Gatsby"

After that Luhrmann decided to take some time off from feature filmmaking and infused his style into The Get Down (2016, cin. William Rexer), a daring and colourful series retelling the rise of hip hop and disco music in 1970s’ Bronx. In 2022, he came back to creating cinematic spectacles, shining as bright as ever with Elvis (cin. Mandy Walker), an imaginatively shot biopic that is an eye-popping tribute to the everlasting popularity of the King of Rock and Roll as well as a complex study of his meteoric rise and tragic fall.

Baz Luhrmann is a brilliant storyteller who puts years of work into his projects and then uses a variety of techniques and approaches to bring them to cinematic life. Not only that, he is an auteur in the grandest sense of the word as proposed by the French critics all those years ago, taking part in every stage of the filmmaking process, from imagining the story with words to designing each shot and infusing it with images and sounds. It will be our distinct pleasure to host him in Toruń during the 30th anniversary edition of EnergaCAMERIMAGE International Film Festival. We are certain that his meeting with the festival audience will be extraordinary.

Still from "Elvis"
Photo by Hugh Stewart