The Vilmos Zsigmond International Film Festival will be held in Szeged in late October this year. The event commemorates Oscar winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and thus focuses on the art and craft of cinematography. Directors of photography can submit their work until 16 April, the organisers informed MTI on Monday.
The idea of the competition first arose in 2016, the year Szeged-born Zsigmond passed away. The first festival named after him was organised in 2017.
The event draws attention to one of the most important cogs in the machine of the filmmaking process, the cinematographer,
and the significance of their work, while also providing an opportunity for young filmmakers to showcase their own creativity. In the six previous competitions, approximately 2,400 films from fifty countries were submitted.
For the next festival, works can be submitted in four categories until midnight on 16 April. Fiction feature films, short films, documentary films, and experimental films are eligible, with the latter category also allowing for animated and mobile phone films. Creators and creative teams of any age can submit films made after 1 January 2020. The organisers also welcome works made by university students studying film directing or cinematography.
The entries will be judged by a jury consisting of cinematographers, directors, and other film professionals, while the awards of the festival will be adjudicated by an international jury led by Gábor Szabó, the head of the Hungarian Society of Cinematographers. The experts will evaluate the entries based on their cinematographic performance, while also taking into account the artistic quality of the film as a whole. The expectation is that the submitted works will contain original and creative cinematographic solutions that are worthy of Vilmos Zsigmond’s legacy.
The festival will be taking place between 24 and 28 October at one of Hungary’s most beautiful, traditional cinemas, the ‘Belvárosi Mozi’ (City Centre Film Theatre), which first opened over a hundred years ago.
