The continuing fallout over Camerimage CEO Marek Zydowicz’s Cinematography Today column has forced the festival into damage control. A hastily assembled panel November 19 took on diversity and inclusion in the movie industry, a sore subject when only an estimated seven percent of cinematographers are women. Moderated by Anna Higgs, a producer and Chair of the Film Committee at BAFTA, the Widening the Lens: Inclusion and Excellence in Our Industry panel held at the Toruń, Poland gathering featured several festival guests: Actor and producer Cate Blanchett ; costume designer Sandy Powell; director of photography Mandy Walker (“Elvis,” “Snow White”); director of photography and, with “Pedro Páramo,” director Rodrigo Prieto; director of photography and British Society of Cinematographers president Chris Ross (“Shōgun,” “The Day of the Jackal”); and director Maura Delpero (“Vermiglio”).
Higgs insisted they weren’t there to discuss Zydowicz’s words. But she added immediately, “The idea that inclusion dilutes excellence is not up for debate.” Maura Delpero, whose “Vermiglio” is in the Main Competition, said that she made round tables like this a condition of her attending the festival.
“Is quality an objective parameter?” she asked. “Or is it just the result of the tastes of the people who came before us?” Delpero’s films focus on the complexities of motherhood, a subject rarely covered in mainstream films. “The movie story’s.
