Image Courtesy: Sabrina Mikolajewski
Retired German cinematographer Jost Vacano will be honored with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s EnergaCamerimage Cinematography Film Festival, which has been scheduled from 13 November to 20 November 2021 at Toruń, Poland. The award also means to commemorate the legal recognition that Vacano got for cinematographers as co-creators of cinematographic works. Vacano, who fought in court with Das Boot producers Bavaria Film and WDR, as well as distributor Eurovideo, had got them to pay him additional compensation as a part of his share of the film’s revenue, thereby establishing a stage for recognition of cinematographic talents in the industry.
The 87-year-old cinematographic genius is best known for his work in the critically acclaimed 1981 movie Das Boot, which had also got him a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography. Vacano had developed a gyro-stabilized camera system to capture the claustrophobic setting and space inside the submarine, which captured the vision of director Wolfgang Petersen perfectly. The duo got together again for Neverending Story in the year 1984.
Vacano also collaborated with Dutch director and screenwriter Paul Verhoeven for almost two decades, where he worked on popular movies which captured fantastically rich elements, including a colony of the future on Mars in Total Recall, Detroit in a dystopian setting in the movie RoboCop, as well as movies like Soldier of Orange, Starship Troopers, Spetters, Hollow Man and Showgirls.