Szeged was the hometown of the world-renowned, Academy Award winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who was also a honorary citizen of the city. The festival venue, the nearly hundred-year old, splendid Belvárosi Cinema in Szeged, is one of the oldest traditional cinemas in Hungary. The largest auditorium with five hundred seats was named after Vilmos Zsigmond in 2005, and he was especially proud of that. Whenever he came home, he never missed visiting "his cinema”.
Beyond these personal ties, our film festival was also inspired by Vilmos Zsigmond’s greatness in film, by his honour and reputation. The quality of his work and his influence over the next generations are reflected in the festival goals: to draw attention to the cinematographer, one of the most important co-creators of films, and to the relevance of their work.
"The festival's name makes it clear that we study films from a cinematographic perspective. However, we have learnt one important thing from Vilmos, namely that the cinematographer's achievement, the image can’t be evaluated on its own. The best example is his art itself: the image, the cinematographer's accomplishment can only be evaluated together with the directorial intentions or the message of the entire film. So this way we award not only the cinematographic work, but the films as a whole.”
Gábor Szabó HCA, president of the jury