Double Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bolzano Film Festival Bozen 2023: the prestigious award, this year in collaboration with the Bolzano Tourist Board, will be awarded to the Austrian cinematographer Christine A. Maier and the Italian editor Jacopo Quadri.
Christine A. Maier, wonderful image maker with an international career
“The making of a film is certainly not limited to the contribution of director *, actor * and producer *. I think it is necessary to further recognize and give visibility to other professions that build, imagine and invent cinema – says Vincenzo Bugno, new Artistic Director of the BFFB -. It is following this conviction that we have decided to award a Lifetime Achievement Award to Christine A. Maier, a marvelous researcher and image creator, a well-established cinematographer in her country of origin, Austria and elsewhere, who since the beginning of his activity has contributed to the success and visibility of a decidedly frontier cinematography, the Bosnian one”.
Born in 1969 in Graz, Austria, Christine A. Maier, after studying at the Filmakademie in Vienna, in 1998 made her first film as director of photography, Nordrand by Barbara Albert, acclaimed at various international festivals. In 1996, on a business trip to Bosnia, he met the director Jasmila Žbanic, at the time an art student in Sarajevo: a professional partnership was born which materialized in Grbavica, Golden Bear at the 2006 Berlinale, and then in Quo vadis, Aida?, winner of the Best European Film Award at the European Film Awards 2021. Since 2005 he has also worked with the American artist Amie Siegel, for art films and installations.
There are two films chosen by Maier to represent her work at the next edition of the BFFB. In addition to Quo vadis, Aida? by Jasmila Žbanic, – the story of Aida, interpreter in the negotiations with the Bosnian Serb units in Bosnia in 1995, after having sought refuge in the United Nations camp of Srebrenica – Bolzano will also screen Licht, a 2017 film by Barbara Albert, on true story of the young blind pianist Maria Theresia von Paradis, parable on the obstacles that female talent must face to establish itself in Mozart’s Vienna.
Jacopo Quadri, to date 13 awards and 21 nominations in the past in his career
“Editing as the soul of cinema, perhaps a very pragmatic, methodical soul but certainly a builder of artistic and narrative identities”, this is how Vincenzo Bugno describes the importance of editing and consequently the choice of the other 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award, which goes to Jacopo Quadri, “one of the most significant personalities in Italian cinema in my opinion of the last (at least) thirty years: a great editor, or rather an editor, an invaluable partner of directors including, just to name a few, Bernardo Bertolucci, Mario Martone, Gianfranco Rosi, Marco Bechis, Paolo Virzi, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul”.
Jacopo Quadri, born in 1964, has worked on more than 90 feature films and documentaries, presented in the most prestigious international festivals and often winners of important awards: from the Grand Jury Prize in Venice for Death of a Neapolitan mathematician by Mario Martone in 1992, to the Leone Golden for Sacro Gra in Venice in 2013, Golden Bear in Berlin in 2016 for Fire at Sea by Gianfranco Rosi.
Two titles chosen by him will also be proposed as part of the Lifetime Achievement Award dedicated to Jacopo Quadri. These are Garage Olimpo, a 1999 film by Marco Bechis, on the tragic season of the Argentine dictatorship, presented at countless festivals and to which Jacopo Quadri feels particularly attached, and Lorello and Brunello, directed by Quadri himself in 2017, story of twins who, in the Tuscan Maremma, take care of the family farm: film awarded at the Turin Film Festival and also presented at the Berlinale, among others.