Xavi Giménez: “for ‘Ágora’ I followed Sebastião Salgado’s social photography closely”

Shot with photochemical emulsion, director of photography Xavi Giménez, during the TVE broadcast, when collecting his Goya for 'Ágora', vindicated the role played by laboratory professionals.

Face to face with three of the most thriving young cinematographers at the moment such as Álex Catalán (After), Carles Gusi (Celda 211) and Félix Monti (El secreto de sus ojos), and starting from a diametrically different production concept among them, finally last night the Academy chose to reward the work behind the camera of Xavi Giménez in Now.

Although Giménez acknowledged that at some point he considered the possibility of tackling this ambitious project digitally, he finally opted for photochemical. “From my point of view, based on the fact that cinema and photography are textures, photochemistry gives you texture and creative possibilities that are different from those of video. I hope the video improves and is much easier to work with, although I find it very complicated. I feel very comfortable with photochemistry to achieve very elegant textures, something that this film required. For other jobs I see the video as perfect,” Xavi Giménez told Panorama Audiovisual.

According to this photo director, “Now It seems to me to be a brilliant film in which we have managed to perfectly combine films ranging from 250 day for outdoors, 200 for indoor nights and even some 500″ support. As for laboratories, the material was processed in several, although most of it was carried out at FotoFilm Madrid.

And Amenábar's film presents two very defined parts, a first that radiates light and a second that is dark. “The first part, especially around Hypatia, is very brilliant, highlighting the philosophical concept in which she lives. However, the second tends to chiaroscuro, with the entry into the Middle Ages and how religions would be defined. For us the light reference was Hypatia. “We wanted all the light to come from the character, and for the character himself to define the light of the film,” Giménez acknowledged.

Asked about the references that served as a guide for filming Now, Xavi Giménez acknowledges that he drew on countless documentary and pictorial sources, although he acknowledges that “for Ágora I closely followed the social photography of Sebastião Salgado. For me he was a photographic reference, for example, current Palestine in a world of radicalism and social darkness.”

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