FESTIVALS AND EVENTS
TOMISLAV PINTER’S FILMOGRAPHY
From an early age, Tomislav Pinter (born
Zagreb, June 16, 1926), decided to pursue a career in cinematography,
so immediately following World War II (and after passing
the entrance exam to the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb),
and with no practical experience, he was hired by Jadran
film, where he worked as an assistant to Hrvoje Šarić.
After his apprenticeship and the shooting of reports for
the Film Journals, the first feature film that he worked
on was Little Jole by Nikša Fulgosi. Since this
film was never finished, his feature film debut was in
1960 with Mate Relja’s Kota 905.
This was the beginning of a period of intensely creative
camera work that attested to his skill as an exceptional
artist of image and light. During the 60’s he was the director
of photography on the best of the best films of that time
including: Prometheus
from the Island of Viševice and Monday or Tuesday by
Vatroslav Mimica, The
Key (Waiting) by Krsto Papić, Rondo by Zvonimir
Berković and The
Birch Tree by Ante Babaja. He was also the director
of photography in many significant films by Serbian
authors as well: The Way Things Really Are by
Vladan Slijepčević, Three and The Feather Gatherers by
Aleksander Petrović. Pinter was the recipient of nine Golden
Arenas at the national film festival in Pula as well. Pinter’s
indisputable artistic achievements during the 60s (he shot
15 feature films, most of them authorial and »against the
grain«) brought him the job of lead cinematographer in
two nationalistic super-productions: The
Battle for the Neretva (1969) by Veljko Bulajić and Sutjeska (1973)
by Stipe Delić.
From 1969, Pinter began working for foreign producers
as well, both in coproductions and in completely foreign
productions, and as a result, he became an internationally
renowned cinematographer. Outstanding achievements during
this period include his association with Orson Welles (The Merchant of Venice),
for whom he shot about ten kilometers of 16 mm film for
a hidden camera project on the themes of how Italians speak
with their hands and how Italians view women (a portion
of this material was used in the film F for Fake and
in the TV series Orson
Welles Around the World). Even today, after half
a century of camera work, this renowned cinematographer
still continues to work with a camera in his hands. Boris Vidović |