(this text was originally published in Polish 13th May 2024)
The Millennium Docs Against Gravity film festival is the largest documentary film festival in Poland. After studying the programme of the 21st festival and adjusting it to my personal schedule, my choice was the film „Uncropped. James Hamilton. Photographer of New York”.
The film begins in a very ordinary way: a man walks through the city and takes photos…. with a compact digital camera. But this is often how the most interesting photographs are taken: when we capture reality in the frame, unintentionally. And then it turns out how much emotion has been captured in that one photo. In the film itself, one of the journalists James Hamilton worked with said: „I struggled to write an interesting text, whereas James took a single photo that expressed more than all my words”.
I admit that this time my „cinematic intuition” worked perfectly. The film „Uncropped. James Hamilton. Photographer of New York” not only presents an impressive collection of photographs by this well-known and renowned photographer (which are skilfully woven into the plot of the film), but also devotes a lot of space to his relationships and cooperation with journalists from different countries. So for me this screening was a double joy: not only did I „discover” the artist James, but I also could see a part of the history of American press journalism.
With his works, Hamilton has shown many times how much he can show with a single photograph. But it would probably not have been possible if he had not met people along the way who simply trusted him. And this was both in the beginning, when he was learning photography from scratch, and when he accompanied famous musicians and journalists during the war in Ethiopia or when he was given the freedom to publish two of his photographs a week.
The film „Uncropped: James Hamilton. Photographer of New York” confirms that a good documentary consists of an interesting protagonist and a director interested in his story. I recommend the film to everyone, not only to those who are passionate about photography.
The festival took place from 10 to 19 May in seven Polish cities: Warsaw, Wrocław, Gdynia, Poznań, Katowice, Łódź and Bydgoszcz. After that, from 21.05 to 3.06 2024 the films will be available online on the festival website: https://www.mdag.pl/22/pl/Gdynia/page/O-festiwalu-1.
And here you can find information where to watch the film outside the festival: https://www.uncroppedfilm.com/watch .