The Brothers Quay to receive Camerimage award for Directors with Unique Visual Sensitivity

Throughout the last three decades EnergaCAMERIMAGE have bestowed their special awards to a number of directors who use the visual language of film not only for aesthetic reasons but mostly to enhance their storytelling with polysemous images that speak louder than words ever could.

Thus the term ‘unique visual sensitivity’ which signifies people who are artisans crafting their work according to the highest standards they have set for themselves and at the same time artists who are not afraid of going outside of their comfort zones to discover new ways of expression.

Stop-motion and live-action directors Stephen and Timothy Quay, or the Brothers Quay, who are coming to Toruń this November to accept CAMERIMAGE Award for Directors with Unique Visual Sensitivity, excel themselves in exploring dark areas of human imagination most filmmakers would not dare to consider. Their short and feature films offer a unique blend of ghostly imageries, surreal atmosphere and evocative genre-hopping that makes the stories they tell literally one-of-a kind.

EnergaCAMERIMAGE Film Festival participants will be able to take a deep dive into the Brothers’ Quay singular worlds by watching some of their most important films on a big screen and discussing their numerous aspects with the directors themselves.

Since the 1970s, when they made their first projects and realized their artistic sensibilities are not attuned to the mainstream, the Brothers Quay have become true masters of short stop-motion films, finding comfort and artistic freedom in time constraints and loose plots the form allows. Like in Street of Crocodiles which, on a literal level, is a story of a man who inadvertently brings to life a truly bizarre world of inanimate objects’ grimly captivating rituals. The film is an idiosyncratic rumination on the hopes and despairs of being alive, whereas its haunting musical score and dreamily ambience evoke a sense of longing for something that is always outside of our reach.

A true work of art that inspired Tim Burton and Henry Selick’s Nightmare Before Christmas and is considered by Terry Gilliam to be one of the best animated films of all time. Those are not the only filmmakers stirred by the Brothers’ Quay work – Christopher Nolan produced a short documentary (Quay) about them and their studio. As even though the brothers were born in the United States, in Pennsylvania, they have been living in England for most of their lives, and have their own studio in south London in which they bring the effervescent creations of their imagination to cinematic life.

Still from “Street of Crocodiles”

Not only do the Brothers Quay direct and write scripts for their offbeat films, but they are also their own animators, editors, production designers and cinematographers, truly earning the title of film auteurs. Their stories do not have typical three-act structures, they are usually devoid of spoken dialogues, and are removed from being literal as much as it is possible, using symbols, metaphors and evocative music scores to support the visual world-building – the lyrical darkness, morbid humour and dark psychology that penetrate all of their films.

The Brothers’ Quay stories shift between the living and the inanimate, the fantastic and the mundane, the curious and the weird, using plethora of literary and cinematic references, from Franz Kafka to Walerian Borowczyk, from Bruno Schulz to Jan Švankmajer, from Jan Lenica to Luis Buñuel. Although the Brothers’ Quay are mostly recognized for their short and feature films, they have also worked on music videos (for Peter Gabriel or His Name is Alive) and commercials (for Coca-Cola, Nikon, MTV or British Film Institute).

Still from “The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer”

Needless to say, we are – and have been for a long time – enamoured with the Brothers’ Quay filmography, and it fills us with joy that we will be able to host them in Toruń, honour them with CAMERIMAGE Award for Directors with Unique Visual Sensitivity and share our passion for their films with all EnergaCAMERIMAGE participants. Thus, come to Toruń for the Festival’s 31st edition (11-18 November) to celebrate the beauty of the cinema of the Brothers Quay.