News

Jimmy Gimferrer. Photo by Jan Baka.The bold films of Catalonian filmmaker Albert Serra—Birdsong (2008) and Story of My Death (2013), along works commissioned by museums or galleries, the cross-over of documentary and essay, The Lord Worked Wonders in Me (2011), and the unorthodox and experimental 14-episode “television series” El Noms de Crist (2010)— share the same man behind the camera, French-born, Spanish-based cinematographer Jimmy Gimferrer, often billed as Albert Serra's cameraman.Gimferrer studied at Arts and Design school Escola Massana in Barcelona, and, similarly to Serra, is an autodidact. Their film career trajectories have roots to Serra's first film, Crespià (2003)—though Gimferrer did not grab the camera before Birdsong, for which he won a Gaudí Award—carrying the tasks of art director, production designer and actor in the director's second film, Honour of the Knights (2006). The penetrative and concentrating gaze of Gimferre's lens has also served other filmmakers, most notably José Maria...

Jimmy Gimferrer. Photo by Jan Baka.The bold films of Catalonian filmmaker Albert Serra—Birdsong (2008) and Story of My Death (2013), along works commissioned by museums or galleries, the cross-over of documentary and essay, The Lord Worked Wonders in Me (2011), and the unorthodox and experimental 14-episode “television series” El Noms de Crist (2010)— share the same man behind the camera, French-born, Spanish-based cinematographer Jimmy Gimferrer, often billed as Albert Serra's cameraman.Gimferrer studied at Arts and Design school Escola Massana in Barcelona, and, similarly to Serra, is an autodidact. Their film career trajectories have roots to Serra's first film, Crespià (2003)—though Gimferrer did not grab the camera before Birdsong, for which he won a Gaudí Award—carrying the tasks of art director, production designer and actor in the director's second film, Honour of the Knights (2006). The penetrative and concentrating gaze of Gimferre's lens has also served other filmmakers, most notably José Maria...

This interview was originally published online by Sight & Sound. It is being re-published on the Notebook in conjunction with Albert Serra's Story of My Death playing on Mubi in most countries in the world through December 14, 2015.If new movie masterpieces are proclaimed at each and every major film festival each and every year, the notable absence of adventurous, exciting and otherwise transgressive cinema amongst those lauded should inspire us to question not only the terms we use to describe films but also the standards to which we hold them.Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra, a transcendental minimalist who wields his camera like only a handful of fellow feature-film digital adventurers – among them Pedro Costa, David Lynch and Michael Mann – is one of the few who produces work that truly creates a new encounter with the audience. His radically stripped-down, voluptuously shaggy adaptations of canonical writing – Cervantes in Honour of the Knights...