Gianmarco Donaggio (b.1991, Italy) is an award-winning film director, cinematographer, and artist. Member of the European Film Academy.
He is primarily known as an avant-garde filmmaker, particularly for his pioneering approaches in cinematography and audiovisual performances, as for instance, the manufacturing of unique lenses and experimentation with unusual recording and projecting techniques. His cinema celebrates motion and materiality, emphasizing sensation over information. The motion picture is conceived as a body of performing light, a concept articulated in his academic writings.
He has been a Berlinale Talents alumni, and his projects were awarded and screened in several prestigious international film festivals, contemporary art museums, and events including; the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon, the National Museum of Soares dos Reis in Porto, Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, Biennial of Art of Alentejo (BIALE), Palazzo Fondi in Naples, the Pesaro International film festival of New Cinema, the Asolo Art Film Festival, and the Athens Digital Arts Festival.
His works have been supported by companies including Kodak Motion Picture, Freefly System, Resolume, and Lomography.
Gianmarco holds a Bachelor degree in cinematography/creative documentary at the Arts University of Bournemouth (UK), and a Master degree in Visual Culture at Lund University (Sweden) in the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences.
He has an extensive experience in high-end film productions (camera/light department mainly), assisting and collaborating in the making of some of the most known Scandinavian features and tv-series, including Occupied (2017), One Night (2018), As I Fall (2018), Stories from Norway (2018), Neste Sommer (2019), Wisting (2019). Internationally he worked with production companies including Working Titles (UK), Cattleya (IT), Nordisk film (DK), Fantefilm (NO), Canal + (FR), Miso film (NO), Feelgood (NO), Motion Blur (NO), 4 1/2 (NO), NRK (NO), Ape & Bjorn (NO), Encore Film (NO), Mer film (NO), Monster (NO), Sant & Usant (NO), Pravda film (NO), Animaskin (NO).
Over the years he collaborated with Academy Award winners and nominated filmmakers, he served as gaffer/grip on Gunda (2020), shortlisted for an Oscar for best documentary and nominated for best cinematography at the American Society of Cinematography (The ASC).
Gianmarco's films are profoundly experiential, somehow referring to the process of cinema as a standalone art form: moving images, an approach theorised and praised by a few filmmakers in the avant-garde. He proposes a cinema of optical lyricism, approaching the camera as a means to encounter the world of perception instead of attempting to rule its possibilities. Therefore, he employs the capacities of the camera to unlock enchanted cinematic spaces leading to fields of kinetics.
