DAILY | Photo | Schatzberg Shoots Polanski
The story behind a photograph shot in 1963.
Thanks to Eugene Hernandez of the Film Society of Lincoln Center for sending along a hi-res version of this photo (which you can view here). Director and photographer Jerry Schatzberg snapped this shot of Roman Polanski following a screening of Knife in the Water at the inaugural New York Film Festival in 1963.
Roman Polanski, 1st N.Y. Film Festival, 1963 © Jerry Schatzberg
Schatzberg tells Eugene that he was so impressed with the film that night that he asked Polanski if he might photograph him: “He came to my studio. I wanted to give the appearance of New York, so I took him up to my apartment, where I went out on the roof, and had him stand inside behind glass doors that reflected a New York scene. I know Roman liked the photographs and we did a number of other sittings through the years. We became friends, and have been friends ever since.”
The FSLC is in the midst of a year-long countdown to the 50th anniversary edition of the New York Film Festival (September 28 through October 14), presenting highlights from the previous 49 editions. Tonight, for example, they’ll be screening Victor Erice’s Dream of Light (1992), originally presented in NYFF 30.
Meantime, Polanski’s been all over the ongoing 65th anniversary edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Laurent Bouzereau’s Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir screened on the opening day and, last night, Polanski presented not only a newly restored print of Tess (1979) but also a new three-minute short, A Therapy, a collaboration with the Italian fashion label Prada that he calls an “anti-commercial.” Simon Jablonski for the Guardian: “A suave, melodramatic Helena Bonham Carter, draped in a fabulous purple fur coat, swans into the office of Ben Kingsley, who plays her silent psychoanalyst. She removes the coat, kicks off her Prada shoes, drapes across a chaise lounge and recounts a dream surrounding typically Polanski themes of loneliness and anxiety.”
Update, 5/23:
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