The book summons the collective reflection of critics, photographic historians, filmmakers and theorists who approached the photographic and cinematographic work of Eugenio Polgovsky. This book has the participation of 13 authors, including Eugenio himself. Among them are some of the most internationally renowned film critics, such as Dennis Lim (director of film programming at the Lincoln Centre in New York), Olaf Möller (programmer of the Rotterdam International Film Festival), Diego Lerer (delegate from Latin America for the Directors’ Fortnight of Cannes), Carlos Bonfil (outstanding Mexican critic and contributor to the newspaperLa Jornada), Kieron Corless (deputy editor of the British film magazine SightSound), Erica Segre (University of Cambridge), Michel Lipkes (filmmaker and artistic director of FICUNAM), Deborah Martin (University College London), Mara Polgovsky (Birkbeck College, University of London), the Austrian documentary director Hubert Sauper (Darwin Nightmare, We come as friends, Epicentre), Mexican Carlos Reygadas (Japón, Luz Silenciosa, Batalla en el Cielo, Nuestro Tiempo) and Gareth Evans (film curator at the Whitechapel Gallery). In the absence of a professional school of photography in Mexico, I began to study cinematography, although I also became interested in screenwriting, directing, editing, and acting. Since the beginning of my career as a filmmaker, I distanced myself from the commercial industry, where young directors copy cinematic ‘success stories’ and dress up business with narrative, instead of developing their own language. Photography and editing constitute the axis of my cinematographic practice; my films construct their narratives through the gaze, without depending on voiceovers or other forms of verbal description -Page 37.
