‘Angh’ Cinematographer on How He Captured the Film’s Challenging Nighttime Sequences

Cinematographer Adam Pietkiewicz has been dealing with patchy internet over the past few days. He and his crew have been sailing on the Baltic Sea and have finally docked at an undisclosed location in northeastern Poland. In a few weeks, Pietkiewicz will attend the Toronto International Film Festival to accept the Variety TIFF Artisan Award for his work on the film “Angh,” about the last surviving chief of a village in India near the Burma border in the 1960s. While he has a number of shorts under his belt, this is only his second feature film.

“Receiving this award means the world to me,” he says over Zoom. “I couldn’t believe it because so many past honorees are filmmakers I look up to, so being included alongside them is a big honor.” He adds that the award doesn’t just belong to him, but also to the people of the Indian region of Nagaland. “They deserve to be seen and heard because this region is not well recognized around the world.”

Directed by Theja Rio, “Angh” follows a small Konyak Naga family in the 1960s who are the last remaining residents of their otherwise abandoned former village in the mountainous state of Nagaland. Their devotion to the traditional culture of their people is challenged by the arrival of a Christian missionary from the United States.

Rio and Pietkiewicz’s relationship goes back to their film school days, and when the filmmaker mentioned that he was going to expand his short film of the same title, Pietkiewicz said yes.

“Angh” was shot on 16mm film, a format Pietkiewicz is no stranger to, but it was Rio who insisted on using it. Pietkiewicz explains, “He wanted to capture the rough and raw environment of the story.” The cinematographer used Arri cameras paired with Ultra Prime lenses. In addition to 16mm film, he worked with Kodak’s VISION3 250D and VISION3 500T film, mixing formats. “We both knew this format was a great idea for this kind of story. It perfectly reproduced color and added to the grainy look of the film.”

Navigating nighttime shoots proved to be a challenge for Pietkiewicz. He explains that Nagaland didn’t have reliable electricity, which made shooting any nighttime sequences particularly difficult. “Firelight wasn’t enough; it didn’t give me enough exposure on my light meter during tests.”

He experimented with Anghlong Konyak, who plays the village chief. “We built separate fire torches, and on top, we applied a special flammable liquid. Thanks to that, we were able to get enough exposure on their faces.”

As for his shorthand with Rio, Pietkiewicz says they are both huge fans of simple and minimalist filmmaking with a very few camera setups per scene. The scene where the village burns down was shot entirely in camera with no VFX or CGI. Pietkiewicz says that depsite their minimalist approach in front of the camera, behind the scenes, they created a detailed guidebook. “We called it the ‘Book of Angh’ and planned out every single scene.”