Kazi Zaman
- Cinematographer
- Editor
- Writer
Kazi Zaman is a cinematographer and co-founder of Broken Lens
Productions. He was always interested in art as a child and payed
considerable attention to the way a piece was shaded. He enjoyed the
way shadows told a story about an image which led him to watching films
and paying close attention to the cinematography. From the early years
in high school, Zaman began an interest in filmmaking, shooting his
classmates with his camera and learning how to edit by himself. He was
fascinated with the idea of using the camera as a tool to observe and
the video editor to create a story around the captured footage. The
high school headmaster came across some of Zaman's short films on the
internet and recommended him to take film studies as a GCSE subject. He
was fascinated by directors such as Kenji Mizoguchi, Akira Kurosawa,
Hirokazu Koreeda, Kim Ki Duk, Park Chan Wook and many more. All these
directors had one thing in common in Zaman's eyes and that was the
beautiful cinematography that accompanied their works. He began to look
up to cinematographers such as Kazuo Miyagawa who he was greatly
impressed by his work on ''Sansho the Bailiff (1954)'' and Yûharu
Atsuta with his beautifully shot ''Tokyo Story (1953)''. Kazi Zaman
graduated from high school with top grades in film studies and hoped to
make his lifelong career in filmmaking. He later co- founded a
production company called Broken Lens Productions with his college
colleagues. Kazi Zaman's cinematographic style stems from the
influences of cinematographers during his early years as a filmmaker.
He considers himself a ''dark lighter'' with his work usually
consisting of strong back light and lighting ratios ranging from 5:1 to
8:1. Zaman's use of wide shots is also notable, this coming from his
influence from Japanese cinematographers which he says is very
important for the viewer to observe from afar the lives of the
characters.