Niccolò Palomba

His career revolves around documentary and experimental cinema; he has worked with directors including Roland Sejko, Marco Spagnoli and Gianfranco Pannone. His work has been presented in the Orizzonti Extra section of the 78th Venice International Film Festival (Roland Sejko’s La macchina delle immagini di Alfredo C. / The Image Machine of Alfredo C.), twice awarded the Nastro d’Argento by SNGCI — for Best Documentary Film and for Best Documentary in the entertainment category, ex aequo (Franco Battiato — La voce del padrone) — and twice selected as a David di Donatello finalist for Best Documentary. Alongside his work on set, from 2004 to 2006 he served as president of Cineclub Detour in Rome — founded in 1997 in the Monti district, affiliated with the Italian Federation of Film Clubs and later a founding member of the European Kino Climates network — one of the historic reference points for independent and research cinema in the capital. Niccolò Palomba is a member of AIC (Italian Society of Cinematographers) and Imago (European Federation of Cinematographers).

A recurring thread runs through his filmography: the materiality and history of the moving image. From Paramount Pictures e l’Italia (Paramount Pictures and Italy) to Lucherini ne ho fatte di tutti i colori, through La macchina delle immagini di Alfredo C. — shot on Super 16mm with an Arri camera specifically restored for the production — and up to the recent La nostra magnifica ossessione — Bernardo Bertolucci e la sua generazione, his work has contributed to telling the story of the cinematic apparatus on screen: its figures, its technologies, its transformations.

The same thread runs through his work as a director. In 2021 he made Mariuschenka, a documentary short produced by Cinecittà: a first-person portrait of photographer Caio Mario Garrubba, told through the voice and memories of Alla Folomietova Garrubba, his life partner and assistant to filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov. The film was selected at numerous international festivals, including the Asolo Art Film Festival and the Buenos Aires International Film Festival.

His relationship with the instruments of image-making, though, is not only curatorial. In 2009 he designed and hand-built an adapter for mounting 35mm photographic lenses onto broadcast video cameras, at a time when such systems were the cutting edge of video cinematography. The prototype delivered roughly two-thirds of a stop more light than the commercial adapters of the era — an approach later overtaken by the spread of HDSLR cameras, which would soon reshape the market. In later years his research focused on tools for reflecting and shaping light, and on developing on-set workflows in collaboration with a number of post-production studios.

Since 2024 he has extended that practice into software, developing and testing through Pongo Studio — the digital branch of his production house Balene Film — tools for filmmakers that span pre-production, the set and post — built with the same care a cinematographer brings to choosing a lens. A continuation, in another form, of the same authorial interest that runs through his work on set: understanding, restoring, and when necessary rebuilding from scratch the instruments through which images are made.