2015 IMAGO IAGA REPORT ~ Ron Johanson OAM ACS

2015 IMAGO IAGA REPORT

Greetings everyone,

I have just returned from Jerusalem the capital of Israel after attending the 2015 IMAGO Annual General Assembly (IAGA). This was the very first IAGA to be held outside Europe and it was my honour to represent both the ACS and the NZCS.

Before I go into details about the IAGA, here’s a short history of the city that is Jerusalem.

During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. The oldest part of the city was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent. Today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old City’s boundaries.

Jerusalem is a truly unique city, steeped in so much history and culture, including the Old City of Jerusalem and those many Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other sites that are famous for so many biblical and other significant historical events. Jerusalem is a vibrant, busy city that mixes effectively the old with the new.
I found all the people, whether they are Jewish, Muslim or other ethnicities, to be very gracious and eager to talk and discuss a vast range of topics, but always one get’s the feeling the Israeli opinion is the one that really matters. Sadly at the time Jerusalem was experiencing a new sudden round of violence and this was very evident with a large police and military presence on the streets. Our hotel was the home to many soldiers who were seen at breakfast and during the day armed to the teeth, but nevertheless enjoying the facilities of the hotel. Given Israel has a National Service system in place, many of the military, both male and female were very young, but ever diligent and ready for anything that could take place. This whole situation was disconcerting for us all, and did cause some disruption particularly when wanting to visit the Old City, the Mount of Olives and other religious areas. I did, with other delegates have the chance to visit the Old City along with the historically and architecturally significant Yad Vashem which is Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Established in 1953, Yad Vashem is located on the western slope of Mount Herzl on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem and left me with a great feeling of sadness, but also elation that I had the opportunity to visit this significant and also remarkable place.

Obviously, our security and safety was paramount and our hosts, the Israeli Society (ACT) led by it’s Past President, Idan Or and a wonderful team, were steadfast in ensuring we were all quite safe and the journey for us all was an experience not to miss.

Overall the 3 day Assembly (IAGA) was an outstanding success with a new Board elected under a new President; Paul Rene Roestad from Norway. I was fortunate to be elected to the new Board having served as retiring Board member, Idan Or’s deputy. This means my term as an IMAGO Board member will be for the next 2 years.

The new Board comprises the following talented and broad based personel:

President: Paul Rene Roestad FNF (Norway)
Daniele Nanucci AIC (Italy)
Ms Nina Kellgren BSC (UK)
Rolf Coulanges BVK (Germany)
Predrag Bambic SAS (Serbia)
Ron Johanson ACS (Australia)
Ms Elen Lotman ESC (Estonia)

I think that the current Secretary-General, the amazing Louis-Philippe Capelle is remaining as interim Secretary until the new Board meets. His vast knowledge and experience, as well as his extraordinary capacity to deal with a large number of administrative issues, should be taken into account when the new Board does meet. This also applies to Nigel Walters BSC whose obvious strengths, vast experience and commitment cannot be lost simply because his Presidential term has finished.

The IAGA attendance was very impressive, and by my count there were 40 of the 49 member countries in attendance, with the remaining 9 represented by proxies. The relevance and importance of this IAGA was evident by the overall attendance figures and the Agenda items discussed.

The 3 days are very full and the first day, Friday is a Board meeting to go through the Agenda item by item to prepare for any possible matters that may arise. It is on this day that the majority of the delegates arrive into Jerusalem.

The Saturday and Sunday are the nuts and bolts days where each country attending has the opportunity to raise and discuss matters set out on the Agenda.

DAY 1 – Retiring President, Nigel Walters BSC who has been a very positive influence particularly expanding the International base of IMAGO and liaising with the smaller member countries, particularly those in the Balkan region, thanked his fellow Board Members and welcomed new Full Members from Australia, Japan, Canada, Israel, New Zealand.

Nigel Walters’ opening address included discussion regarding the BSC motion, which the ACS and NZCS support, to encourage the French Society (AFC) to return to IMAGO. The new Board will no doubt discuss this and one hopes there will be a positive outcome, as I believe IMAGO needs to have the French back at the table.

Nigel believes passionately in typical Welsh style that IMAGO offers a real heart to our profession and that IMAGO work together with the craft organizations in trying to fight in the world of self-employed and freelance cinematographers to enhance their rights and working conditions, particularly n Europe.

He also recognised the arduous work done by Louis-Phillipe Capelle in finalising the new Statutes and the necessary IMAGO legal move to Belgium.

Sadly this will be Nigel’s last report as President and it warrants some reflection on his achievements during his term over the past year:

• The unforgettable, positive experience at the last IAGA in Delphi, Greece 18 months ago hosted with great warmth and purpose by the Greek Society, led by GSC President, Yiannis Daskalothanasis.
• The Balkan Conference held recently in Macedonia, with the main topic being the future application of 4K technologies in the Balkan region.
• Nigel has led by example in enabling IMAGO to bring Societies together, and this was evident last December when the Finnish Society initiated a Baltic Conference, with almost all the Societies present from around the Baltic Sea.
• Nigel with his customary unbridled energy has kept the IMAGO flag flying high at Camerimage, along with the GoKinema in Sweden, Cinegear in L.A. encouraging sponsors there and continuing cooperation and collaboration with the ASC.
• There was the Manaki Festival in Macedonia, which is the oldest festival in the world devoted to the craft of cinematography.
• The Helsinki conference followed, where the Finnish Society (FSC) extended an invitation to IMAGO to hold the IAGA 2017 in Finland, which has been accepted.

One of the principle Agenda items of this current IAGA is going to be “The Way Forward for Imago”.
A concept that will explore the possibility of holding regional events similar to the Balkan Conference.

In these “round table discussions” we will have the opportunity to talk about the possibility of strengthening IMAGO with regional initiatives and conferences. MORE LATER ABOUT THIS…..

IMAGO, like most Societies exists on a financial shoestring and if we are ever going to make real progress we have to put the Federation on a more secure basis, which sounds very familiar! In a perfect world IMAGO cannot continue to rely on volunteers, we need an office and a structure to continue successfully as an international Federation. In terms of the yearly budget, we increase occasionally the sums of money but it is not systematic. The lack of resources has been a fundamental factor in the unfortunate cancelling of the IMAGO Spring Conference in Brussels. Everything appeared to be in place for it, but it did not happen and we missed an opportunity, because in the end our finances stopped us and the Board had to decide that we could not continue with this important initiative for the time being.

Nigel talked about the issue of the Digitally Restored Authorizate (DRA) which has been proposed by the Czech Society (ACK) This was discussed at length first in Mons (2013) and then last year in Delphi and the ACK at that time were asked to return to their country and come back with proof that this system of restoring works.

IMAGO recognizes that a system of restoring is vital for the cinematographers’ role and at the Mons IAGA in 2013 we did officially approve the origination of the system, but the process became acrimonious between the Archivists and the ACK and sadly caused a great deal of ill feeling.

It must be noted that the Czechs are the only Society that work actively in the field of the restoration. Sadly, it appears that IMAGO is in the middle of internal squabbling between, on one side the Archivists and on the other side the DRA and the Czech Society (ACK). Imago had promised to organise official meetings with the archivists, but that hasn’t been done at this point in time.

Perhaps the new Board will discuss this further, and bring it to a head. For all concerned, I sincerely hope so………

Also IMAGO hasn’t managed to revive the Authors Rights and Working Conditions committees, which in Britain is now called The Creator’s Rights. On a positive note, Tony Costa has activated the Education Committee and this is proceeding positively.

Nigel finished his report by thanking the member countries for their friendship and support, Louis Philippe Capelle for his tireless work as General Secretary and expects to see us in Macedonia during the Manaki Festival in 2016 for the next IMAGO IAGA. In addition he recognised the outstanding contribution of the founders of IMAGO and the individuals whose hard work has preserved the Federation over the years.

Nigel Walters then introduced the representative of Turkish Society, Zekeriya Tekin Kurtulus as our 49th member. Zekeriva spoke of the honour for his Society to join IMAGO as a full member., and presented a document from the Turkish Society President. I spoke personally to him later and welcomed Turkey on behalf of both the ACS and the NZCS. He spoke with great fondness for both countries, given our historic links.

The financial presentation by the General Secretary Louis-Philippe Capelle:
Louis-Philippe gave a detailed breakdown of the sponsors and the situation of who is staying and who is leaving. There are discussions to take place at Board level to determine if we should have different levels of sponsors, not unlike the ACS model, but Louis-Philippe believes that it might not be a good idea for the small sponsors, who are often our most active partners. Our aim is to benefit from official EU funding and to have a corporate sponsor that wants to benefit from supporting Cinematography and Screen culture.
The most positive factor is there is no debt at all to speak of.

It’s important to remember that Louis Philippe Capelle is dealing on a daily basis with fundraising, along with administration while continuing as a working cinematographer, and is to be congratulated on his outstanding efforts.

Louis – Philippe continued:
To bring you all up to speed regarding the future Budget, this IAGA falls in the budget of 2016, because this is a new European fiscal year. We would also like to increase the communications costs to have more people who would work for IMAGO as a journalist to write and produce articles and we have decided with our new President, Paul-Rene at yesterday’s Board meeting to allocate funds specifically for this, along with allocated funding for the IMAGO committees to bring in consultants if necessary to enable the committees to work more efficiently and effectively.

Marek Jicha ACK spoke about the DRA issue to the IAGA delegates (Taken directly from the Minutes) We want to explain to you the DRA situation from our side. We went to Delphi to start to work with archivists. The past vice president of FIAPF and Director of National Archive was the first to become active with the digitalization so they called the ACK and said they wanted cinematographers to be part of the digitisation. The Czech Republic Ministry of Culture said that they would not put any money in restoration if there is no recognized method for it. We started working on it and Technological Committee and Authorship Committee were part of it. Then something happened, we went to talk to them and the Archivists decided that they don’t like it any more. They don’t like that there is a professional association that has the control over the restoration. There is a big difference in restoring the image from artefacts or in restoring the content or the picture. The directors and we, the cinematographers are the authors of the picture, which is why we started making the DRA method, which is finished, and we will report about it. We received a directive from the Delphi IAGA to go back to Czech republic and we come with the report and we also tried to cultivate harmonic relations with archivists. Our idea is that cinematographers are authors so we should also protect old films, of our colleagues who don’t live any more.
New President Paul-Rene Roestad commented: To make an acceptable system of restoration is in the utmost interest of Imago and we do applaud the work. We must leave everything that has happened in the past, behind us.

Jaromir Sofr ACK talks about how the DRA team spent this summer experimentally proving the method of DRA and it was officially finished. The decision begins with the decision with the choice of the reference print and it cannot be totally in the hands of the archives.

Marek Jicha ACK: The first results of DRA methods exist, the first restorations have been done and we have presented it in some cinematographers’ festivals already and we will present it at Camerimage this year. Three separate cinematographers were included in the restoration and the conformity was very high. It has been scientifically proved that the
expert group will not attempt to improve the image.

For the harmonic relationship with the archives the ACK became the member of AMIA, the Association of Moving Image Archivists.

New IMAGO President, Paul-Rene Roestad advised the ACK: that the new Board will contact you and will discuss with you the best way to continue. We all know what the issues are and we will have to make it work.

The post lunch session on Day 1 commenced with a series of ”round table’ informal discussions on selected topics of interest to the delegates.

IMAGO – ”The Way Forward”

1# Nigel Walters BSC –
Theme: Education; transfer of knowledge and experience.
Topic: REGIONAL CONFERENCES AND MASTERCLASSES
How should Imago foster regional conferences? The structure and cost of Masterclasses, various locations, cheaper, more often etc?

2# Ron Johanson & Tony Costa –
Theme: Promoting Cinematography.
Topic of the discussion group: THE IMAGO AWARDS
Award for the IMAGO Cinematographer of the Year – where, when, how? Different models that are already there (ACS, CILECT etc.) Sponsorship, management etc.

3# Paul-Rene Roestad –
Theme: Monitoring and influencing technical developments
Topic of the discussion group: What kind of innovative events and activities would be helpful for IMAGO in terms of technical developments.

4# Dr Cristina Busch, Louis-Philippe Capelle –
Theme: Authorship, working conditions etc.
Topic of the discussion group: What kind of concrete collaborations with different other international organisations should Imago continue or initiate.

5# Idan Or –
Theme: Working conditions etc.
Topic of the discussion group: IMAGO conference or congress, what should be discussed there and for whom should it be directed to; how the lobby should work in a structured way.

6# Predrag Bambic –
Topic: Committees: How to make IMAGO committees work?
Country-specific? Topic specific? Assign people and disband committees?

After completion of the “round table” presentations there was a feedback session from the Moderators to the IAGA delegates

Nigel Walters’ discussion group presentation:
There were some very useful suggestions – the group mostly talked about Masterclasses and the difficulties in raising the funding for it. There are various ways of Imago assisting societies in helping to organise the Masterclasses. One very good idea emerged that there could be for example Masterclasses that attract the cinematographer and the gaffer – it is interesting and it has a potential of having sponsorship from the companies who are interested in the gaffers, for example.
Publicity is essential and the Imago facebook page has influenced a lot of attention.
The Romanians have been organising small master classes and because most people do it out of generosity and goodwill, this is a very viable option of holding smaller regional Masterclasses.

Ron Johanson and Tony Costa’s discussion group presentation:
Ron thanked the participants for the positive and collaborative discussion. We could plan to have Imago Awards that could be held at the time of the IAGA, which would have no association or affiliation with any other festival. Every member country would nominate one film or maybe more from their country, maybe even an emerging cinematographer award, among other special awards, and a Television Drama category could work, given the outstanding television being produced around the globe. The judging or the original nominations would come from the various Societies and then it would come to a seleted jury and they would narrow it down to 5 nominees, and it would be all peer-evaluated.
It is something that should be pursued and then brought to the Board for further discussion, which I am very happy to do. But it won’t happen quickly, it might take 2 years but it is worth pursuing. It will also be a good attraction for our sponsors, and will give worldwide appreciation of the cinematographers from our member countries. Each Society will nominate its film or entries based on its own selection criteria and that from IMAGO, but it must come from a level playing field. Obviously costs will need to be investigated, which I will also commence, based primarily on our own ACS National Awards for Cinematography, but with information from Europe given the Awards will and should take place in Europe. Much more to investigate and present to the Board.

Paul-Rene Roestad’s discussion group presentation:
The discussion group decided that the main aim for the next period would be to try to influence the camera companies to make as many user-friendly cameras as possible. The IMAGO Technical Committee is the most active of all the committees. We concluded that Technical Committee will write down it’s aims for the next administrative period and give it to the Board so it would be easier to influence the development and to reach it’s aims.

Louis-Philippe’s presentation of the discussion: Our group was about to talk about the relationships about the international organisations and what could bring the name of IMAGO forward. With Cristina we made a resume of the situation, which is not very easy as we are well known in some ways and in some ways we are totally unknown. Some organisations don’t want to hear about our principal aim, which is the author rights for cinematographers, and we were hoping to get opportunities for new solutions. The discussion went around the DRA again because our ACK friends believe that this could be a door opener. There were different points of views on how to do it, and we did not get any positive conclusion. What is quite clear is that we need an office running in Brussels that would be equal with FERA, UNIMEI etc. which would be a key point of our development. The relationship should be applied immediately when there is the next public consultation with the EU. We also talked about the Brussels conference that besides of being heard there was also the idea of being known – we can invite a lot of people just to meet them and to prove them that we are also an organisation, which can run these kind of events.
Dr Cristina Busch added: Imago should establish a better connection with a Collective Rights Society and maintain a good dialogue.

Idan Or’s discussion group presentation:
Our very small but efficient group had an advantage of discussing something that we had worked on in the beginning of the year. What we are planning to do is not to have just one conference, but to have a project of two years that the two-day conference would be an opening for. We are planning to have politicians and keynote speakers and second day should have discussions to keep going on in taking care of these issues actively. We already found three EU funding application calls that we can apply for and we want to get offers from companies that write applications. Then the offers should come to the Board and it is to the Board to decide to give the budget to start to work on it.

There were 4 other items put forward to finish Day 1.

Nigel Walters spoke about the proposal for Bitola (Macedonia) as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
He also asked the Board for permission from the delegates to hold the next IAGA in Bitola. The dates will be some time around the second half of September.
IAGA approves the Bitola proposals unanimously.

Timo Heinänen – President of the Finnish Society presented the proposal from the Finnish Society to host IAGA 2017 in Espoo, near Helsinki.
Tony Costa remarks that it will be the 25th anniversary of IMAGO.
Elen Lotman remarks that this would be a very good time for the first IMAGO Awards.

END DAY 1

COMMENCE DAY 2 – Sunday 18 October

To begin the day we had a very informative presentation from the Director of the Jerusalem Film & Television Fund, Mr Yoram Honig who spoke with great clarity and enthusiasm about locations and facilities available in Israel and Jerusalem and the funding assistance of up to 60% cash refunds on money spent in Jerusalem as part of the production budget. He spoke about the various international productions that have already taken advantage of these incentives including the recent Television series DIG, and Natalie Portman’s debut film as a Director, both shot using Jerusalem’s fantastic locations and facilities.
Click on the link to view a promo film previewing what the region has to offer – link to download –
WWW.Jerusalemfilmfund.com

A very special greeting followed this from the incoming Israel Association of Cinema & Television Professionals (ACT) President. Mr Avi Satat.

Avi welcomed us all in the spirit of friendship and mutual cooperation and hoped we would have a successful IAGA.

IMAGO COMMITTEES OVERVIEW

Hermann Verchuur DFF spoke about the Masterclass Committee of which I am a member, and informed the delegates that the committee did not manage to hold a Masterclass last year, due to the lack of funding, simple as that. The previous Masterclass in Vienna was a great success, but we were unable to find the funding for the next Masterclass. The Masterclass committee is concerned there is no conclusion as to how we can continue. Obviously we want to retain the current level of quality and the Imago brand as assurance, but we are still determining the best way to proceed with the current “INSPIRATION” concept.

Unfortunately the amount of money we can raise is not enough to proceed as we have done in the past, so the possible solution is to hold smaller, localised events in different locations, using a more cost effective budget.

It was agreed that the Masterclass and the Education Committees work together in future to determine the best way forward.

IMAGO TECHNICAL COMMITTEE REPORT
Kommer Klein SBC and Rolf Coulanges BVK (Transcribed directly from the IAGA Minutes)

Esteemed cinematographer Rolf Coulanges BVK presented the communication from the Committee to camera manufacturers about the access to settings, which is an initiative from Rolf and Philippe Ros AFC. The question of the texture of the digital image with adjusting sharpness started the discussion. Should the image structure be accessible for cinematographers? Some camera manufacturers reject the access of the cinematographers. We see it in another way, because we always have had control over the filters and lab etc. So one of the targets is that we want to get access to everything. There is no camera in the moment, which gives access to the parameters because cameras are all exhausted while shooting. We are looking now into working with the raw data in postproduction. One of the main aims in the committee is to make the cinematographers aware that the future is divided in the three parts – the lighting, the composition of the image and the processing of the image in the postproduction. I don’t speak about colour grading, but developing the image from the raw data – debayering, taking the bayer pattern from the sensor, colour mapping etc. The most complex step is the colour mapping, to find the right colour for each photosite and it is a special secret sauce of each camera manufacturer. Debayering parameter is something that is available in the market, but if you use only the algorithm itself there are a lot of mistakes and only what the proper software for developing the images and colour mapping that is based on the experiences of the companies is what makes the real difference. Mostly they use software development kits, one is for example from Arri Company, which many use. Nevertheless it is not a technical problem, but about the decisions which are hidden in the software and decided by somebody and we want to know what is going on. In the meantime we got a lot of possibilities to look deeply into the process on a conference we were invited by Arri. Now we have three parameters in the cameras that have to work together and they have a complicated programme called Scaler that combines the three parameters and then you have different options to find the maximum quality of the image and because of those options it will always be the question of taste, not ta technical question – and this is why cinematographers need the access to these parameters. The three parameters are sharpness, detail and accutance.
Sharpness – measurement for the smallest detail, which the sensor can resolve;
Detail – different from sharpness, it means finest resolution possible through the frequency of some detail, it’s a physical parameter;
Accutance – this is the most complex and interesting part of the parameters: the perception of sharpness of our eyes depends less on the resolutioon and more on a microcontrast of the image. If we are talking about sharpness the companies mean the microcontrast. We cannot influence the sharpness but we can influence the edges of the details on the image. What is new now in the camera is that in the last debayering software of the Arri Company one can influence the sharpness from the three colour channels separately. It’s a process of influencing RGB directly after the debayering and before the colour mapping process. We cannot change the debayering process, I always thought it is possible, but it is not possible. But you can do it directly after debayering. Colour mapping is finding all the missing colur information for each photosite, as each one of them only has one colour. This possibility will not be given in the camera but you can do this in the imaging software.
Generally, when you start with the role of sharpness they you are really getting surprised, because the highest resolution is the least important effect in the history of paintings. Through the time it did not need the creation of sharpness, for example impressionistic painting did not consider it important. We should think if this discussion of 4K and 2K is even relevant. Does the image have the presence in the perception of our eyes? What happens with the light energy that hits the sensor and creates the image? Where does this energy of light remain in the debayering process? You can feel this difference when you compare a monochrome image and the image with debayering process – it is not connected with the resolution but the perception of the image by the sensor of monochrome image. Therefore we think that the sharpness does not represent the real sharpess of the image. Through the detailing the image does not get any more resolution. In fact there is no better image resolution if you would use better lenses, sensor or film. These other factors are much more important. In film technology we used this, changing to a fine grain and using the accutance technologies with sharper black and white images in the chemical process.
The point of discussion on the future will not be sharpness but the colour mapping and the decision of the debayer software, some companies don’t only have the three values but also a value of luminance that for example in Baselight you can control separately.
Our goal is to get the cinematographers access to these choices and we are right to be part of the process.

Kommer Klein SBC then introduced the other topics that the IMAGO Technical Committee has worked on and a survey that he has done on the projector manufacturers ability to project different frame rates.
Patrick Lindemaier SCS (Swiss Society) the recently elected member of the Technical Committee drew attention to the fact that the survey does not reflect the real reality, because although the manufacturers might say that they are able to project higher frame rates in reality the cinemas often are not due to not updating software etc.

Rolf Coulanges BVK: Another piece of news is that the Technical Committee will have a new name: the Committee of Creative Technologies in Cinematography.

EDUCATION COMMITTEE
Committee Chair, Tony Costa’s presentation is available on IMAGO webpage Member Section, but I made the following observations:
• A decision regarding the next Education Committee conference should be known before 27 February and will more than likely take place in Munich. I have registered our interest in attending as both I and Erika Addis are committee members.
• There will be a call for papers, after 27 February, for the conference based on the topic “Teaching Cinematography in Universities and Film Schools” universally.
• Suggestion to create several different classes with Workshops/Seminars which IMAGO will produce.
• Consider an IMAGO Summer Camp of Cinematography in Europe.
• Educating younger students regarding retaining the control over the final DCP, along with the importance of understanding all tge artistic elements of cinematography and it’s effect on the storytelling.

Presentation about JSC Camera Assistant Seminar by Yoshiko Osawa representing the Japanese Society of Cinematographers.

Presentation by Kurt Brazda AAC (Austrian Society) from the Social Dialogue committee.
Kurt explained in detail the Austrian meeting of politicians and freelancers. It was a successful event and 11 demands were formed which could be a good basis for the proposed conference in Brussels, as it was prepared by AAC for the cancelled Brussels conference. PLEASE NOTE – Kurt Brazda read out the 11 demands, which I have attached as a separate document, which makes for interesting and informative reading. RJ

Yannis Daskalothanasis, President of the Greek Society presented an issue relating to the Greek cinema tax.
The Greek film industry suffered largely by the demand of European Commission to terminate the cinema tax that was used to support local film production. Since the tax does not exist any more, it was replaced with VAT, so the price of the ticket did not change, but the money does not go to the local film production any more, but goes to the general state budget. It is ironic because last year there were more than 20 feature films made in Greece. Because FERA has written a letter to the Greek Government, we thought if we, as a Society, write a letter to the Greek government too from IMAGO it may help.
The IAGA agrees to write the letter in support of the Greek Society, under advisement from Yiannis and his Greek committee.

General Discussion took place on the Lithium Ion Battery subject, which are banned from being placed in the baggage hold – because recently there was a fire and explosion on a plane that had started because of the batteries and it is agreed that the IMAGO webpage could have the documents that describes the regulations of travelling with batteries. I provided the information from Qantas we have on our ACS web site.

And sadly that was that!! The end of Day 2 and the completion of an extremely successful IAGA 2015.

Imago President, Paul Rene Roestad closed the Jerusalem IAGA and thanked everyone, especially Nigel Walters BSC, Louis-Philippe Capelle, Andreas Fischer-Hansen, Luciano Tovoli AIC, our Moderator the man in constant motion, Rodrigo Ruiz Tarazona and our outstanding and generous host Idan Or, along with Avi Satat, Ms Noa Ben Izakh and the members of the ACT.

My thanks to Elen Lotman ESC for her help in providing me with the Minutes of the IAGA which I have used to ensure correct explanation is given relating to some discussion in my report to the ACS and NZCS Executive, and to my ACS colleagues for your unwavering support on a daily basis.

My enduring support and friendship to all my IMAGO colleagues, whom I will miss, but think of you constantly when I am home in Australia.

Until we meet again…..
Ron Johanson OAM ACS
ACS National President