Dick Pope, Leigh's longtime cinematographer, reacted with elation to his second Oscar nomination, and first for his work with Leigh.
Many times over the past decade and in the middle of making other films – All or Nothing, Happy-Go-Lucky, Another Year – Mike Leigh and his cinematographer, Dick Pope, would look at the sky and then at one another and say: "Oh God, we must make our Turner film".
Daldry has clearly found his ideal collaborators, too: Finn; screenwriter (and playwright) Lee Hall; and cinematographer Brian Tufano, the British veteran responsible for Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and East is East.
He does lectures, he does telly, he appears as a cinematographer now and then.
And thanks to shimmering lighting and airy framing from justly Oscar-nominated cinematographer Dick Pope, the film channels and cherishes the aesthetic of its subject more cannily than any great-painter biopic before it.
As well as screening films, the festival also has a series of masterclasses, including one with Danny Cohen, who was the cinematographer of The King's Speech.
The film will be followed by a Q&A about the making of the film, in which Boyle will be joined by a panel including Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner, the film's influential cinematographer, Brian Tufano, and writer John Hodge.
Trash was even invited on to a panel to decide on the best female director (Kathryn Bigelow); UK female film exec (Christine Langan, BBC Films); female in crew (Ellen Kuras, cinematographer); female writer (Jane Goldman, Kick-Ass) and one to watch (Emma Stone, star of Easy A).
His choice of Sam Mendes now looks inspired, and the meeting he engineered between the young British stage director and the veteran American cinematographer Conrad L Hall looks set to pass into Hollywood legend.
Filming begins in late June on the Isle of Mull, shot by cinematographer Ed Rutherford, who also lensed Joanna Hogg's atmospheric island drama Archipelago.
Some thought its cinematographer, Yang Weihan, deserved recognition for the multi-level reflected images that echoed precisely its characters' interlocking solipsism.
