Emil Novák, director and cinematographer, is a full member of the Australian Society of Cinematographers and a credited member of the Hungarian Society of Cinematographers (HSC). In 1992 in Sydney he won the Golden Tripod Award in the music clip category, and in the same year he got the Certificate of Merit in the experimental category.
Emil Novák graduated in 1983 the Hungarian Theatre and Film Academy, and in 1991 he made his BA as a cinematographer at AFTRS in Sydney. In Sydney he predominantly made commercials, but jointly with Gregory Read also a documentary entitled, Spirit of the Festival.
It was Béla Tarr who invited Emil Novák back to Hungary, asking him to be the cinematographer of his film, Werckmeister Harmonies. The film was awarded numerous prizes and accolades amongst others at the Berlin International Film Festival, Berlinale, and it was also nominated for the Award of the Chicago Film Critics Association.
This was to follow by the assignment for the artistic and cinematographer's task of the Hungarian historical feature film for the millennium, entitled Sacra Corona. The film had over 600 000 theatrical viewers, and millions of people saw it on television. This film was the very first one with the combination of computer generated and life images of the duration of 60". Novák shot both aforementioned films in analogue format. Subsequently he started to use the digital one, and the television series, entitled Sobri, the Penny Film directed by him, originally consisting of 6x60' parts was blown-up from the digital format for the purpose of theatrical distribution.