Professional Motion Picture Production and Distribution NEWS

Announcement of The International Festival of Cinema and Technology 2004 Tour Award Winners

By International Festival of Cinema and Technology
posted Aug 12, 2004, 14:14

The announcement of the International Festival of Cinema and Technology 2004 Award Winners recently took place. The tour was launched this past February in Orlando and festival screenings took place in London, Toronto, New York, Sydney and Brisbane and included many student films. Festival locations included Universal Studios in Orlando, The Fox Studios Screening Room in Sydney, The Canadian Broadcast Centre in Toronto, the Horse Hospital in London among others. In each city, extensive judging took place in each city to determine the award winners. The international projects this year swept the award categories as multiple recognitions went to the German film directed by Erika Rettig Michaels, "Viendo Lluver (Looking into the Rain)," which won five separate award categories. "Time to Be Born" by Columbian Director Jose Restrepo and the dramatic short "The Rainbow" from Iran and Wales, directed by Caradog Wolfe also won multiple award recognitions. Animated films also were big winners at this year's IFCT 2004 World Tour, the animated documentary "Einstein: Shedding Light on the Universe" won first prize for Best Animation. The UK short experimental animation "Insight" won for Best Experimental Film and German film "Kann ich abhaben?" (What's in it for Me?), which uses 15000 animated photos to tell its innovative story, won the first place award for "Best Use of Special/Visual FX in a Live Action Short."

The IFCT 2004 World Tour is a creation of the International Festival of Cinema and Technology. Last year's IFCT tour took place in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, London and Paris. Popularity of the touring event in 2003, launched a new tour in 2004 with the additional cities of Sydney and Brisbane added to the list. The festival seeks to showcase the best in truly independent cinema. The festival also provides participating filmmakers with comments from the judges in each city, providing useful feedback which may potentially either encourage them to make different choices in their future works. Many of the award winners in the festival this year were by student or "first-time" filmmakers: this factor speaks to the level of new filmmaking talent which often goes unrecognized. Many of the award winning films were U.S. Premieres, Canadian Premieres, and Australian Premieres at IFCT.

Festival projects include short comedies, dramas, animations, experimental films, music videos and documentaries and are from truly independent filmmakers from a wide variety of countries including the U.S., U.K., Canada, Mexico, Spain, Colombia, France, Germany, Bermuda, and Switzerland. The festival's motto is it seeks to "discover the undiscovered film." The "technology" in the festival's name occurs both in the content of the festival, which tends to focus on themes of technology or feature unique creation techniques, as well as in the method of showcasing content at the events. The winners of the tour were selected by a panel of over 50 judges who are based in London, Toronto, Sydney, Brisbane, New York and Orlando. These judges consisted of film reviewers, magazine editors, music composers, acting teachers, and award winning directors.