On Saturday night the 2007 Sundance Film Festival award-winners
for jury and audience selections were announced at the events
closing Awards Ceremony in Park City, Utah. Both "Dark Matter" and
"Nanking" won prizes.?
Director of the film
Dark Matter Chen Shizheng (C) poses with stars of the
film, Liu Ye (R) and Aidan Quinn, at the premiere during the
Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on January 23, 2007. The
film won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film
Festival on January 27, 2007.
Dark Matter, directed by Chen Shi-Zheng and written by
Billy Shebar, won this year's Alfred P. Sloan Prize. The film,
inspired by real events, delves into the world of a brilliant
Chinese cosmology student whose dreams are challenged when he
arrives in the US to pursue his Ph.D.
Dark Matter, which screened in this year's Spectrum
section, was recognized for its evocative portrayal of scientific
passions, career politics and cultural conflicts in an astrophysics
research laboratory. It was also recognized for its impressive
achievement in filmmaking. This included note-worthy performances
from Chinese actor Liu Ye and the US pair of Aidan Quinn and Meryl
Streep.
Nanking, a film about the Japanese army's notorious
Nanjing massacre during World War II, won the Documentary Editing
Award from the Independent Film Competition Documentary Jury. This
honored editors Hibah Sherif Frisina, Charlton McMillian and
Michael Schweitzer for their work on the film.
Festival juries awarded top prizes to two films -- Padre
Nuestro and Manda Bala -- and highlighted a range of
movies that concerned world issues, the war in Iraq and
families.
Padre Nuestro, which tells of an illegal immigrant from
Mexico looking for his father in New York City, won the Grand Jury
Prize for best drama made by a US filmmaker. Manda Bala, a
look at crime and corruption in Brazil, earned the jury honor for
top US documentary.
Festival director, Geoffrey Gilmore, called 2007 a "landmark
year" due in large part to the numerous topics and quality of
independent films screened at the top US festival for movies made
outside Hollywood's mainstream studios.
"For so many different reasons, this work is exceptional in
terms of how much of it will get into the marketplace, and the
range of issues and maturity of the filmmakers," Gilmore said.
Padre Nuestro director, Christopher Zalla, said that
while his movie dealt with illegal immigration to the United
States, it was also a film that tried to paint a picture of New
York as a city of immigrants.
"When we filmed the movie we talked to a lot of people crossing
the (borders) and they were just families -- families coming to
feed themselves and reunite with their family," Zalla said.
Sundance juries also hand out honors for international movies
and the World Cinema drama prize went to Israeli movie Sweet
Mud about a boy dealing with his mentally ill mother on a
kibbutz in the 1970s. Denmark's Enemies of Happiness,
which details the life of an Afghani woman politician, earned the
World Cinema jury prize for best documentary.
The juries at Sundance, which is backed by actor Robert
Redford's Sundance Institute for Filmmaking, are composed of five
filmmakers and industry professionals for the US-made movies and
three jury members for the World Cinema awards.
While the jury prizes are the top awards audiences also vote for
their favorite films during the 10-day event held each January in
the mountain town east of Salt Lake City.
The Audience Award for best film drama went to Grace is
Gone. It stars John Cusack as a father of two coming to terms
with the death of his wife in the Iraq war. This movie also earned
the screenwriting award for its filmmaker, James Strouse.
Strouse said throughout the festival he'd been asked whether he
intended his film to make a political statement and had answered
that Grace is Gone focused on the families of the men and
women who’d died. "The losses suffered in this war to the families
left behind transcend political dogma," he said.
His movie was not the only war film honored at Sundance. The
documentary jury gave a special prize to No End in Sight.
It's about potential US policy mistakes over the Iraq war.
Hear and Now, director Irene Taylor Brodsky's personal
story about her deaf parents' undergoing surgery to regain their
hearing, won the audience trophy for best documentary.
In the World Cinema arena, In the Shadow of the Moon,
an emotional tale of the Apollo astronauts from Britain's David
Sington, was the audience documentary winner, while Irish musical
Once earned the audience trophy for best drama.
Directing awards went to Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine for their
documentary "War/Dance" about child soldiers in Uganda and to
Jeffrey Blitz for his drama Rocket Science about a high
school student with a stutter who learns lessons in life and love
while a member of a debating team.
"The films in this year's program have opened up the
possibilities of what independent film can be and will be in the
future," said Geoffrey Gilmore. "The 2007 Sundance Film Festival
award-winners reflect the talent, diversity and evolution of
independent film and exemplify the artistic power of film to
illuminate and explore issues that are prevalent in our global
society."
The Independent Film Competition is the heart and soul of the
Sundance Film Festival program. It has introduced audiences to many
of the best American and international independent films and
filmmakers of the past 24 years. Films selected to screen in the
Dramatic and Documentary Competitions were eligible for a number of
jury awards.
(Agencies via CRI January 29, 2007)
