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Winners of 18th Jihlava IDFF 2014

List of awards presented at the 18th Jihlava IDFF

The 18th Jihlava IDFF was topped off with the Closing Ceremony presenting the competition section winners, audience awards and the Silver Eye Award. The ceremony was traditionally staged by the Vosto5 ensemble.

 

OPUS BONUM – Best World Documentary Film Award

Member of the jury: Želimir Žilnik
Jury statement: “It offers an innovative introduction to turbulent times of Arab Spring. The hardship of peasants´ life and work, wisdom and tenderness of the film heroes, help us to understand how the unbreakable ordinary men have to be like to pass through dangerous and uncertain time.”

Special mention went to Chasing After the Wind (Persiguiendo al Dragón) by Juan Camilo Olmos Feris. A meditation on the value of community and the transformation of a traditional, though dangerous, place into a tourist destination, the film attempts to capture the spirit of the Getsemaní district in the Colombian town of Cartagena through 60-something drug dealer Gustav.

 

CZECH JOY – Best Czech Documentary Film Award

Members of the jury: Bohdan Bláhovec, Ivo Mathé, Tereza Czesany Dvořáková, Martin Kolář, Petr Hruška
Jury statement: Martin Dušek pulls the viewer into the subculture of young people living empty lives in northern Bohemia; their view of responsibility and their own lives as presented authentically and with empathy. The director has managed to bring together his entire filmmaking team with a distinct sense for the language of film. The rejection of a greater level of a clear directorial hand thus produced a convincing outcome.

With a great deal of personal engagement, director Martina Malinová has created a valuable report on the meaningfulness and futility of contemporary social activism. The film’s value rests also in the director’s ability to take a critical look at a community of which she herself is a member.

 

FASCINATIONS – Best Experimental Documentary Film Award

Members of the jury: Eve Heller, Peter Tscherkassky
Jury statement: A Steadicam walks us down a street at night in Burbank, Los Angeles, discreetly accompanied by haunting phrases of music and fragments of Gene Hackman’s voice as the camera turns a corner and enters a sound studio where a sound mixer and a foley artist are recording acoustic details of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. On a screen in the studio we see Gene Hackman dismantling a house in search of a hidden bug, a climactic and desperate scene, after the tables have turned and the surveillance expert himself has become the one under ongoing observation. The camera proceeds to move out the backdoor and returns to everyday life of the street while we hear Hackman talking about how the NSA accesses private information. In a single 15-minute shot, Deborah Stratman’s “Hacked Circuit” brilliantly pierces the glamor of Hollywood production, demystifies cinematic illusion and raises the troubling specter of contemporary US governmental surveillance of everyday life. The film is aptly dedicated to Walter Murch, the exceptional sound designer and editor behind The Conversation, and Edward Snowden.

The Sexual Struggle of Commodities by Pavel Sterec and Vilem Novak presents a technically ingenious and imaginative vision of three-dimensional imaging and a subversive alternative to the reductive commodification and spectacle of everyday life. The filmmakers provide us with a utopian vision of mind-bending possibilities, allowing for a rethinking of how we conceive gender, architecture, and various forms of ancient and futuristic tools. This work offers an exciting, action-packed alternative to mainstream 3-D filmmaking and production, in a world where Hollywood dominates with reactionary stories and computers punch out functional guns.

 

BETWEEN THE SEAS – Best Central and Eastern European Documentary Film

Members of the jury: Raymond Bellour, Deborah Stratman, Kateřina Šedá, Albert Serra, Nick Bradshaw
Jury statement: Hubert Sauper is a fly in the storm of Africa’s supposed development. He rides the chaos with daring, conviction and persistence, using his curiosity to show the competition of claims and interests now vying for the world’s youngest country, and his privilege as an alien in Africa to unmask the true face of that privilege. We Come as Friends embodies its maker and his methods: it is reportage cinema at its most fleet, mischievous, provocative, compassionate and plaintive.

 

FIRST LIGHTS – Best documentary debut film in section Opus Bonum, Between the Seas or Czech Joy

Members of the jury: Ceciliea Barrionuevo, Haruka Hama, Ludmila Cviková, Veton Nurkollari, Mathieu Darras
Jury statement: For its respectful and sincere relationship the director managed to establish with a family. For its human, cinematic portrait of every day life in an Egyptian village on the background of country’s historical moments. And for creation of a sensitive equilibrium between the filmmaker and the family whom she captured.

Special mention went to Brazilian director Tiago Tambelli’s 20 Cents (20 Centavos), an observational look at last year’s protests in São Paolo after the city decided to raise public transit fares by 20 cents.

 

SHORT JOY – Best european documentary short

  • Best Film: Babash, dir. Lisa Truttmann, Behrouz Rae

Members of the jury: Rafani
Jury statement: Many of the films in the Short Joy section were about the need for communication – sometimes over distances using technology, at other times up close with a weapon in your hand. Sometimes impersonal and virtual; at other times almost too direct. Babash, which is named after the film’s main protagonist, is about the possibility of communicating with a mute face. Which isn’t exactly easy. We have no idea what those two talk about within the confines of their Los Angeles apartment – or whether they even talk in the first place. But we like stroboscopic effects and the use of a monochrome screen. A few seconds of fluttering wings, intercut with fields of color, gave us a short joy.

 

CONTRIBUTION TO THE WORLD CINEMATOGRAPHY AWARD

  • Godfrey Reggio

 

AUDIENCE AWARD

  • Audience Award: Danielův svět (Daniel´s World), dir. Veronika Lišková

 

BEST FESTIVAL POSTERS

  • Festival Identity: DokuFest
  • Audience Award: DokuFest

 

SILVER EYE AWARD 2014

Winners of individual categories:

  • Best short-length documentary: Návšteva (The Visit), dir. Matej Bobrik
  • Best mid-length documentary: Krov (Blood), dir. Alina Rudnitskaya
  • Best feature-length documentary: Toto si surorile lui (Toto and His Sisters), dir. Alexander Nanau
  • Special Mention: Gottland, dir. Viera Čákanyová, Petr Hátle, Rozálie Kohoutová, Lukáš Kokeš, Klára Tasovská and 1973
  • Print
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DAYS TO THE OPENING OF THE FESTIVAL
 

 

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