Father Geek here with our Ms Moon Yun Choi's report on the winners at the Hawaiian "CINEMA PARADISE" film fest for this year...
Moon Yun reporting in from Hawaii…
After spending a week chasing as many movies as I could at the Cinema Paradise Film Festival 2003 which ended Sept. 25, I was surprised to learn that there were about 40 visiting filmmakers at the festival.
That’s a pretty astounding number considering that the Festival is only in its second year. I was hanging with Sergio Goes, the Festival founder/organizer, and he was telling me that attendance doubled from last year and that the Festival got a lot more sponsors.
The Festival also received a big boost from the Movie Museum (Hawaii’s beloved specialty movie theater and video store) when it fronted the money for a $5,000 cash prize award to a local filmmaker.
But for Dwight Damon, the owner of the Movie Museum, the award wasn’t just to dole out money to the best filmmaker but to honor the memory of his beloved “kupuna” (respected elder), Lilia Wahinemaika’i Hale, who passed away in June.
At the awards ceremony celebrated on the last night of the Festival at the W Hotel in Waikiki, anticipation ran high. Everyone wanted to know who was going to win the local filmmaking award. When Damon mentioned during the award announcement that the film he admired featured the beautiful Kohala district of the Big Island, we knew right away that the winner was KAMEHAMEHA. (The judging was done by three individuals who all belong to the Hawaii film industry.)
Nathan Kurosawa, the director of KAMEHAMEHA, nabbed the Hale Ki’i’oni’oni Award.
KAMEHAMEHA is an 18-minute short about the great Hawaiian warrior king from his birth to the time of his childhood.
The other winning films are:
-Best Dramatic Feature: WHAT ALICE FOUND, directed by A. Dean Bell
-Best Documentary Feature: BUS 174, directed by Jose Padilha
-Best Short Film: THE ANNIVERSARY, directed by Ham Tran
-Best Animation: TOMATO LOVE, directed by Joey Kan
-Experimental Film: DISPLACEMENT MAP, directed by Theo Lipfert
(These are non-cash prize awards which recognize excellence in filmmaking for each specified category.)
Audience Awards:
-Dramatic Feature: BOMB THE SYSTEM, directed by Adam Bhala Lough
-Documentary Feature: STOKED: THE RISE AND FALL OF GATOR, directed by Helen Stickler
-Short Film: DOWNSIZING, directed by J. Brad Wilke
-Animation: ROOF SEX, directed by PES
-Experimental Film: DISPLACEMENT MAP, directed by Theo Lipfert
Check out photos of some of the winners by logging on to This Site.
For those who weren’t able to make it the Festival, you can catch some of TOMATO LOVE, by logging on to Kan’s website at www.valkan.com
There’s a demo reel that has some scenes of TOMATO LOVE as well as his sketches. His animation is also available on QuickTime but I wasn’t able to access it with my computer. Maybe you’ll have better luck.
You can also order DVD and VHS copies of Stephanie Castillo’s COCKFIGHTERS. It contains rich collections of interviews with a group of 26 American cockers who share their lives and their world for her documentary. You can order by calling her at 808-739-3938 or go online to Her Site
The Festival featured a FlashTV program dedicated to a series of flash-generated film shorts and animation. Founded by Nicholas Da Silva, FlashTV is a mac-based community site which supports and develops cool flash-generated film shorts from talents around the world. This year’s Festival screened 22 flash shorts. You can view some of the ones screened at the Festival such as NINJAI: THE LITTLE NINJA, DADDY APE & DUMMY IN MOONWATER, JACK, MARCUS PEBLO SAGA, NIMS WINTER TALE, NYLON STALKING, SECRET AGENT DAN, STRINDBERG AND HELIUM SERIES, THE DRAGON AND THE RAT, and THE TRIP on www.iwantmyflashtv.com
Also, FlashTV is holding a storytelling competition on October 8, 2003. The competition, called "The Greatest Story Never Told," will be an annual event.
Artists/filmmakers are given three months to produce an original story (with soundtrack) using Flash or any 3rd party software that exports to the .swf platform. The story must be based on one of the FlashTV genres (http://www.iwantmyflashtv.com). The story should run between 2:00 and 30:00 minutes.
Prizes include (1 Grand prize winner and 2 runner-ups):
- NBC - TV Appearance on NBC's TechNow
- Macromedia - Macromedia Studio MX 2004
- MediaTemple - Free web-hosting for life
- Final Draft - Final Draft and Final Draft AV (Scriptwriting software)
- Discreet - 3ds max and Plasma
... just to name a few!
To obtain information and to enter, log on to the FlashTV site.
