VIFF Announces Canadian Award Winners
Vancouver, BC, Canada – VIFF has released their Canadian Award Winners:
Winners of the 2014 VIFF Canadian Images Awards, BC Spotlight Awards, and VIFF Impact Award were announced at the BC Spotlight Awards Gala this evening on Saturday October 4, 2014 at The Playhouse Theatre in Vancouver, BC.
This year’s BC Spotlight Gala film and winner of the Audience Must See Award (#mustseeBC) was Grant Baldwin’s Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story. Attempting to live waste-free, filmmakers Grant Baldwin and Jen Rustemeyer subsist on discarded food for six months.
The BC Spotlight Awards jury commented, "Canadians should be very proud, this year’s line-up of BC filmmakers was outstanding. From docs and narratives to emerging and established filmmakers, BC is a hot bed of talent in the Canadian film industry."
BC Spotlight jurors included Joel Bakan (Co-creator, The Corporation), Cathy Chilco (Producer/Director, Sesame Street), and Bruce Sweeney (Director, Live Bait and The Dick Knost Show).
Both the awards for Best BC Film and Best Canadian Film went to Andrew Huculiak’s Violent. The Canadian Images Awards jury had this to say about the film: "Marked by strong performances, this ground-breaking and emotionally mature film has audacious ambitions and more than delivers. The story inhabits a very unusual space for contemporary cinema. A film about loneliness in an ordinary life, it had the jury rapt for the duration as its profound storytelling resonated throughout the film and long after."
The Canadian Images jurors included John Cassini (Co-Artistic Director, Railtown Actors Studio), Peter Machen (Manager, Dublin International Film Festival, Film Columnist, Sunday Tribune), and Gaylene Preston (Director, Hope and Wire).
The VIFF Impact Award also went to Grant Baldwin for Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story. Jurors for the award included David Rummel (Assistant Professor, UBC Graduate School of Journalism), Lynne Fernie (Senior Canadian Images Programmer, Hot Docs), and Julia Ivanova (Director, Family Portrait in Black and White).
Here are the awards that were presented this evening:
VIFF Impact Award went to Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story (Grant Baldwin) $5,000 cash sponsored by Agentic Digital Media + $5,000 in marketing and strategic in-kind services provided by Agentic and Story Money
Most Promising Director of a Canadian Short Film was The Cut (Geneviève Dulude-Decelles) $2,000 cash
Best Canadian Film Award went to Violent (Andrew Huculiak) $8,000 cash prize sponsored by the Directors Guild of Canada
BC Emerging Filmmaker Award went to Ana Valine ( Sitting on the Edge of Marlene) $7,500 cash + $10,000 credit for production equipment from William F White
Best BC Film Award went to Violent (Andrew Huculiak) $10,000 development bursary + $15,000 credit towards post production with Encore Vancouver