Festivals
20th Annual Cinequest Film Festival
Official Cinequest Web Site
San Jose, CA--The 20th Annual Cinequest Film Festival came to a close on Sunday, Mar. 7th, 2010 with encore screenings of the jury and audience award winning films, announced the previous evening at the Closing Film and Awards ceremony. Recognized as one of the world's top 10 festivals, Cinequest hosted screenings and events Feb. 25-March 7 in downtown San Jose at Camera 12 Cinema, SJ Repertory, and the California Theater, smashing all previous records for film submissions, attendance and box office sales.
Featured celebrity guests this year included Maverick Award recipients, Benjamin Bratt (Pinero, Traffic and TV's Law and Order), who will present his "La Mission", and Indian spiritualist and filmmaker Deepak Chopra.
The electrifying drama The Good Heart, in which a cantankerous bar owner (Brian Cox) takes a homeless young man (Paul Dano) under his wing to teach him his trade, kicked off the festival, while the closing night film was Mother, the latest dark comedy/thriller from Korean director Bong Joon-ho(The Host), about a fiercely protective mother sets out to prove her grown but childlike son is innocent of murder.
Following are the 2010 Cinequest Award Winners:
MAVERICK COMPETITION
Maverick Spirit Award -- Applause, dir. Martin Pieter Zandvliet (Denmark)
Best First Feature -- Lost Persons Area, dir. Caroine Strubbe (Belgium)
Special Jury Prize for Directing -- Eamon, dir. Margaret Corkery (Ireland)
Best Documentary Feature -- Buried Prayers, dir. Steven Meyer (USA)
Best Special Jury Prize: Cutting-Edge Vision -- The Real Revolutionaries, dir. Paul Crowder (USA)
Best Narrative Short -- The Six Dollar Fifty Man, dir. MArk Albiston, Louis Sutherland (New Zealand
>Best Animated Short -- The Spine, dir. Chris Landreth (Canada)
Best Documentary Short -- How Green Was Our Valley), dir. Fereshteh Joghatael (Iran)
Best Student Short -- Kavi, dir. Gregg Helvey (USA)
Kaiser Permanente Thrive Award -- The Tijuana Project, dir. John Sheedy (USA/Mexico)
DIRECTORS AWARDS
New Visions Award--Solitary, dir. Greg Derochie (USA)
Global Landscapes Award--The Escape, dir. Kathrine Windfeld (Denmark)
AUDIENCE AWARDS
Best Feature Film--TBA
Best Documentary--TBA
Best Short Film--TBA
SCREENPLAY COMPETITION CONTEST
First Place--Baron of Havana (Alex Simon)
Second Place--Pyotr (Steve Warren)
Third Place--The Stolen Mistress
MAVERICK SPIRIT AWARDS
Deepak Chopra, Benjamin Bratt, Terry Zwigoff, Kathy Wolfe
Cinequest 2009: 19th Anniversary Wrap-up
San Jose, CA--The 19th Annual Cinequest hosted screenings and events Feb. 25-March 8, 2009 in downtown San Jose at Camera 12 Cinema, SJ Repertory and the California Theater, smashing all previous records for film submissions, attendance and box office sales.
Featured celebrity guests included Maverick Award recipients, Diablo Cody (Academy-Award winning screenwriter of last year's hit comedy, Juno) and Academy Award-nominated actor Kevin Pollack (Tropic Thunder, Deterrence, Buffalo 66, She's All That).
The Opening Night feature was Ellie Kanner's superbly crafted dark romantic comedy, Wake, that reveals the future of the dating scene is not in bars, clubs or via the Internet . . . but at funerals. Roger Nygard -- who explored the phenomenon of Trekkies (Cinequest, 1998) and the world of car salesmen with his dark comedy Suckers (Cinequest, 2000) -- took on The Nature of Existence in the Closing Night feature.
Following are the 2009 Cinequest Award Winners:
DIRECTORS AWARDS
Global Vision Award--Historias Extraordinarias (Mariano Llinas)
New Visions Award--Why Am I Doing This? (Tom Huang)
SHORT FILM COMPETITION
Best Student Short Film--Thanksgiving (Anja Marquardt)
Best Short Documentary Film--Life for a Child (Edward Lachman)
Best Short Narrative Film--Glory at Sea (Benh Zeitlin)
Best Short Animated Film--Slaves (Hanna Heilborn, David Aronowitsch)
DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Special Jury Award--:Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders (Mark Hopkins)
Best Feature Documentary--Heart of Stone (Beth Toni Kruvant)
MAVERICK NARRATIVE FEATURE COMPETITION
Special Jury Award for Overall Excellence--The Tour (Turneyja) (Goran Markovic)
Best First Feature Film--The Friend (Der Freund) (Micha Lewinsky)
Maverick Spirit Award--Firaaq (Nandita Das)
AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS
Best Feature Film--All About Dad (Mark Tran)/ For My Father (Dror Zahavi)
Best Documentary--Witch Hunt (Dana Nachman, Don Hardy)
Best Short Film--X to Y (Matt Sobel)
SCREENPLAY COMPETITION
First Place--Ora (Frederica Bailey)
Second Place--Feed The Monster (Rob Rex)
Third Place--The Juno Incident (Cody Yarbrough)
MAVERICK SPIRIT AWARDS
Kevin Pollack, Louis Gossett Jr., Diablo Coby
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