PASSION AND COMPASSION FOR URBAN SINS – THE WINNERS OF THE 1. INTERNATIONAL SINCITY FILM AWARD

A German and a British filmmaker from South Korea win the Jury Award of the 1. International SinCity Film Award. 

A young Italian contributor wins the Audience Award.

Berlin, 22 November 2011. SinCity, the hauntingly intense song by the young German singersongwriter SCHMIDT from Berlin, was the basis for filmic interpretations of the 21st century’s temptations. 85 filmmakers from 27 countries have sent in their music videos and shortfilms for the 1..International SinCity Film Award and presented astonishing works of passion and compassion, perils and pleasu¬res, visions and imaginations. The prizes, chosen by an acclaimed international jury and the audience, have an overall value of 20 000 Euro.

Overall Jury Prize (Euro 5.000)

The music video from South Korea was chosen by the jury as outstanding: filmmakers NILS CLAUSS and STUART HOWE were awar¬ded first place. Clauss, a German from Berlin, and Howe, an Englishman from Norwich, have been working and living in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, for several years now. The film plays on the transition between city and countryside in such an original way that even a fish finds himself in pure astonishment.

Jury Runners-up (each Euro 1.000)

Four more jury prizes go to SIMON ROGOWSKI / Inspiria from Germany, to ZOLTÄN BOGDÄN from Hungary, to CHRISTIAN MATSU¬MUTO and LAIA MIRET / We hate Sundays from Spain and to ZSUZSA KOHAN from England.

The Audience Award (Euro 5.000)

Determined by the means of worldwide facebook-likes, this prize goes to the contribution of SILVIA BORDIN, a young Italian photogra¬pher and filmmaker from Bologna. SCHMIDT on the film: That’s SinCity Italian style, right on the point – bravissimo!

Special Award for Best Cinematography
The contribution of MICHELE CASTELLUCCI from London / United Kingdom, is awarded with the prize for Best Cinematography; director of photography JOSEPH FORTEBRACCIO wins a trip to the International Film Festival Berlin in February 2012.

The Jury

Guy Chambers (music producer), Rita Fluegge-Timm, Warner Music Germany (director artist department), Florian Gallenberger (direc¬tor and Academy Award winner) Thekla Reuten (actress), Volker Schloendorff (director, producer, and Academy Award winner), Philipp Stoelzl (director), Eike Wolff, Studio Babelsberg (head of communication), Rolf Zehetbauer (set designer and Academy Award winner)
To Guy Chambers, who produced the debut album of SCHMIDT, the competition represents “a true innovation in the music industry”. 

SCHMIDT

With her EP ‚Above SinCity‘ in stores now, SCHMIDT will be playing shows as special guest of british singer Mel C. on her tour in No¬vember and December. The debut album by SCHMIDT will be released in March 2012. http://www.femmeschmidt.com

All winning films on: http://genero.tv , http://www.sincityfilmaward.com und http://www.femmeschmidt.com

The Turkish Film Festival

The Turkish Film Festival is back again in London this year, and will be running from 24th November to 8th December and has moved from a familiar three day event to a full scale two week festival with some brilliant films on show and some wonderful attendees.

Claudia Cardinale stars in the opening night gala film, Being Italian with Signora Enrica, the debut feature from Ali Ilhan - a delightful film about an elderly Italian woman who takes in a young Turkish exchange student.  Cardinale is famous for her work with Fellini, Visconti and most famously in Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time in the West.  Ms.Cardinale will be in attendance for the Opening Night.

Other highlights include Tayfun Pirslimoglu's Hair which won Best Turkish Film and Best Director at the 2011 Istanbul Film Festival; the debut feature from acclaimed photographer Cemil Agacikoglu, September; Do Not Forget Me Istanbul, a portrait of Istanbul as seen through the eyes of six young International directors and Home, the first feature from actor Muzatffer Ozdemir, best known for his role in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Distant, for which he won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival.

These fresh offerings from younger voices go hand in hand with the established directors who are on show here, Ceylan himself with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Dervis Zaim's Shadows and Faces and Sedat Yilmaz's Press.

Whilst other specialist film festivals are struggling to stay afloat, the unfortunate news a few weeks ago that there will be no Birds Eye Film Festival in 2012 came as a shock to many in the London film community, as it was a festival with a unique identity.

London has a whole host of film festivals with a specific genre or nationalistic strain (Korean, Jewish, Russian, even Kazakhstan) - the Turkish festival however, has been running for some years now and is now established as a vital platform for new emerging Turkish film-makers working both at home and abroad.  It also has a prestigious award - The Golden Wings Digiturk Digital Distribution Award - which offers a £30,000 prize enabling the winning film to be released theatrically in the UK and Ireland.
     Thanks to this prize a film like Bal (Honey) would never have received the great acclaim it did upon its release in April of this year.
     There is also a Golden Wings People's Choice Award presented to the most popular film as selected by audiences throughout the festival.

Turkish cinema is in a period of rude health at the moment, thanks in part to the auteuristic pedigree of Ceylan whose new film Anatolia received its world premiere at Cannes in the Grand Prix selection and was up for the Palme D'Or, and also selected as Turkey's entrant for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.  Bal won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and the much celebrated Men on the Bridge did some good box office and garnered critical attention when released also.

This year's festival will run at the following venues: Odeon West End, Apollo Piccadilly, Rio Dalston and Cine Lumiere.

For more information go to the festival website: www.ltff.org.uk for details of the schedule and screenings.

PAIR OF TEENAGERS WIN £5000 COMPETITION TO MAKE NEXT GREENPEACE CAMPAIGN FILM

Two teenage German students have won an international film competition organised by Greenpeace. 

The contest to make a short film attacking the Volkswagen brand was won by 18-year-old Andreas Borlinghaus and Johannes Laidler, 19, from Lake Constance, Germany. The result was announced last night at a ceremony at the Curzon Soho cinema in London. Andreas and Johannes will now be given a budget of £5000 to make Greenpeace’s next campaign film. Previous films have been seen by millions online and won a clutch of awards. 

Eighty film-makers from across the world entered the competition. A shortlist of 12 was selected by online voting before a judging panel, including directors Clio Barnard, Michael Geoghegan and Jack Price, and Nick Darken of advertising agency Albion, chose the winner. 

An estimated four million people have already watched Greenpeace’s own online film attacking Volkswagen’s record on climate change, while 450,000 people have signed up to join the campaign against the car-maker. The film has won a prestigious Gold Lovie award and is nominated for the viral video award at the 27th Berlin International Short Film Festival (it can be seen at www.vwdarkside.com). Now Andreas and Johannes will make its sequel. 

The competition was run across the UK, Germany, France and Belgium. All 12 shortlisted films – many of which subvert some of VW’s most famous adverts – were screened at the Curzon last night before the winner was named. 

Andreas Borlinghaus said: 

“We’re so excited to have won, because we think it’s really important, as film makers, to use cinema to raise public awareness of environmental issues. This competition was a great opportunity, giving us a chance to showcase our skills to a really wide audience.” 

Clio Barnard said: 

“What I loved about Pretending was how angry it made me. It exposed Volkswagen’s duplicity in such a simple but powerfully executed manner.” 

Another judge, Greenpeace executive director John Sauven, said: 

“We were stunned by the quality of the entries. This experiment in crowd-sourcing a brand attack has been a startling success with a large number of films I think agencies would have been proud to produce. VW has some of the most expensive creatives in the business working for them, but our online crew has come up with a great response to the company’s green-washing. We can’t wait to see what Andreas and Johannes make for us with the prize money.” 

Volkswagen has a reputation for producing some of the most memorable television adverts in history. Most recently its one minute film of a mini-Darth Vader – premiered in the ad break during this year’s Superbowl – became the most viewed online ad in history. With YouTube movies increasingly forming the cornerstone of global campaigns against corporate targets, the competition represented an opportunity for anyone with a camera and laptop to dictate the direction of the Greenpeace campaign in major media markets. 

VW markets itself as a green car company. But in reality it lobbies against key climate change laws and only fits the most fuel efficient technology to a small proportion of its vehicles.