10th Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation Films
held from 3rd to 9th February, 2010

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTERNATIONAL CATEGORY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Award

Title of the Film

Entry No.

Duration

Country

Director

Producer

Citation

Best Documentary Film / Video (Upto 60 mins)

Golden Conch + Rs. 2,50,000/-

GODDESSES

104

42 mins.

INDIA

LEENA
MANIMEKALAI

C.JERROLD

The young filmmaker, Leena Manimekalai, is faced with three old material goddesses who for different reasons find themselves naturally emancipated from Tamil tradition and orthodoxy. Leena creates for Goddesses a trusting filming arena that was never manipulative so that the three women opened up and revealed their total strength and power bordering on the archetype. They emerged free, master of the very tradition that had earlier kept them shackled.

Second Best Documentary Film / Video (Upto 60 mins.)

Silver Conch + Rs. 1,00,000/-  To Be Shared Between Two Directors ( i.e. Rs.50,000/- each + Silver Conch )

ONE DAY IN
PEOPLE’S POLAND

129

58 mins.

POLAND

MACIEJ .J. 
DRYGAS

MACIEJ .J. 
DRYGAS

September 27, 1962 was an ordinary day in Poland except for its reconstruction by Maciej J Drygas in the film One Day in People's Poland . The archival  images and sounds retrieved from several sources obviously do not synchronize to a singular reality. Without an effort to force a historical realism upon the material, the director keeps the two tracks independent, makes them move closer and further away from each other, creates an extraordinary document that is startling in its revelation of the nature of surveillance the state maintained in the sixties by keeping account of banal and inconsequential details in the daily life of its suspect citizens. The enormous task of editing the monumental archival material in the way it has been done is most commendable.

BEYOND THE WALL

132

20 mins.

POLAND

VITA
ZELAKEVICIUTE

MACIEJ . J. 
DRYGAS

Beyond the Wall uses short and pure images that elude description, often cannot be named. Through this poetic procedure the director directly enters into a hazy (often out of focus) universe of Russian soldiers sent to prison hospital to serve their sentence. The nondescript events such as the walks, the meals, the medicines, the crowding of the cell generate an unforgettable poem of silence and depth in confinement. Vita Zelakeviciute's narrative of broken spirits is a reflection on cold and heartless systems mankind is able to set in place in governance of countries.

Best Documentary Film / Video (Above 60 mins.)

Golden Conch + Rs. 2,50,000/-

  SALATA BALADI
 (HOUSE SALAD)

72

103 mins.

EGYPT

NADIA KAMEL

SHARRY LAPP, NADIA KAMEL,
ELDA GUIDINETTI,
RICHARD COPANS

Salate Baladi breaks down the classical cinema composition and makes a home movie deeply insightful of history. It makes geographical borders between countries appear unnatural, incapable of constricting families from their extensive affinities. The metaphor is no longer the family tree rooted in local soil – it is closer to a multiplicity in the manner the grass grows. Naida Kamel brings a new world family together.

Second Best Documentary Film / Video (Above 60 mins.)

Silver Conch + Rs. 1,00,000/-

VIEW FROM A
GRAIN OF SAND

28

82 mins.

USA

MEENA NANJI

MEENA NANJI,
AMIE WILLIAMS

Faced with an environment where women are oppressed to the extreme, Meena Nanji was able to make her characters in View from a Grain of Sand feel safe for them to re-evaluate their condition under the Taliban and post-Taliban periods in Afghanistan in front of the camera. Even as they put themselves to risk they are prepared to boldly share their knowledge and experience with the filmmaker - we sensed, for other women and children to understand and question.

Best Fiction Film / Video (Upto 75 mins.)

Golden Conch + Rs. 2,50,000/-

KRAMASHA

207

22  mins.

INDIA

AMIT DUTTA

DIRECTOR, FILM & TELEVISION INSTITUTE OF INDIA , PUNE

In the manner music keeps you quietly enthralled with a resonating sense of things without a need to necessarily reduce the experience to a verbalization of meanings, Kramasha offers a world of images and sounds that made us smell and touch the lush of nature amid a mysterious index of hallucinations. Like a dream that we may fail to understand but that reaches deep recesses of our unconscious and touches familiar chords, Amit Dutta's Kramasha weaves a powerful narrative that blends legends, myths and nostalgia into a film that allows us to recall our own early experiences.

Second Best Fiction Film / Video (Upto 75 mins.)

Silver Conch + Rs. 1,00,000/- To Be Shared Between Two Director ( i.e. Rs.50,000/- each + Silver Conch )

UNDERTAKERS

210

9 mins.

INDIA

EMANNUEL
QUINDO PALO

DIRECTOR, FILM & TELEVISION INSTITUTE OF INDIA , PUNE

Emannuel Quindo Palo's Undertakers inverts certain empty conventions of acting to distance the viewer from the narrative and create a moving account of a Catholic coffin maker whose business is death but whose dead friends can claim free coffins. The absurd idiom of the film draws a humane picture of the struggles of an ordinary salesman who appears strangely caught between his survival and personal ethic.

BARE HANDED

131

26 mins.

BELGIUM

THIERRY KNAUFF

THIERRY KNAUFF

Just the manner in which the dancer in Thierry Knauff's Bare Handed handles the newspaper, handles the noise of the newspaper, strangely reveals the violence a newspaper and therefore the world around us may carry. But it is the dancing woman whom a verbal world threatens to contain.  In a series of deft choreographed movements and an equal graphic light the film makes the dancer dance her way through memories and desires until after a complete immersion in this world she loses herself in it.

Best Animation Film / Video

Golden Conch + Rs. 2,50,000/-

THE JURY DID NOT FIND A SUITABLE FILM IN THIS CATEGORY

 

Second Best Animation Film / Video

Silver Conch + Rs. 1,00,000/-

THE JURY DID NOT FIND A SUITABLE FILM IN THIS CATEGORY

 

International Jury Award

Rs. 1,00,000/-

FLOW : FOR LOVE
OF WATER

62

94 mins

USA

IRENA SALINA

STEVEN STARR

The Jury decided to characterize the Award as a recognition of films that bring unknown shocking revelations that threaten ecological and even existential balance of the planet we inhabit. The depiction of a global crisis caused by privatization of natural resource such as water in the film Flow: Love of Water attempts to educate the audience of atrocities major corporations commit against individuals, families and communities in the name of water and for the sake of plain old profit. The message of the film is clear: make water free, clean and available to the citizens of the world. The Jury commends the revealing research Irena Salina brought to bear on the film and unlike our condition for awards at this edition of MIFF, the Jury exempts this film from the obligation of discovering a parallel cinematic form to its content.

Best First Film / Video of a Director - instituted by " Dadasaheb Phalke Chitranagari " (A Govt. of Maharashtra Undertaking)

Trophy + Rs. 1,00,000/-

INK (SIRA)

25

28 mins.

INDIA

BHARANI
TANIKELLA

SREENIVAS TANIKELLA

Through surreal imagery, Bharani Thanikela, Ink, is able to employ a violent visual idiom for existential struggle of the poet, for the fight the poet wages against violence of terrorism.  His wife deeply worried about their lives, takes on the mantle of fight against terrorism after the poet's death.  Film full of resilience.

International Critics Award

Certificate of Merit

  SALATA BALADI
 (HOUSE SALAD)

72

103 mins.

EGYPT

NADIA KAMEL

SHARRY LAPP, NADIA KAMEL,
ELDA GUIDINETTI,
RICHARD COPANS

 

Best Film / Video of the Festival Award (for Producer only)

Rs. 1,00,000/-

KRAMASHA

207

22  mins.

INDIA

 

DIRECTOR, FILM & TELEVISION INSTITUTE OF INDIA , PUNE

In the manner music keeps you quietly enthralled with a resonating sense of things without a need to necessarily reduce the experience to a verbalization of meanings, Kramasha offers a world of images and sounds that made us smell and touch the lush of nature amid a mysterious index of hallucinations. Like a dream that we may fail to understand but that reaches deep recesses of our unconscious and touches familiar chords, Amit Dutta's Kramasha weaves a powerful narrative that blends legends, myths and nostalgia into a film that allows us to recall our own early experiences.

Organised by Films Division,
Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Govt. of India.