NHK wins an armload of statuettes

Yasuaki Okamoto with

Gold Camera and Best of Festival

awards for “Mimicries”

“Sumo Spirit-A Storm from Egypt” team:

 Haruhiko Iguchi (from left);

 Miwako Nishikawa, Yoshibumi Senoh, Mariko Iino

Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) captured four major awards in the 2015 US International Film & Video Festival, and chairman Lee Gluckman traveled to Tokyo for a presentation ceremony. 

The top two awards went to “Mimicries – The Secret of Black and Yellow,” an educational program for preschool and kindergarten that won a Gold Camera award and was selected Best of Festival-Education.
NHK’s other awards included three Silver Screen statuettes for documentaries on autism, sumo wrestling and the mechanisms behind major volcanic eruptions.

Takao Yamamoto with  Silver Screen

 award for “Raging Earth Super

 Eruptions” episode about the mechanisms

 behind major volcanic eruptions

Shinichi Terazono with Silver Screen 

statuette for “What You Taught Me 

About My Son,” a documentary

 about autism

Grand Prix Winner Combines Entertainment and Education

“Olive Green,” an online project that combines an interactive movie, a computer game and an English learning application, proved to be the perfect marriage of entertainment and education --“edutainment” --  in the 2015 US International Film & Video Festival, Los Angeles. The movie, produced for SuperMemo World, Poznan, Poland, by Ekstasy Ltd. of Harrow, U.K., won Best of Festival (Grand Prix) – Entertainment. It also received a Gold Camera Award in Entertainment: Entertainment Programs: Action / Adventure. 

The overall competition drew entries from 34 countries.

The movie works with an online English course that can take students from beginner to advanced English, based on a syllabus developed according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The CEFR guideline is used to describe achievements of learners of foreign languages across Europe and other countries such as Colombia and the Philippines. Aimed at self-learners aged 16 to 35, the movie uses games, quizzes 

and plot twists that support the SuperMemo learning method of memorization. Instruction and subtitles are available in 10 languages. 

The movie’s plot has Olive Green, a smart art thief, at its center. Olive is commissioned by a mysterious British businessman to steal a precious painting from a country manor. The mission is nothing like what she expected. She ends up messing up with high-profile criminals, being betrayed, chased and brutalized. And – what she never anticipated – she finds … love.

The film’s dialogues introduce the English language and expose viewers to different accents. Also users can play the film characters’ roles in interactive dialogues and read about their adventures in new contexts beyond the film. 

Mike Saraswat, founder of Ekstasy, was producer on the project, which was directed by Suki Singh and edited by Ilinca Calugareanu. Chris Fergusson was director of photography, and the script was by Wojciech Wojtasiak. General design, coordination and management were by SuperMemo World with the aid of CEO Krzysztof Biedalak, who with Piotr Wozniak founded SuperMemo World. Biedalak, in an interview, noted the project began in January 2013 and while not the largest project SuperMemo has done, he believed it was “going to be the best and, in the future, the most popular product we have ever developed.”

More about the project can be found at www.OliveGreenTheMovie.comwww.OliveGreenTheMovie.com and at Olive Green's fan page: https://www.facebook.com/olivegreenthemovie.. View the trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BTTqapkF0k.

Stating 'purpose' crucial to judging process

Each year, veteran documentary filmmaker Neil Curry puts together a judging committee in his homeplace of Africa. These judging groups use the information that

Neil Curry

entrants list under "purpose" to help them make judging decisions, and all too often, the details have not been provided.
 

"As usual, some producers lose marks because they ignore the question of ‘why was this film made,’ on the entry form," writes Curry. "But more importantly, if the makers themselves don’t know precisely why they made the film – and can spell it out in a couple of sentences - it explains why so many of their films end up as simply catalogues of stunning shots and sequences, but without any real direction or focus to hold them all together in the end."  

Good information to keep in mind as we look toward next year's competition. The final judging stages for 2015 are nearing completion so we should be able to announce the overall winners and the Best of Festival (Grand Prix) nominees in just a few days. 

You wanted more time! You got it!

Entry deadline for 2015 competition is extended until April 15. Hurry; get those entries ready. This is no April Fool's joke.