'Last Bogatyr' wows!

Amazing work came in from our student winners, especially from Sarah Lotfi, who with Kevin Beechwood, produced "The Last Bogatyr." They are students at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Their film has been recognized by several festivals and was a finalist in the 2010 Student Academy Awards.
Sarah, 21, (here in her pix from www.imdb.com) was writer-director-producer on the project.
Shooting was done in the Pikes Peak region with Monument Valley Park and Holy Theophany Orthodox Church in key scenes.
Sarah recently won an internship with Emmys Foundation, according to her website, www.sarahrlotfi.net/
Check out the film's website: www.thelastbogatyr.com/

Don't just look at First Place

It's always great to win a First Place Gold Camera Award, but some really interesting work also can be found among the Silver Screen and Certificate winners in FilmFest. Check those out under the Award Winners button on the left of our opening page. You can search that database in a variety of ways. Check out: www.filmfestawards.com

Meet the student winners

Over the coming weeks, we hope to introduce the student winners in some detail here because they are an interesting bunch who came to their winning works from a variety of angles.

Several were doing a class assignment. Some had special grants to support a documentary on a subject and another was trying his hand at an animated film for the first time.

Tony Cammarata, an MFA Film-Television Production student at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, produced "DANCER AND THE RED BALL," which uses motion capture technology for the dancer's performance. (See sample shot here.)

Tony, who lives in Los Angeles, also studied film at the University of Minnesota and the University of Bologna in Italy.

More on him and others as we move along.

Tough decision faces BOF Documentary Judges

Documentaries “NATURE: Kilauea: Mountain of Fire,”“Nine Days That Changed the World,” and “A Passionate Challenger, Alice Sara Ott: Born to be a Pianist” are vying for Best of Festival-Documentary, which makes the judges’ decision really tough. Broadly different in subject matter, the films give us a front row seat on nature as Kilauea boils out new land masses, on the nature of a nation as Pope Paul II made his historic trip to Poland in 1979 and on human nature in the look at Alice Sara Ott.

“Kilauea,” by THIRTEEN, New York, can be viewed at www.pbs.org.

Learn more about “Nine Days That Changed the World,” featuring Newt and Callista Gingrich, at www.ninedaysthatchangedtheworld.com.

Mainichi Broadcasting System Inc., Osaka, produced the film on the stunning Japanese-German pianist, Alice Sara Ott. Ott has her own website, www.alice-sara-ott.com where you can learn about this exceptional woman and follow the links to hear some of her performance of Chopin’s works.