Fall 2006 Short Film Contest Wrap-Up

Synopsis
Sensational City is an animation short about having one's ears wide open in a city that offers a million sounds at every corner. Recorded mostly in New York City, the film's animation invites the viewer to hear sounds we normally filter out of our consciousness and shows that beauty can be found in the ambient sounds of a bustling city. Sensational City is a partially abstract, hand-made animation, drawn with brush-tipped markers on index cards.

Bio
Tarik Cherkaoui is an independent animator and filmmaker based in New York. He is interested in animation as a form of art. His earlier film, Saadia: A Moroccan Woman in the Resistance, was screened at the Human Rights Film Festival and won a gold plaque at the Chicago Film International Film Festival. Cherkaoui's recent work focuses on abstract and non-traditional narrative style where shape and sound are the sole subject. Cherkaoui is agnostic to technique; having been trained in computer 3D animation, he fell in love with the hand-made feel of traditional animation and has worked with paint on glass and markers on index cards. He is developing a live-action piece about nuclear fall-out shelters in New York City.

Eternal High
Bryce Mackie
Youth Award

Video: Click HERE to view the trailer.

Synopsis
Crying uncontrollably at the kitchen table, mind racing with thoughts of suicide. How could this happen to a teen who has everything: budding film career, success as an all-state athlete, good grades, loving parents and a perfect girlfriend? Everything was great, yet suddenly everything was horrible. Why?

Meet 17-year-old Bryce Mackie, a filmmaker who captured his true-life battle with depression and suicide. At the time the film was made, Mackie was unaware he was suffering from depression. The film promotes the open discussion of depression and suicide, to remove the stigma still existing today.

Bio
Bryce Mackie is a high school senior in Battle Creek, Michigan. His goal is to earn a film degree from Columbia College in Chicago. Mackie's interest in filmmaking was kindled by the impact he experienced watching powerful films by directors such as Gus Van Sant and Quentin Tarantino. He intends to follow his passion to make films, professionally or as an amateur. Mackie's film festival experience began in February 2006 when he entered Eternal High in its first film festival. The film has since won awards in 10 film festivals.

Tuesday
Payman Benz & Sean Becker
Narrative Award

Synopsis
Tommy, a telemarketer, is having a regular day at the office until a frustrated man decides he's had enough telemarketing calls.

Bio
Co-Writer/Director Payman Benz is a human man. In addition to that, he's an award-winning comedy writer/director. Benz has studied comedy since he was an awkward immigrant child trying to figure out how to survive socially in America. Since 2005, Benz has directed and/or produced five festival films, including his first one, Needle Anus. In 2006, Benz co-founded Awkward Pictures with his producing/writing partner, Sean Becker. Benz resides in Los Angeles, California.

Co-Writer/Director Sean Becker is an Emmy Award-winning director whose short films have played in festivals across the country. In 2004, Becker directed video segments for a variety show that aired on the UPN network. This resulted in a regional Emmy Award in 2005 for his short film Parallel/Parallel. In 2006, Becker co-founded Awkward Pictures with producing/writing partner, Payman Benz. The company was created with the intent to produce comedy based entertainment for both the screen and the Internet. Becker resides in Los Angeles, California.

Caught In Paint
Rita Blitt
Documentary Award

Synopsis
Caught in Paint, a six-minute collaboration with choreographer David Parsons and photographer Lois Greenfield, joins film, dance, painting and photography. This energetic and inspiring piece captures renowned painter and sculptor Rita Blitt painting on four-by-eight-foot transparent surfaces while Parsons and members of the Parsons Dance Company are seen in mid-air, flying through the painting... a true work of art!

Bio
As a child, Blitt won scholarships to the Kansas City Art Institute and returned there for further studies after attending the University of Illinois and graduating from the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Her work celebrates her love of nature, music, dance and the spontaneous flow of movement captured in the drawn gesture. Her first New York exhibit was in 1969. Blitt's sculptures, up to sixty feet in height, have been permanently installed and exhibited along with her drawings and paintings in Australia, Germany, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and the United States. Blitt's sculpture won 5th prize in the Florence, Italy, 2005 Biennale.

Moviebonics, a short film by Lance Miller and Donald Unverrich, was given a Special Recognition Award by the judges. As a Special Recognition film, Moviebonics will be included in Moving Pictures Magazine Best of 2006 DVD, will be considered for distribution by Maitland Primrose Media and will be considered for the Cannes Film Festival issue.

Judges also selected 11 runners-up who will be considered for inclusion in Moving Pictures Magazine Best of 2006 DVD and for distribution by Maitland Primrose Media.The runners-up in the Fall 2006 Moving Pictures Magazine Short Film Contest are as follows:

Narrative:
1: Off to Iraq, Chris Darnell, director
2: Go-Go Guy, Brian and Dean Ronalds, co-directors
3: Moon (The 1,000 Sides of the Moon), Varda Hardy, director
4: Denial, X Roze, director
5: E.A.P., Brad Youngs, director

Documentary:
6: Whale Sharks of Holbox, Michael Wham, director
7: Caught in Paint, Rita Blitt, director

Animation:
8: Dear Sweet Emma, Loraine Cernak, director
9: Low Battery, Jerry Chalupnik, director
10: Mirage, Youngwoong Jang, director
11: Four Seasons, Sara Adina Smith and Shaheen Smith, co-directors

All films are viewable on Google Video by typing in the name of the film and Moving Pictures Magazine Short Film Contest. Google served as a partner with the magazine and featured the Contest on its home page.

At MPM, we know that today's struggling artists are tomorrow's established industry voices. We hope to forge long-term relationships with young filmmakers and are looking for work that highlights the talents, stories, hopes and dreams of up-and-coming filmmakers.

JUDGES FOR THE FALL 2006 MOVING PICTURES MAGAZINE SHORT FILM CONTEST:

John Daly
For more than 30 years, John Daly's many films have helped shape the filmmaking industry and have inspired independent filmmakers and audiences in this country and abroad. He has been executive producer to 13 Oscar® winners, with an unprecedented back-to-back Best Picture Oscar for Platoon and The Last Emperor.

John Daly was born to working-class parents in South East London, a part of London badly damaged in World War II. In 1967, in a South London pub, John was introduced to David Hemmings. This chance meeting resulted in a lifelong friendship. Together, they formed an entertainment company, naming it Hemdale, which was a combination of their names.

Daly, who had knowledge of corporation and business law, set about building Hemdale, which soon had many diverse entertainment business interests and grew rapidly in the '70s owning music groups Yes and Black Sabbath and also producing for the stage Lionel Bart's hit musical Oliver, plus Grease starring Richard Gere. The company had also acquired an interest in an important new TV company, and then acquired its own film studios as it continued to expand in the film and music world, in banking, and in the off-track betting industry.

Soon, Hemdale began producing, financing and distributing its own full-length feature films and became the leading independent film company in the United Kingdom. Huge box-office hits Melody and Tommy were among Hemdale's many successes.

Establishing a Los Angeles headquarters, Hemdale gave important career starts to many of today's leading actors, including Keanu Reeves, Denzel Washington, Sharon Stone and Julia Roberts.

The company also gave a chance to many first-time directors who have since become famous. Among the directors who got their career starts from Hemdale are: James Cameron (The Terminator), Oliver Stone (Salvador, Platoon), Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor), Mick Jackson (The Bodyguard), Martin Campbell (Bond, Zorro), Michael Apted (The Coalminer's Daughter), Robert Altman (Images); John Schlesinger (The Falcon & The Snowman), Ken Loach (Hidden Agenda), Harold Becker (The Boost), Gillian Armstrong (High Tide), Tim Hunter (River's Edge) and James Foley (At Close Range) Hemdale is now firmly established in Hollywood and consistently makes successful independent films.

Since its incorporation, Hemdale has made more than 100 films, and Daly's films have grossed in excess of $1.5 billion dollars. Daly has personally achieved on behalf of his company 21 Oscar nominations and 13 Oscar wins. This achievement has never been matched by any other independent filmmaker or company.

His films have also won numerous Golden Globes, Cannes Film Festival awards, Berlin Film Festival awards, Independent Spirit Awards, Houston Film Festival awards and many other prizes throughout his illustrious career.

Today, Daly continues to create quality motion pictures for his public company Film & Music Entertainment, Inc. and has now stepped up his film activity by not only producing but also directing and co-writing his own films. His latest film, The Aryan Couple, starring Oscar®-winner Martin Landau, is continuing to gain critical attention and receive awards at prestigious film festivals around the world. Its worldwide theatrical release is now taking place in America and England.

Barbara Kopple
Barbara Kopple, a two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker, recently completed the feature-length documentary Shut Up and Sing, which tells the story of the Dixie Chicks and their personal and creative response to the political fallout they faced after making comments critical of President Bush on the eve of the Iraq War. Shut Up and Sing premiered in a gala screening at the Toronto Film Festival before being released in theaters nationwide.

Kopple produced and directed Harlan County USA and American Dream, both winners of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In 1991, Harlan County USA was named to the National Film Registry by Congress and designated an American Film Classic. Harlan County USA was recently restored and preserved by the Women's Preservation Fund and the Academy Film Archive, and was featured as part of the Sundance Collection at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005. The Criterion Collection released a DVD of Harlan County USA in 2006.

Kopple produced and directed Bearing Witness, which tells the story of women war correspondents in Iraq and around the world; A Conversation with Gregory Peck, a film portrait of the career and family life of the actor, which was produced by Cecilia Peck; The Hamptons, a four-hour mini-series for ABC; My Generation, which examines the Woodstock legacy and Generation X; and Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson, for which she was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Directing. She directed the feature nonfiction film Wild Man Blues, about the European tour of Woody Allen and his New Orleans-style jazz band, for which she won the National Board of Review Award for Best Documentary. Ms. Kopple also produced the HBO documentary American Standoff, which chronicled an 18-month strike of the Teamsters Union against Overnite Transportation. Kopple also helped to create the film Winter Soldier with the Winter Soldier Collective.

Other nonfiction films directed by Kopple include No Nukes, a "rockumentary" shot during five days of concerts at Madison Square Garden and distributed by Warner Brothers, and Defending Our Daughters, an investigation into women's human rights issues in Bosnia, Pakistan and Egypt and winner of Voices of Courage Award. Kopple also directed a series of specials for the Disney Channel, including Friends for Life: Living with AIDS, the first show about AIDS to air on that network. Kopple also co-created, produced and directed I Married..., a series for VH1 about the spouses and families of rock stars.

Kopple directed the narrative feature Havoc, written by Stephen Gaghan about a group of wealthy teenagers coming of age and searching for an identity in Los Angeles. Kopple also directs episodic television and commercial spots. Her television work includes episodes of "OZ" on HBO and "Homicide," for which she won a DGA Award for Outstanding Direction. Kopple has directed spots for companies such as Sprint, Applebee's, Dove, Intel, Target and the Tiger Woods Foundation.

Kopple has been awarded the Human Rights Watch Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Award, National Society of Film Critics Award, the SilverDocs/Charles Guggenheim Award, New York Women in Film & Television Muse Award, the Maya Deren Independent Film and Video Award, and the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, Filmmakers Trophy & Audience Award. Kopple currently serves as a board member for the American Film Institute and the American University Center for Social Media, and actively participates in organizations that address social issues and support independent filmmaking. 

Rob Pearlstein
Rob Pearlstein wrote, directed and produced his first short film, Our Time Is Up, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Live Action Short Film in 2006.

Pearlstein is set to direct his romantic comedy, Bellissimo, originally sold to Universal Pictures; his comedy/drama Downtown; and his comedy Avenue A about young artists in the East Village. His screenwriting credits in film also include a sports drama, Ashland, for Focus Features, and a rewrite of an action -thriller for Working Title Films.

His work for television includes pilots for 20th Century Fox, ABC Sony Pictures, NBC and Broadway Video Productions, episodes of the NBC series "Medium," and the Fox drama "The Inside."

Pearlstein studied acting with Lesly Kahn in L.A. and Black Nexxus in New York, and has a degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania.

F. Miguel Valenti
F. Miguel Valenti has been an independent film producer, director and entertainment attorney for more than 25 years. A Yale-trained scholar, Valenti has maintained an interest in academia, and serves as the Lincoln Professor of Ethics and the Arts at Arizona State University.

A member of the ASU faculty since 2004, Valenti founded the Film & Media Production Program and is Assistant Director of the new School of Theatre and Film. The ASU Film & Media Production Program is the first in the nation to incorporate ethics into a hands-on production program while preserving First Amendment values. The program is based in the latest digital and cutting-edge technologies, and focuses on narrative storytelling. It was inaugurated in 2006, with much of the theoretical underpinning of the program based on Valenti's textbook, More Than a Movie, which outlines ethical issues surrounding filmmaking.

Based in New York and Los Angeles, Valenti boasts film credits that include The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, a micro-budgeted spoof of the 1960's Roger Corman low-budget sci-fi films, released theatrically by Tri-Star Pictures/Sony Entertainment nationwide in 2004. Most recently, Valenti served as executive producer for Netherbeast Incorporated, a comedy starring Robert Wagner, Judd Nelson, Jason Mewes, Darrell Hammond, Dave Foley, Steve Burns and Amy Davidson. Valenti also produced Vig (aka The Money Kings) starring Peter Falk, Lauren Holly, Timothy Hutton, Freddie Prinze Jr., Tyne Daly and Colm Meaney (Barbra Streisand's Barwood Films & Lion's Gate Entertainment, executive produced).

He directed and produced a horror thriller feature entitled Eyes of the Woods, currently in post-production. A mafia comedy, Johnny Slade's Greatest Hits, is set for release this year. Fear & Clothing, a feature Valenti co-wrote, directed and produced, is currently in post-production. Other producing credits include Abracadabra, Master of the Manor, a short which Valenti also co-wrote with 2004 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction Doug Wright (Quills), and co-directed, which earned top awards at seven major film festivals and was distributed internationally; also, The Refrigerator, Night Gathering, Scarlatti Birthday Party and Birth of Tragedy. Television credits include Fernando Valenti: A Man of Music, and Conversations with William F. Buckley Jr.

Upcoming projects include March Morning Frost, written by award-winning playwright Paul Hapenny. Valenti is currently developing Sacrament, to be shot in Mexico. Other projects include Russian Poland by David Mamet.

Valenti is former managing partner of The Management Company, based in Santa Monica, Calif., whose clients include noted writers, producers and directors in film, television and theater. He still specializes in working with young writing talent and has expertise in all aspects of script development, creative packaging and on-set producing, as well as entertainment industry business and legal matters.

Theatrical credits include producing the premiere of March Morning Frost, co-producing the premiere of Vig in Los Angeles and Canada, and directing/producing Vig in Boston. This play, by Paul Hapenny, won three Drama-Logue awards, including 1993's "Best Play/Best Playwright." Valenti directed the premiere of Sacrament in Boston and produced/directed the premiere of Machiavelli's Handbag in Los Angeles. He produced/directed a new translation of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard in New York, Shakespeare Enigmatique at Haworth Shakespeare Festival, and When The Wine Is Cold, an award-winning play by Jack Kendrick. Valenti served as Company Manager for director/choreographer Martha Clarke's The Garden of Earthly Delights, handling finances, logistics and operations for several national tours.

Valenti recently created and directed a major national conference, film festival and digital workshop surrounding the issues of ethics in entertainment, entitled E2: Ethics of Entertainment 2005. He has been invited to lecture for two consecutive summers at the prestigious Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York. He has served as a Guest Fellow of Yale College and coordinated a series of film production seminars for Yale University. He has served as Moderator for acting classes at the Amadeus Theater Company in Los Angeles, as well as taught acting classes and mentored acting students in both Los Angeles and New York.

He graduated Yale College in 1980, cum laude, and Yale Law School in 1983. After five years practicing mergers & acquisitions, general corporate and entertainment law at Shearman & Sterling and at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom - two of the world's leading international law firms - Valenti left law firm legal practice to pursue film and theatrical production. He is a charter member of the New York State Bar Association's Committee on Motion Pictures and Video.

Valenti is president of Valenti Entertainment Incorporated, an arts production and development concern founded in 1996. The son of internationally renowned harpsichordist Fernando Valenti, he spent part of his youth touring with his father.