We were honoured to be approached recently by Megan Torgerson who runs the fascinating US-based venture, The Audience Awards – http://www.theaudienceawards.com – a short film networking, distribution and film competition site. Megan asked us to nominate a selection of short films previously screened at the ESFF for a two-week competition hosted by The Audience Awards.
The films we selected spanned the diverse output of the ESFF programme, from the hauntingly imaginative, Lynchian and ironically humerous short ‘The Diver’ by Student Academy Award nominated director Damon Mohl, to Segolene Romier’s enchanting and marvellous short film, ‘Fly Me Baby’ an incredibly detailed and painstaking work of stop-motion animation, involving dozens of wonderfully imaginative characters. We screened Anna Yanovskaya’s debut short film ‘Goodman’ which has now accumulated numerous screenings across the world and was winner of the Antenna D’Oro in Italy.
And we showed Davide Pompeo’s taut suspense thriller ‘The Confessional’ (‘Il Confessionale’) set in war-time Italy, it tells the story of a partisan on the run from the Nazis and won best International short at the Indian International Short Film Festival as well as ‘One Man’s Loss’ directed by Philip Sansom and Winner of Best Cinematography, Best Actress and Best Editing at the Silicon Valley Film Festival. A witty slice of Americana that immerses you in a heated argument on a hot summer day.
‘The Misbehaviour of Polly Paper Cut’ by Scottish director, Bryan M Ferguson follows the wantonly destructive career of Polly Paper Cut, a girl gone bad! The film’s culty, comic-book aesthetic impressed and entertained at last year’s ESFF and we also selected alented photographer Marcin Walczak’s debut documentary short film ‘Arty Anne’ – the heartwarming story of Anne Dignan, a visually impaired photographer on a quest to set up a photographic exhibition as well as one of our favourite shorts from last year was the stunning French sci-fi short ‘Entity’ Directed by Andrew Desmond and previously screened at the Hollywood Horror Festival.
We had 14,483 users see the competition over the two week period, the total number of pageviews was 60,704 and the total number of votes cast was 2,380 so thanks to all the film-makers for taking part and to The Audience Awards for holding the competition.
We really enjoyed The Audience Awards competition experience, it was just so exciting seeing the votes coming in for all those short films that you’ve screened and loved!
In the end, it was a close run thing between ‘One Mans Loss’ by Philip Sansom
and ‘Walk Tall’ by Kate Sullivan
but with 483 votes the winner was…. ‘Walk Tall’!
Screened at the NY Shorts Festival, the London Short Film Festival & many others, Kate Sullivan’s heart-warming documentary is a biography of the 91 year old gymnast and 1948 Olympian competitor, George Weedon, who still performs rolls and encourages good posture in those he meets!
We’re delighted to be able to present Kate with the prize – a Festival pass for this year’s ESFF as well as include her short film as one of the highlights of our touring programme for screening at festivals across the globe!
Well done Kate, we’re looking forward to seeing your next film and we’ll hope to feature an interview with the talented film-maker in our next newsletter!
Click to can find out more about The Audience Awards HERE
