NATUZZI INTERNATIONAL AWARD FOR BEST FEATURE FILM
AFF is proud to announce the Natuzzi International Award For Best Feature Film, with a cash prize of $AUD25,000. This juried best feature award will be the first of its kind in Australia.
The festival has invited twelve narrative feature films into competition. The only criterion for selection was that the films must have been completed in 2006. Our jury is looking for a distinctive voice, bold storytelling, and creative risk-taking—above all, a film that genuinely engages and transports the viewer. The president of the jury will announce the winning film on Closing Night.
This Award has been made possible through the generous sponsorship of Natuzzi with support from the Maras Group.
NATUZZI JURORS
Our jury brings together a rich range of expertise in screen culture and the international art scene. We’ve aimed at a mixture of skills and backgrounds which reflects both the wide-ranging nature of our program, and the way that film’s vitality comes from its ability to cross boundaries and form new communities of interest
Noah Cowan (Jury President)
Noah Cowan returned to the Toronto International Film Festival Group in January of 2004 to become Festival Co-Director, a position he shares with Piers Handling. Cowan was most recently Founding Executive Director of The Global Film Initiative. He was also President of Code Red Films and Cowboy Pictures. Cowan had various programming and administrative roles at the Toronto International Film Festival from the late 1980s through 2000 while working as a film critic and freelance curator.
Mick Harvey
Mick Harvey is an arranger, multi-instrumentalist, producer and film soundtrack composer, as well as key member (and co-founder) of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and, in the 1980s, The Birthday Party and Crime & The City Solution. His film score credits include Ghosts...Of The Civil Dead, Chopper, Australian Rules (ARIA winner for Best Original Soundtrack Album), Deliver Us From Evil and Suburban Mayhem (AFI winner for Best Original Music Score). Mick is currently working on a new album due for release late April 2007.
Margaret Pomeranz
Margaret Pomeranz is co-host (with David Stratton) of ABC Television’s At The Movies. She worked at SBS Television from 1980-2004, variously as a producer, writer, Executive Producer (Front Up, Subsonics, AFI Awards and IF Awards) and as co-host (with David) of The Movie Show. Margaret has served as a member of the Advertising Standards Board, is a past President of the Film Critics Circle of Australia and is currently President of Watch on Censorship and member of the inaugural board of the Australian Writers’ Foundation.
Ana Kokkinos
Ana Kokkinos’ film, Head On, which she co-wrote and directed, had its world premiere in Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in 1998. Her second feature The Book of Revelation, which she co-wrote and directed, was selected for the Visions Section of the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006. Other films include Only the Brave (94) and Antamosi (91). Her television credits include episodes of Eugenie Sandler, Young Lions and The Secret Life of Us.
James Hewison
James Hewison is CEO of the Australian Film Institute. Previously, he held the position of Executive Director of the Melbourne International Film Festival from 2000 to 2006. He was Associate Producer of the feature documentary film, Letters to Ali (Clara Law, 2004) and of Short and Sweet 2 (for ABC TV). He is an advisor to the Asian Film Market for the Pusan International Film Festival. He has a background in cinema and television marketing and has worked in radio and publicity.
Clara Law
Clara Law moved to Melbourne in the mid '90s from Hong Kong, where she had already directed many features, including Farewell, China (90), Autumn Moon (92) and The Temptation of a Monk (93). Clara Law's Australian-based films, which were written with her longtime partner Eddie Fong, are Floating Life (96), The Goddess of 1967 (00) and Letters to Ali (04). Her films have won numerous awards at film festivals internationally including Venice, Locarno, Torino, Creteil and Gijon.
Georgia Blain
Georgia Blain has written four novels and has been published in Australia and the UK. Her first book, Closed for Winter, has been optioned with a film expected to be made later this year. Her forthcoming book of personal stories, titled Births Deaths Marriages, will be published by Picador in October.
