Short Film News - Hosted by documentary filmmaker and television journalist, Avi Lewis, the Hot Docs Awards Presentation was held this past Friday night at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Canada.

 

The award for the Best Canadian Documentary (Feature) was given to Shelley Saywell for Martyr Street, a compelling look at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the eyes of two Hebron young girls, as well as a $5,000 cash prize courtesy of the Documentary Channel.

 

First-time director Greg Hamilton's Mystic Ball, which follows his involvement with Myanmar's national sport of chinlone, received the Special Jury Prize in the Best Canadian Documentary category. Hamilton also received a prize valued at $5,000 courtesy of the National Film Board.

 

The award for the Best International Documentary went to Ben Hopkins' 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep (UK), an engrossing look at members of the once nomadic Kirghiz tribe as their younger generation adjusts to the modern world in Turkey.

 

Adan Aliaga's My Grandmother's House (Spain), a look at the relationship between an elderly woman and her young granddaughter in the days before her eviction from her home, also received a Special Jury Prize in the category of Best International Documentary. A word of honor was also given to Nikolaus Geyrhalter's Our Daily Bread (Austria, Germany), a stunning exploration of the mechanization of food production.

 

The award for the Best Documentary Short to Mid-Length was presented to Ibtisam Ma'arana's Badal (Israel), examining the swap-marriage arrangement of the same name through the story of one family and their match-making grandmother. An honorable mention was given to Malene Choi Jensen's Inshallah (Denmark), the story of a young Muslim woman's struggle with discrimination in her own country.

 

The Hot Docs' Board of Directors also presented the annual Outstanding Achievement Award to the filmmaking legend, Werner Herzog, who was also honored with a retrospective during the Festival.

 

For the first time, the Don Haig Award was presented in partnership with Hot Docs at the awards presentation ceremony. The $10,000 cash award is presented to a filmmaker whose work has bridged the documentary and fiction genres and is intended to provide for whatever the filmmaker needs for his/her craft.

 

The award was presented to Quebec filmmaker Guylaine Dionne. The jury for the Don Haig Award also announced that Manitoba filmmaker Sean Garrity was the winner of a Special Jury Prize, $5,000 in cash, courtesy of Films Transit.

 

Two additional prizes were also announced for projects in development pitched at Rendezvous. The OMNI Prize for Best Third Language/Ethno-Cultural Pitch ($10,000 in development money) was awarded to Where Shall I Go? pitched by Dominique Darmon.

 

The Lens on CBC Newsworld Camera Prize for the Best CBC Pitch ($10,000 camera rental package) was awarded to It's a Different World  pitched by Ramona Persaud.

 

[Hot Docs website]