30th Images Festival Award Winners

May 8, 2017

OCAD University Off Screen Award Winners Ivana Dizdar and Alvin Luong for their exhibition Bidding War at Y+ Contemporary

30th Images Festival Award Winners news date: May 9, 2017

Jury: Sharlene Bamboat, Johnson Ngo, Carly Whitefield

More with Less Award: Sponsored by CFMDC, CARFAC Ontario, Charles Street Video, Dames Making Games, Gamma Space, ImagineNative, LIFT, SAW Video, Toronto Reel Asian Int’l Film Festival, Amar Wala and Anonymous. This award was established in 2015 to honour Scott Miller Berry (Images staff 2001-2015) and is presented annually to a project whose artwork does more with less and honours the resourceful spirit. The recipient receives a $1,500 cash prize.

Scene 38, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit For capturing a rich and humorous meta-cinematic imaginary in a single shot

OCAD University Off Screen Award: Sponsored by the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU), this award honours the strongest new Canadian or international installation or new media work in the festival. The recipient receives a $500 award.

Y+ contemporary Bidding War, Ivana Dizdar and Alvin Luong For its thoughtful integration of time-based media into a comprehensive installation and its simultaneously playful and critical approach to site-specificity, addressing poignant issues within urban/suburban cityscapes with humour. We love that they take the piss.

Steam Whistle Homebrew Award: Sponsored by Steam Whistle Brewing, this award honours excellence and promise in a local artist. The recipient receives $500 and a Steam Whistle Prize Package.

Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso / Come to Me, Paradise, Stephanie Comilang For its multivalent approach, moving between various screens, staged and appropriated images, and between speculative fiction and contemporary social realities to underscore the resilience of disenfranchised domestic workers.

Overkill Award: Sponsored by an anonymous donor. Established in 2000 to honour former Executive Director Deirdre Logue, this award is presented annually to an artist whose work approaches extremes of incorrigibility through form and/or content and challenges our notions of experimental practice. The recipient receives a $500 award.

Can’t Get You out of My Head Award Hard as Opal, Dani Leventhal and Jared Buckhiester We’ve decided to amend the title of this award this year to recognize a work we felt was in the spirit of Deirdre Logue’s ‘extremes of incorrigibility’ but for which the ‘Overkill’ designation would have misread the approach. This Can’t Get You out of My Head Award goes to Hard as Opal for its truly sticky images.

Marian McMahon Akimbo Award: Sponsored by Akimbo Art Promotion. This award is given to a woman filmmaker each year to honour strong work in autobiography, complexity of “subject” and the spirit of Marian McMahon. The recipient is funded to attend the annual Independent Imaging retreat (Film Farm) and workshop in Mount Forest, Ontario. The recipient also receives $500 worth of transfer services courtesy of Frame Discreet.

Untitled, Anonymous

fuckthepatriarchy

York University Award for Best Student Work on Screen: Sponsored by York University’s Department of CINEMA & MEDIA ARTS awarded to the best student work on screen. The recipient receives $500.

Fiesta Forever, Jorge Jácome For its technical expertise, seamless and subtle navigation of narrative layers and lost spaces.

Vtape Award for Best Student Work on Screen: Sponsored by Vtape, Toronto’s video art Distributor awarded to the best student work on screen. The recipient receives $500.

Herat in my Head in my Heart, Weeda Azim For its deft interweaving of personal and political content in a concise experimental form. We want to see more!

Trinity Square Video Award: Sponsored by Trinity Square Video. This award honours the best GTA media artists at the Images festival. The recipient will receives a $100 membership + $1000 in-kind equipment rentals.

A Mountain That Opens Like a Door and Closes Like a Mountain, Felix Kalmenson For its precise composition, and animating archival materials with signs of human life and physical vulnerability, toxicity, and collective memory.

Additional Award:

Special Programming Mention We want to give a special mention to an exceptionally curated program, Housekeeping Notes, by the Images programming team. This program was dynamic in its form and content, the range of approaches and traditions it drew in, and threads it opened up.