The Golden Gate Awards were established to augment the San Francisco International Film Festival's tradition of recognizing and promoting excellence in independent and world cinema. For more than 50 years, the competition has exhibited the best of Bay Area and international filmmaking talent by honoring superior innovation in narrative, documentary, animation, experimental and television works.
The prestige of the Golden Gate Awards competition has grown along with the Festival, and is reflected in the recent substantial increases in monetary awards. This year, nearly $100,000 in cash prizes will be given to the winners in 14 categories. The prize for Best Documentary Feature has grown to $20,000, and the Best Bay Area Documentary Feature is now valued at $15,000. In addition, SFIFF52 will inaugurate the Golden Gate Award for Best Investigative Documentary Feature with a juried cash prize of $25,000. One of the largest film festival prizes in the country, and one of the few for work that probes issues of social and political importance, this new award is designed to embolden courageous filmmakers working to uncover the truths about topical issues.
The Golden Gate Awards are distinguished in large part due to the participation and expertise of members of our vital and dedicated Bay Area film and video community. Each year, a core group of filmmakers, journalists, exhibitors, curators and academics devote hours to screening hundreds of entries. Each submission is thoughtfully reviewed and evaluated by these participants who then recommend films for Golden Gate Awards competition. Four juries view the Official Selections at the Festival and choose Golden Gate Awards in 14 categories.
The Golden Gate Awards are only one of many ways in which the Film Society fulfills an important Festival function: to increase attention and resources available to independent filmmakers and to support the development of local and international cinema. We are especially proud of the world-class films selected for competition and invite you to join us in celebrating the cinematic accomplishments of the distinguished filmmakers whose works enliven and uplift audiences and the San Francisco International Film Festival itself.
OFFICIAL SELECTION 2009
DOCUMENTARY FEATURES
The Age of Stupid
Franny Armstrong, England
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
Anders Østergaard, Denmark
California Company Town
Lee Anne Schmitt, USA
City of Borders(Bay Area)
Yun Suh, USA
Crude
Joe Berlinger, USA
D tour(Bay Area)
Jim Granato, USA
Kimjongilia
N.C. Heikin, USA
My Neighbor, My Killer
Anne Aghion, USA
New Muslim Cool (Bay Area)
Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, USA
Nomad's Land
Gaël Métroz, Switzerland
The Reckoning
Pamela Yates, USA
Speaking in Tongues(Bay Area)
Marcia Jarmel, Ken Schneider, USA
Z32
Avi Mograbi, Israel
Documentary Feature Jury
Ellen Bruno's documentary work has focused on leading human rights issues including Burmese prostitution, Tibetan nuns, health care in Cambodia and homelessness. Her highly awarded films have been used extensively in universities, as lobbying tools in Congress and to raise funds for global issues. Her films include House of the Spirit (1984), Requiem (1985), Mamie (1986), No Fairytale (1986), Samsara (1989), Blessed (1995), Sacrifice (1997), A Call to Prayer (2000), Leper (Nepal, 2004) and Sky Burial (Tibet 2005).
Robb Moss is codirector of the documentary Secrecy (SFIFF 2008). His previous film, The Same River Twice, premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for a 2004 Independent Spirit award and played theatrically in more than 80 cities across North America. He was on the 2004 documentary jury at the Sundance Film Festival and has thrice served as a creative advisor for the Sundance Institute documentary labs. He has taught filmmaking at Harvard University for the past 20 years.
B Ruby Rich is professor and chair of the Community Studies department and Social Documentation program at UC Santa Cruz. She has been a working critic, curator and cultural theorist since the mid-'70s, Rich has been closely identified with a number of important film movements, notably feminist film and Latin American cinema. Her work and voice can be found in countless magazines, newspapers, academic journals, books, panel discussions, and public radio programs. She is the author of Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement.
Rod Webb is head of programming at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's international television service, Australia Network. Over a long career he has had prominent positions at the National Film Theatre of Australia, the Australian Film Commission and the Sydney Film Festival, which he directed for five years. In the 1990s, he worked at SBS Televsion and on the establishment of the World Movies subscription channel. In early 2005 he was appointed head of programming at Australia Network.
DOCUMENTARY SHORT
The Conscience of Nhem En (Bay Area)
Steven Okazaki, Cambodia
A Day Late in Oakland (Bay Area)
Zachary Stauffer, USA
575 Castro St. (Bay Area)
Jenni Olson, USA
Tongzhi in Love
Ruby Yang, USA
Waiting for a Train: The Toshio Hirano Story (Bay Area)
Oscar Bucher, USA
Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall (Bay Area)
Sam Green, Carrie Lozano, USA
Zietek
Bartosz Blaschke, Poland
NARRATIVE SHORT
Angels Die in the Soil
Babak Amini, Iran
History of Solitude
Mathew Szymanowski, Poland
Immersion (Bay Area)
Richard Levien, USA
Konvex-T
Johan Lundh, Sweden
The Lake
Boaz Lavie, Israel
Next Floor
Denis Villeneuve, Canada
TELEVISION NARRATIVE LONG FORM
Artemisia
Chiang Hsiu-chiung, Taiwan
ANIMATED SHORT
AANAATT
Max Hattler, England
Far Away from Ural
Katariina Lillqvist, Finland
The Heart of Amos Klein
Uri Kranot, Michal Kranot, Israel
Kanizsa Hill
Evelyn Lee, USA
Lies
Jonas Odell, Sweden
Photograph of Jesus
Laurie Hill, England
Slaves
David Aronowitsch, Hanna Heiborn, Sweden
NEW VISIONS
Circles of Confusion (Bay Area)
Phoebe Tooke, USA
Danse Macabre
Pedro Pires, Canada
Frida in the Mirror (Bay Area)
Adrian Arias, USA
The Last Rites
Yasmine Kabir, Bangladesh
Last Thoughts (Bay Area)
Paul Burke, USA
me broni ba (my white baby)
Akosua Adoma Owusu, USA
Running Sushi
Mara Mattuschka, Chris Haring, Austria
Shorts Jury
Jesse Hawthorne Ficks programs the popular Midnites for Maniacs extravaganzas at the Castro Theatre. He specializes in "neo-sincere" revivals of underrated and overlooked films of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. In 2008, he honored director Peter Bogdanovich during a three-day retrospective. Ficks also teaches film history at the Academy of Art University, works for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and reviews films for the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
Amy Hicks has been making experimental work in film, video and analog/digital combinations for ten years. She teaches digital media at California College of the Arts and Stanford University. Her videos and films have been presented in museums, galleries and film festivals around the globe. Hicks is currently working on a multichannel video project funded by the San Francisco Art Commission and is a member of the San Francisco Film Society Filmmakers Advisory Board.
Jason Sanders is an archivist and writer at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. As a journalist he has covered film festivals such as Rotterdam, Toronto, New York and Hawaii for publications including Filmmaker Magazine, Cinema Scope, Release Print and International Documentary. He is also a writer for film festivals around North America, including the Tribeca, Miami, Seattle and SFIFF, and is the editor of the San Francisco Asian American International Film Festival Program Guide.
WORKS FOR KIDS AND FAMILIES
Good Advice
Andreas Tibblin, Sweden
Mutt
Glen Hunwick, Australia
The Turtle and the Shark
Ryan Woodward, USA
WAWA
Mona Achache, France
YOUTH WORKS
The Freeze (Bay Area)
P. Roxanne Smith, USA
A Generation of Consolidation *
Samantha Muilenburg, Brooke Noel, USA
No Light at the End of the Tunnel
Charlotte Burger, USA
Nuestra Dignidad *
Kathy Vega-Muñoz, USA
Daily Bread (Bay Area) *
Yianeth Saenz, USA
Poetry in the Dark
Daniel Kharlak, USA
Youth Voices (Bay Area) *
Sydney Paige Matterson, USA
* Films in Adobe Youth Film for Change Award competition