WorldFest-Houston Film Festival 2004 Awards
Ten Great Days in April - 450 Intl Filmmakers Attended!

Grand Finale of 2004 WorldFest-Houston (The 37th Annual WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival)
WorldFest-Houston, the third oldest film festival in North America, celebrated the conclusion of its 37th annual independent film showcase with an Awards Gala on April 24th and Closing Day festivities with a VIP tour of NASA and Space Center Houston and Texas Barbecue on April 25th sponsored by The Houston Yacht Club. Both events were open to the public.

WorldFest was founded as an International Film Society in August 1961. It became the third competitive international film festival in North America, following San Francisco and New York. WorldFest evolved into a competitive International Film Festival in April 1968 and has a long list of "discovered" film greats such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott, Ang Lee, Robert Rodriguez, the Coen Brothers and many others from their beginning efforts in short subject submissions early in their careers. Multi award-winning producer/director, Hunter Todd, founded this international film festival to honor all categories of film and video production and still continues his long dedication to finding and spotlighting the emerging Independent filmmakers, "the Spielbergs of tomorrow."
WorldFest's mission is to recognize and honor outstanding creative excellence in film & video, validate brilliant abilities and promote future filmmaking in the state of Texas as well as enhance cultural tourism for Houston.

The 10-day film festival ran to a smooth finish with several full-houses, one being the Texas production, "Tom's Wife," directed by Alana Cash. Directors, producers and actors representing their premiering films flew in from all over the globe such as: Korea (Hak-Soon Kim; "Rewind"; Australia, (Jan Sardi; "Love's Brother" & Michael Egan, Tors Larsen; "Straight to You"); Hungary, (Katalin Vajda; Rose's Songs and three Hungarian shorts); Israel, (Mordecai Bregman; "God's Sandbox); Belarus, (Yuri Yelkhov; " Anastasia"); Germany (Ralf Schmerberg; "Poem"); and Canada (Trent Carlson; "The Delicate Art of Parking" & Jordan Barker; "My Brother's Keeper") plus many others from the International Short Subject competition.

Bob Boudreault was Master of Ceremonies at the Awards ceremony which was held in the ballroom of The Renaissance Hotel on Saturday night, April 24th.

The festivities began with a cocktail reception hosted by The Houston Film Commission. World Champion Bagpipe Band from St. Thomas Episcopal School in Houston, launched the awards segment by piping in festival founder, Hunter Todd, leading the parade of a bevy of beautiful Page Parkes models, presenters of the plaques to the winning filmmakers. World Champion Scottish Highland dancers began the night's series of dance pieces followed by the Anjali India Dance Company and finally the Li-Mei Hua Chinese Dance Academy featuring Taiwanese folkloric dances. Award winning Red & White Wines from the Becker Vineyards were served. Becker is the Official Wine of WorldFest.
Complete Winners list in Excel and Acrobat!

HP Crystal Vision Awards and Kodak Cinematography Award. Longtime friend of the festival, Dick Hoff of Kodak, presented the annual Kodak Cinematography Crystal Vision award with his $2,500 film stock certificate to winner, Marcelo Mitnik for his music video, "To the Mountain: An Argentinean Story."
Mark Stouse of HP, presented two Hewlett Packard Crystal Vision Awards along with two iPAQ Pocket PCs; one to Brian Lovell for his short film, "Interruption" and the second awarded to Monika Mitchell for her darkly comic feature "Break a Leg." Accepting on her behalf was Stuart Strutin of Panorama Entertainment, newly picked distributor for her award-winning film.