During the IFFR 2009 Awards Ceremony for Short Films on Monday, January 26, 2009 in Theatre Lantaren / Venster in Rotterdam, the winning short films of the 38th International Film Festival Rotterdam were announced. The three Tiger Awards for Short Film were granted to A NECESSARY MUSIC by Beatrice Gibson (UK), DESPAIR (OTCHAJANIE) by Galina Myznikova & Sergey Provorov (Russia) and BERNADETTE by Duncan Campbell (UK). On Sunday January 25, the NPS New Arrivals Award was given to the online short film SEEKING YOU by Jean-Julien Pous (France), with a Special Mention for JANSOREE by Jung Yol Choi (South Korea).

Tiger Awards Competition for Short Film
For the fifth edition of the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Film, twenty-seven films of up to sixty minutes in length were selected. Each of the three Tiger Awards for Short Film comes with a prize of 3,000 Euro. The jury for Tiger Awards for Short Film comprised Malaysian writer and director Tan Chui Mui (her seven recent short films screen in the festival), Maria Pallier, buyer and programme maker for the Spanish broadcasting company TVE, and the British journalist, curator and artist George Clark.

The jury statements on the three winners:

A NECESSARY MUSIC by Beatrice Gibson (UK)
“A multilayered construction, a unique exploration of community memory and social history. Literary and musical, the work celebrates cinema as a vision machine and as a conduit for oral history. For the complex melding of references, the eloquence of its execution and for its musicality and collaborations the Tiger Award for Short Film goes to A NECESSARY MUSIC by Beatrice Gibson.”

DESPAIR (OTCHAJANIE) by Galina Myznikova & Sergey Provorov (Russia)
“With remarkable economy, elegant compositions and movement, this work achieves a dreamlike quality from minimal means. Humour is its survival strategy, a gruelling film for a gruelling world. For its formal elegance, movement and self-depreciating humour, the second Tiger Award for Short Film goes to DESPAIR by Galina Myznikova & Sergey Provorov.”

BERNADETTE by Duncan Campbell (UK)
“A remarkable form is found for an extraordinary person, the film returns to a past and a person, liberated from the images and sounds that have come to define them. Coloured by false starts, changes of direction and loose ends, the works’ remarkable rigour brilliantly accommodates its questioning of documentary form. For its extraordinary form, its refusal of simple images and conclusions the third Tiger Award for Short Film goes to BERNADETTE by Duncan Campbell.”

NPS New Arrivals Award
New Arrivals is an online platform for short films, a collaboration by the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and Dutch broadcasting company NPS. Filmmakers from all over the world are invited to send in their short film. An editorial committee selects five films every month, a jury selects the monthly winner. During the 38th edition of the IFFR (21 Jan till 1 Feb 2009) all seven monthly winners are shown and an international jury chooses the winning film. The winner receives € 1000.

The jury statement on the winning film SEEKING YOU by Jean-Julien Pous:
“We, the jury, want to honour this young energetic passionate talented director for his impressive cinematic love letter to Hong Kong and encourage him to develop his own talent in the seductive and wide world of Cinema.”

The jury statement on the Special Mention for JANSOREE - THE UNBEARABLE HEAVINESS OF MAMA’S NAGGING by Jung Yol Choi.
“Every year there are many short films made by young people about mother and child relationships. This is one of them, but a very exceptional one that hits the audience to the very cone. This is the power of cinema at its most honest level. We also want to acknowledge the exceptional acting talent of Hae Yein Gil, the mother character. We also recognize that good acting is often a sign of good directing.”

Both SEEKING YOU and JANSOREE are online on http://www.newarrivals.nps.nl/ and www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com.