Astra Film

JURY

SIMONA BEALCOVSCHI
Anthropologist, research interests in communication: construction of representations in totalitarian regimes, cultural models in socialist societies, semiotics of the visual document. Preparing doctoral thesis in anthropology with the University Montreal. Author of documentary films, national and international awards.

MICHAL BUCHOWSKI
Professor of Anthropology at the University of Poznan and at the Comparative Central European University-Viadrina in Frankfurt-Oder. Teaches Theory of anthropology, Systems of beleifs, social and cultural issues of contemporary Central European societies. Published several articles in
international journals and books, among others Reluctant Capitalists (Berlin, 1997),  The Rational Other (Poznan).

PETER LOIZOS
Professor at the Department for Social Anthropology, London School of Economics. Courses taught on aspects of social, economic and political development, with poverty, and environment, drought and famine as key themes. Prior to becoming an academic, worked for five years as a documentary filmmaker and continued making documentary and ethnographic films throughout his academic career. Books, papers, reports, chapters and articles on property transfer and class; political development and patronage; ethnic conflict; participation in DFID development projects (Nepal, and Nigeria); refugee adaptation to destitution, and refugee social capital conservation;  ethnographic film (Innovation in Ethnographic Film: from innocence to self-consciousness. Manchester & Chicago, 1993; Conceiving Persons: ethnographies of procreation and fertility. with P.Heady, Athlone,1999).

DAVID MACDOUGALL
Queen Elizabeth II Fellow and Convenor, Programme in Visual Research, Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University Canberra. Trained at the University of California at Los Angeles Graduate Programme in Ethnographic Film. Made films in Africa, Australia, India, and most recently in Sardinia (complete filmography on page 60). International awards. Writings on theoretical issues in  cinema and ethnographic documentaries (most recently Transcultural Cinema, collected essays, Princeton University Press, 1998).  

CRISTIAN NIŢULESCU
Works as an executive producer for the News Department of the Romanian Television.  Training in letters, further training in TV Management and Cultural Anthropology. Produced and directed a series of programmes on cultural anthropology topics for the Romanian Television.

MARK SOOSAAR
Director of the Chaplin Art Centre/The Museum of New Art in Pärnu, Estonia. Author of documentary films, winner of international awards. Founder of the Pärnu International Festival of Documentary Film. Initiated a network to support and promote filmmakers and documentary filmmaking in Eastern European countries.

VIOLETTA ZENTAI
Visiting lecturer at Janus Pannonius University, Pecs and ELTE University, Budapest. Research interest in political anthropology, capitalist transformation, gender and transition, and occidentalism in Central and
Eastern Europe. Publications: with Feischmidt M., Magyari-Vincze E., eds. Men and Women in East European Transition (Cluj, 1997), Ed. Politikai antropologia, (Budapest, 1997).

AWARDS

THE GRAND PRIZE
granted by FORMULA AS Magazine

Forever Little, by Barbara den Uyl, The Netherlands

The jury was impressed by the manner in which this film explores the feelings and circumstances of people who are often subjected to the prejudice and misplaced pity of others in society. The film was inspired by the filmmaker’s realization that people who are much smaller than the majority experience exclusion as young people, slowly come to accept their physical limitations, and when they find others like themselves, can create friendships, marriages and families which sustain them. By allowing Big People slowly into the world of Little People, the film encourages both social insight and human sympathy. The film is marked by the trust between filmmaker and subjects.

ASTRA PRIZE FOR THE BEST INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY
granted by The Romanian National Office For Cinematography

Marriage, by Bibo Liang, China

The film masterfully portrays the negotiation process between two Chinese families on the exchange of material values preceeding the wedding of two young people and the marriage ritual. The filmmaker gives a subtle portray on how marriage is embedded and perpetuates the traditional distribution of social relations between families and communities. The film is also exemplary in suggesting a critical reading of Chinese traditions not caring much about individual happiness yet preserving the dignity of the family as a whole.

AWARD FOR  EASTERN-EUROPEAN FILM
granted by Deventer-Roemenie Foundation and FilmhuisDeKeizer, The Netherlands, to encourage documentary film production in Eastern European Countries

A Day in the Life of Ephtim D., by Asen Balikci & Antonii Dontchev, Bulgaria

Black and White in Colour, by Mira Erdevicki , Czech Republic

AWARD FOR ROMANIAN DOCUMENTARY FILM
Granted by the British Council, to encourage the production of documentary
and anthropology film in Romania

Cukoo’s Nest, by Catalin Apostol

The jury highly evaluated the sensitive and delicate approach to mentally ill people shown in the film. The author has definitely become close to the persons with whom he made interviews and whom he met in the hospital making the extremely difficult enterprise very human. Case study of the singular “cukoo’s nest” in a country undergoing rapid change, touches upon the intricate universal issues of what is considered ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ in our contemporary society. The film provokes us to rethink the question and treats a complex worldview of those people as the mirror in which we can look at ourselves more sharply and in much more critical way.

No Rush, No Women,  by Gabriel Hanganu & Adina Bradeanu

The Jury appreciated especially an anthropological way with which the authors dealt with the contemporary problems of post-socialist transition. By focussing on the small group of sheperds living in the “pit” at the outskirts of Bucharest, they were able to show larger issues related to the desindustrialization and desintegration of the society that underwent heavy industrialization in the near past. Former state employees were forced to come back into traditional activities, such as herding and breeding sheep. Individual life trajectories, often broken and shattered, are strictly interwoven into structural changes. Fates of men living in a hut and the “pit” itself becomes an intriguing mataphor of the social and cultural aspects of the contemporary changes in Romania.

 
Special Commendation of the Jury

Lisdoonvarna, Lourdes of love, by Hans Heijnen, The Netherlands

The filmmaker pictures the everyday life and dreams of bachelors in rural Ireland by discovering the peculiarities of individual biographies of men of the same social status. The three different characters nicely explain the complexity of social constrains, family histories and individual choices in the lives of bachelors. The director invites the audience into the world of match-making institutions with sound taste and thorough empathy and makes the viewer understand the vulnerability of men who have avoided the destiny of men in this world as to choose parteners at the right time and direct live to success.