FIAT Award 2008

On the 23rd of September, Ran Tal, director of "Children of the Sun", received the "FIAT Award 2008" from Bríd Dooley, head of FIAT/IFTA's Programme & Production Commission. In a most memorable event at the Danish Cinemathek in Copenhagen, more than 150 members of the FIAT/IFTA-community voted for their favourite production. Although it was hard for everybody to decide, since all shortlisted programs were of tremendous quality, the presentation and the following voting brought "Children of the Sun" the final success.

Shortlist

The P&P-Commissions prejury decided during their last meeting in Prague in May on the three productions (out of 20 nominations), which will be in this years shortlist; the final candidates for the FIAT/IFTA Award 2008 are:

• Private Century – Czech TV (Czech Republic) Producer: Anna Beckova
• In the Factory - RAI (Italy) Producer: Francesca Comencini
• Children of the Sun - Lama Films (Israel) Producer: Amir Harel

The complete List of the nominees for 2008 can be found here.


FIAT streamed the shortlisted programmes in low res via a secure FIAT website provided by RAI (access is limited to the FIAT community only; please use the same login-data as for the members-database and all other restricted areas); the programs has been shown to the delegates at the FIAT Conference in Copenhagen in a shortened version only (see the following paragraph)!

Screening & Voting

The official screening followed by the voting took place at this years conference as following:

Each shortlisted producer had the chance of a maximum 5 minutes introduction of his programme, then 15 minutes of the producer’s selected sequences were be screened. Therefore, in case of being shortlisted, producers of nominated programmes had to agree to produce a screening DVD of max. 15 minutes length, which had to be sent to the address mentioned below (Deadline: August 15th, 2008)

Each conference delegate was be entitled to vote in a secret ballot after the screening.

Rules

The FIAT Award 2008 was open to television programmes first transmitted or produced in any country in 2007, which display outstanding use of audiovisual archival material. This material must represent a significant contribution to the programme.

Citations of shortlisted productions

Private Century – Czech TV (Czech Republic)

This is a poetic and very touching film using only private amateur footage. The story – told by the little girl Eva – is very strong and intense: her memories of her grandparents in Velichhovky on the Czech-German border, her parents "daddy" and "Lili" who at first are madly in love with each other and then later get divorced. The microcosm of an upperclass family living in the countryside as well as in the capital Prague with its ups and downs. In the macrocosm we learn about the political situation, Hitler's annexation, the war and then the communists take over - a family divided between Czechoslovakia and Germany.The commission was impressed with the quality of the the story told in a very emotional way that brings the archive to life and tells a part of the history of Europe through personal experience.
The commission appreciated that this production demonstrates the value of private collections and how broadcasters can help with the preservation and access to such secret collections.
That kind of material from this period supports the official newsreel footage of the time (in the absence of TV) to tell our history.

In the Factory - RAI (Italy)

Such a program is now possible because so much of the RAI archive is digitised and this was an encouraging collaboration between the archive and production. This production was unusual for its focus on the ordinary people and how archive reflected the impact of industrialisation on them. The Commission thought this is a unique and interesting approach, it shows great respect for the people who appeared in the archive films as well as the directors of the original films. The director’s words sum this up – "The Italy that passed in front of my eyes through the film footage, such beautiful, proud faces, showed by images that were also beautiful on film, in black and white, sometimes through the eyes of great filmmakers, made one mourn for it all the time….. The two subjects of this documentary, the workers and the directors that documented them, have been the salt of the country and I think we owe them a relentless effort of remembrance, not to regret them for them to help us find out who we are and move on, towards the future, without relinquishing the thought of it to anyone else, while we remain motionless, taken up on tending the wounds of nostalgia".

Children of the Sun - Lama Films (Israel)

Thousands of children born on kibbutzim in the early 20th century, were raised under a socialist educational system, whose goal was to create a new and improved human being by replacing the traditional family with an alternative one – the group. The film accompanies those children who lived most of their life in kibbutzim and also brought them to their end. The strong storyline about a special historical period of Kibbutzim impressed the Commission. Also commended was the challenging and intensive research that was required through the many neglected archives in the kibbutzim and their private collections saving old neglected footage from being lost forever. The programme is skilfully and sensitively edited creatively using only the archive footage with current interviews of some of the children today with their voices over the old visuals of their childhood, the good and bad memories of a social experiment that they were part of. Again it is a series of personal stories of people reacting emotionally to seeing the archive again.

Address for further questions

Südwestrundfunk
Controlling FS
z.H. Herrn Karl Maier
Postfach 820
76522 Baden-Baden
Germany

E-mail: Karl.Maier@swr.de
Tel: + 49 7221-929-3497
Fax: +49 7221-929-6177