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Heddy Honigmann To Receive Golden Gate Persistence Of Vision Award Festival’s Golden Gate Awards Highlight Documentary Features and Short Works April 3, 2007 San Francisco, CA – The 50th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 26–May 10) recognizes and promotes excellence in documentaries, animation, shorts, experimental film and video, youth works and work for television with its annual Golden Gate Awards. The Golden Gate Awards include the prestigious Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award, which this year will be presented to documentary filmmaker Heddy Honigmann on Tuesday, May 1 at Sundance Cinemas Kabuki; and culminate in celebratory fashion, with a presentation of the GGA nominees and winners at the Golden Gate Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, May 9 at the Cowell Theater in Fort Mason Center. Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award For over 25 years, 2007 POV recipient Heddy Honigmann has brought her unique perspective and boundless curiosity to films that often chronicle the lives of displaced people worldwide. On May 1 she will be presented with the award prior to the showing of her beautiful new documentary Forever; film critic and author John Anderson will interview Honigmann onstage following the screening. Honigmann’s films frequently explore the role that art, and particularly music, plays in people’s lives. She is never reticent about asking a question; her trademark is getting people to open up in ways that must surprise even them. From taxi drivers in Peru, to Bosnian widows and illegal immigrants in the tunnels of the Paris Metro, Honigmann skillfully explores the human condition through her characters and the access they give her into their lives. Her documentary works include: Underground Orchestra (SFIFF 1998), Crazy (SFIFF 2000), Metal and Melancholy (SFIFF 1993), O Amor Natural (SFIFF 1997) and Good Husband, Dear Son (SFIFF 2002). Born in Lima, Peru in 1951, she moved to Italy in 1973 and has lived and worked in Holland since 1978. Forever takes place in Père-Lachaise, the largest cemetery in Paris and the final resting place of the famous. Among its occupants are medieval lovers Heloise and Abelard, modernist icons Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein and ’60s rocker Jim Morrison. Through its gates come tourists who tote cameras to the burial site of Marcel Proust and sing at the gravesite of Yves Montand. Widows of well-remembered husbands, meanwhile, sweep their late spouses’ gravestones and water the flowers. Forever finds that time and memory are the more profound divisions between longing and reality. Golden Gate Awards Ceremony Politics is a strong theme in the documentary features category. Asger Leth’s Ghosts of Cité Soleil (Denmark) offers viewers amazing access to the lives of two gang leaders in a notoriously lawless Haitian slum; Sherine Salama’s The Last Days of Yasser Arafat (Australia) documents the director’s attempts to interview the Palestinian leader; and Steve York’s Orange Revolution (USA) shows the dedication of the hundreds of thousands of Viktor Yushchenko supporters who gathered in Kiev to protest the corrupt 2004 Ukrainian election. Finally, a younger generation enters the political realm in Vanessa Roth’s The Third Monday in October (USA), as middle school students run for student body president. The documentary features category continues with themes of spirituality and family. In Pernille Rose Grønkjær’s quirky film The Monastery (Denmark), a self-sufficient 86-year-old Danish bachelor and a pragmatic Russian nun convert his dilapidated estate into a Russian Orthodox monastery. In the touching documentary Souvenirs (Shahar Cohen and Halil Efrat, Israel), Cohen, an unemployed film director, learns that his father may have left “souvenirs” with Dutch girls while he served in the legendary Jewish Brigade in World War II; the two take a road trip that follows the father’s earlier path and uncovers surprising truths and consequences. Family is the focus of the intimate Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project (Jack Youngelson and Peter Sutherland, USA), as the life and work of the acclaimed and controversial Tierney Gearon is examined. The documentary features category wraps with Mary Olive Smith’s A Walk to Beautiful (Ethiopia/USA), a moving and inspiring tale of young women in Ethiopia who suffer a tragically common illness (and are shunned by their villages because of it) and are aided free of charge by the team of the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. The Bay Area documentary feature category continues the themes of politics, spirituality, family and health. The Rape of Europa (Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole Newnham) offers a World War II tale not often told: the looting and destruction of European artworks by Nazi Germany, as well as how many treasures were saved. Michael Jacobs’ Audience of One looks at a San Francisco Pentecostal preacher who received a message from God to make a biblical film, and his attempt to make his Star Wars-meets-The Ten Commandments epic. Finally, Robert Arnold’s The Key of G is a touching story of the life of a developmentally disabled 22-year-old who is preparing to move out of his mother’s house and move into a new home with his group of artist and musician friends. For a complete list of films nominated for the Golden Gate Awards, see the list below. Also presented at the Golden Gate Awards Ceremony will be the winners of the SKYY Prize (a $10,000 cash award that supports innovative thinking by independent filmmakers and shines the spotlight on an emerging director); the FIPRESCI Prize (which aims to promote film art, to encourage new and young cinema and to help films get better distribution and win greater public attention, as selected by the International Federation of Film Critics); the new Chris Holter Award for Humor in Film (which provides a $2,500 cash prize to the filmmaker whose film paints the most humorous, heart-warming and life-affirming portrait of the human condition); and the GreenWorld Contest (which invites filmmakers to make a two-minute video showing viewers the importance of being green and provides a $1,000 cash prize to the winning entry). Tickets for the Persistence of Vision event with Heddy Honigmann on May 1 at the Sundance Cinemas Kabuki and the Golden Gate Awards Ceremony on May 9 at the Cowell Theater are each $12 general/$10 seniors, students and persons with disabilities/$9 SFFS members. Persistence of Vision Award is sponsored by Jaman. GOLDEN GATE AWARD OFFICIAL SELECTIONS FILM & VIDEO DOCUMENTARY SHORT NARRATIVE SHORT WORKS FOR KIDS AND FAMILIES ANIMATED SHORTS NEW VISIONS YOUTH WORK THESE FILMS ARE WINNERS OF THE GOLDEN GATE AWARDS FOR TELEVISION *Bay Area Filmmakers Sundance Channel and Comcast are sponsors of the Golden Gate Awards Documentary Selection and the Golden Gate Awards Ceremony.
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