News from Paris: Awards Cinéma du réel 2012

This years Cinéma du réel is coming to an end, here is the list of awards given Saturday:

Louis-Marcorelles Award:

Five Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi

Special mention of Louis-Marcorelles Award : Dusty Night by Ali Hazara

Intangible Heritage Award:

Habiter / Construire (Living / Building) by Clémence Ancelin

Special mention of Intangible Heritage Award: River Rites by Ben Russell

Librairy Award:

La Cause et l’usage (The Common Place) by Dorine Brun and Julien Meunier

Special mention of Librairy Award: Habiter / Construire (Living / Building) by Clémence Ancelin

Young jury Award:

East Punk Memories by Lucile Chaufour

Special mention of Young jury Award: La Cause et l’usage (The Common Place) by Dorine Brun and Julien Meunier

Joris Ivens Award:

The Vanishing Spring Light by Xun Yu

Special mention of Joris Ivens Award: A Nossa forma de vida (The Way You Are) by Pedro Filipe Marques

Short film Award:

Dusty Night by Ali Hazara

Scam International Award:

Earth by Victor Asliuk

Cinéma du réel Grand Prix:

Autrement, la Molussie (Differently, Molussia) by Nicolas Rey

The Grand Prix winner 2012, Nicolas Rey’s Differently Molussia, was an audacious choice from the jury: Nine chapters shot in 16mm based on fragments of the Günther Anders’ 1930’ies novel The Mollusian Catacomb, about the imaginary fascist state Molussia. A film, I must admit, way beyond my attention span!

Five Broken Cameras (Burnat, Davidi) continues its success (Special Jury Award IDFA, World Cinema Directing Award Sundance a.o.). This important Palestinian-Israeli-French production, a personal story of a Palestinian farmer filming the non-violent protests of his village against the barrier erected by the Israeli army on their land, deserves as much screening as possible. There is talk about a French theatre-release…

Also a note on the section Arrested Cinema featuring news from Syria this year: The event attracted a huge crowd and we were many not being able to get a seat. Maybe this event could be promoted to the Cinema 1 next year?

Personally, my strongest experience this year was to get to know more about the work of Susana de Sousa Dias and her experimental way of treating historical archives. Again, the festival is to be praised for its extensive side-programmes.

Still: Autrement, la Molussie de Nicolas Rey