2006 Sydney Film Festival Award Winners
July 18th, 2006 by Andre Soares
"Notwithstanding the [Sydney Film] festival’s slogan [Go Deeper], the artistic and intellectual depth of the 33 features and documentaries seen by this writer was limited. Although the festival provided some sense of the world, with a large number of features about the Middle East and a few valuable movies, many of the problems highlighted in previous [World Socialist Web Site] coverage of the festival are still present.
"Overall, the program is still dominated by faddish or sensationalist work, along with an increasing number of mainstream movies from the major studios already guaranteed wide release in Australian multiplex cinemas. In fact, more than 20 of the 74 features shown will be in local cinemas this year. Most of these, however, are bland or unchallenging works."
That’s Richard Phillips in a July 17, 2006, piece for the World Socialist Web Site.
In his article, Phillips discusses the movies he saw at this year’s Sydney Film Festival (which was held between June 9-25), including the 1972 Vietnam War documentary Winter Soldier, in which U.S. soldiers discuss atrocities committed in Vietnam; Alain Tasma’s Nuit noire, 17 octobre 1961 / October 17, 1961 (above), a dramatization of the events leading to the deadly confrontation between the heavily armed Parisian police and 20,000 Algerians protesting French colonial rule; and Zhang Lu’s Grain in Ear, a portrait of a young Korean single mother eking out a living on the outskirts of a Chinese industrial city.
For the record, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s American comedy Little Miss Sunshine, starring Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette, received the Audience Award for Best Feature - World Cinema. The Best Documentary - World Cinema Award went to Davis Guggenheim’s global warming warning An Inconvenient Truth.
Full list of winners at the 2006 Sydney Film Festival
Outfest - Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival 2006 Winners
Winners at the 2006 Jerusalem Film Festival
Great To Be Nominated: Fiddler on the Roof
Atlanta Film Festival 2006 Winners
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