Vancouver International Film Festival 2000 Awards

8th october 2000

The closing gala screening of Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark saw the announcement of the final awards at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

Film taste may be a very subjective thing, but I can't fault the choice by the Vancouver Film Festival audience of this year's Air Canada Award for Most Popular Film. Czech Republic's Jan Hrebejk's Divided We Fall (Wir Müssen Zusammenhalten), a film about a Czech couple harbouring a concentration camp escapee during the Second World War, is a piece of many emotions - swinging from black, laugh-out-loud comedy, to moments of thought-provoking subtlety and tenderness. Jan Hrebejk describes it as a "personal reflection on the strength of human dignity which demonstrates that even a small show of decency can manifest great heroism and, conversely, that sometimes a small indecency can be tragic." It's difficult to improve on that. The runner-up was the Festival opening gala, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo Hu Zang Long) directed by Ang Lee.

Calgary director Gary Burns added the "Federal Express Award for Most Popular Canadian Film" to his Best Western Canadian Screenplay for his mall-set comedy waydowntown.

The runner-up for Most Popular Canadian Film was Life's Evening Hour by Ontario director Karen Murray, a documentary about blind photographer John Dugdale's triumph over adversity.

5th October - Awards announced

The first set of awards at this year's Vancouver International Film Festival were announced tonight at the Ridge cinema. The Dragons and Tigers Award for Young Cinema for the most creative and innovative first or second feature by a director from Pacific Asia went to Wisit Sasanatieng for his "acutely original, highly cyclical and 100% enjoyable" Thai film Fa Talai Jone, a film that parodies the styles of Thai stage and screen productions of the Fifties and Sixties.

The Telefilm Canada Award for the Best Emerging Western Canadian feature went to director Rod Weber for his black-and-white DV drama set in Vancouver, No More Monkeys Jumping On The Bed. "It seems kind of strange to be called the Best Emerging Filmmaker at the age of 41," commented Weber drily on collecting a cheque for C$5,000.

There was initially some confusion as to who the winner of the Rogers Award for the Best Western Canadian screenplay - the envelope with the winner had gone astray. Fortunately, two of the jurors were in the audience to clear matters up - waydowntown was the winning film.

The National Film Board of Canada Award for Best Documentary feature went to first time American filmmaker James Ronald Whitney for Just, Melvin, a film that reveals first-hand the monstrous suffering and sexual abuse suffered by his mother's family at the hands of his grandfather, called Melvin Just.

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