La lampe au beurre de yak triumphs at Winterthur
Chinese-French co-production La lampe au beurre de yak (photo) by Hu Wei won both the Grand Prix and Audience Award at the 17th International Short Film Festival Winterthur (November 5-10).
The Beijing-born director of the 15-minute fiction short also received CHF 12,000 as part of the Grand Prix and CHF 10,000, which come with the Audience Award. Hu Wei's film had its world premiere in the Critics' Week section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
The Promotional Award for a directing talent, worth CHF 10,000, went to Canada's Monia Chokri for fiction film An Extraordinary Person. Chokri is best known as an actress from Xavier Dolan's Les amours imaginaires and Laurence Anyways. Dolan served as editor on the film, which previously won the Leopard of Tomorrow Award at Locarno.
A special mention was given to Ebb and Flow by Gabriel Mascaro from Brazil.
The Prize for the Best Swiss Film and CHF 10,000 went to the 15-minute documentary Down on the Corner by Corina Schwingruber Ilić and Nikola Ilić, shot in a village in central Serbia.
Mexican cinematographer Quetzalli Malagón received the Swiss Cinematography Award worth CHF 11,500 (in kind) for her work on Idyllium by the director Denise Fernandes. The allegorical 14-minute fiction film is a co-roduction between Switzerland and Cuba.
The jury, which decided on both the international and Swiss competition, consisted of Sari Volanen, commissioning editor at Finnish broadcasting company YLE; US film-maker and artist Jennifer Reeder; Cuban artist Humberto Diaz; Mick Hannigan, director of the IndieCork Film Festival; and Alessandro Marcioni, head of Pardi di Domani at Locarno Film Festival.
Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur reported 16,000 admissions over the 6 days of the festival, and the next edition will take place November 4-9, 2014.
13 November 2013, by Vladan Petkovic
