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Tag: Grand Jury Prize

  • Blood Brother opened the 20th Anniversary Ohio Independent Film Festival

    Blood Brother opened the 20th Anniversary Ohio Independent Film Festival

    NEW DELHI:  Award-winning documentary Blood Brother by Steve Hoover which is partly based in Tamil Nadu was the opening film on 7 November at the 20th Ohio Independent Film Festival.

     

    The film has earlier won both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the 2013 Sundance Festival in Park City as well as Audience Award at Hot Docs and Best Feature at Big Sky in Montana among other accolades.

     

    The film is about Rocky Braat a man from Pittsburgh who never really liked kids or hot weather but yet found himself immersed in the culture and heat of Tamil Nadu, caring for HIV/AIDS-afflicted orphans – and never wanting to return to the American life he once had.

     

    Hailed as “a truly beautiful film about the power of love” and as “Exuberant, heartbreaking and transcendent”, Blood Brother depicts Rocky’s devotion to the children and endurance in the face of difficulties most would never even imagine and will shake viewers.

     

    “’Blood Brother is a must-see,” said Therese Grida, Independent Pictures’ Board member and Selections Committee Chair. “The film was submitted to us in October, 2012 and has been working its way around the festival circuit since,” said Grida.

    Director Steve Hoover’s debut feature is independently-produced, which means that it was not financed by any big studio.  “This is the stuff we relish,” Grida said. Blood Brother is what independent filmmaking is all about.”

     

    The Ohio Filmfest started out as the Off-Hollywood Flick Fest in 1992 and held its first screenings in 1993 in a small store in front of Tremont. While the name eventually changed to the Ohio Independent Film Festival, twenty years later the submission process remains the same.

     

    Independent Pictures is also the proud parent of the Ohio Independent Screenplay Awards, the Film Production Training Program, the Director of Photography Workshop, Fiscal Agent Sponsorship Program and more. The mission of Independent Pictures supports emerging and independent filmmakers by giving a voice to those that might not otherwise be heard.  

    Independent Pictures and the Ohio Independent Film Festival are funded in part by grants from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture and Ohio Arts Council, and by Community Shares, a workplace giving organization that supports social justice issues.

  • Fire In The Blood nominated for Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Fest

    Fire In The Blood nominated for Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Fest

    MUMBAI: Fire in the Blood, a feature-length documentary film produced by Sparkwater India, has been selected for the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, to be held from 17 to 23 January in Park City, Utah. USA.

    It has been nominated for the coveted Grand Jury Prize. It is a unique achievement for an Indian film to be selected for this competitive section at what is considered to be the world‘s leading showcase for independent cinema.

    “Sundance is the world‘s most prestigious platform for independent and documentary films, so for our first feature-length production to be selected is a truly immense honour”, said writer, producer and director Dylan Mohan Gray.

    “This, to the best of our knowledge, is the first documentary film of international scale and scope to come out of India, and to be chosen for the World Cinema Documentary Competition and nominated for the Grand Jury Prize out of a massive pool of submissions from talented filmmakers everywhere is extremely encouraging in terms of the future prospects for this film”, he added.

    Here it must be noted that this year, Sundance received a record 12,146 submissions among which were over 4000 feature-length films. From these, just 12 films from the US and 12 international films were selected for competition.

    “Whenever anyone asks me what Fire in the Blood is all about, I always say it‘s about the crime of the century. I felt totally compelled to make this film because the historian in me first could not believe, and then could not accept that there was not a single film or even book in circulation which told this endlessly fascinating and important story,” observed Gray.

    Fire in the Blood is an intricate tale of ‘medicine, monopoly and malice. It tells the story of how Western pharmaceutical companies and governments aggressively blocked access to low-cost AIDS drugs for the countries of Africa and the global south in the years after 1996 – causing ten million or more unnecessary deaths – and the improbable group of people who decided to fight back.