AWARDS/
FIPRESCI PRIZE
The Purpose of FIPRESCI Is to Support Cinema as Art
By Klaus Eder
Festivals offer an exciting opportunity to become acquainted with world cinema. As film critics, it is our interest and often our pleasure to support national cinema in all its forms and diversity, considering it an important part of national culture and identity. We do this by writing about cinema in newspapers or specialized magazines, on radio and television or the Internet. And we do it by awarding the best of them (from our point of view) the International Critics Prize (FIPRESCI Prize). This prize is established at international film festivals, and its aim is to promote film art and to particularly encourage new and young cinema. We hope (and sometimes we know) that this prize can help films to get better distribution, or distribution at all, and to win greater public attention.
FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics, has been in existence for more than 65 years. The basic purpose of the organization, which now has members in over 60 countries all over the world (among them, of course, in the U.S., the National Society of Film Critics), is to support cinema as an art and as an outstanding and autonomous means of expression. We do this for cultural, not political, reasons: Our interest is focused only on cinema itself and its artistic development. FIPRESCI also organizes conferences and seminars and is increasingly playing a part in a number of cultural activities designed to protect and encourage independent filmmaking and national cinemas. We are cooperating with the European Film Academy and are deciding, within the framework of the European Film Awards, a “Felix of the Critics. It is with pleasure that we come to the San Francisco International Film Festival. We are excited to participate in this event with its precious tradition of half a century.
Klaus Eder is the general secretary of FIPRESCI, which can be found on the Web at www.fipresci.org.
Previous Recipients
2007 A Parting Shot
2006 Half Nelson
2005 Private
2004 The Story of the Weeping Camel
FIPRESCI JURY
Kim Linekin
Kim Linekin is a film critic for CBC Radio Canada and the Metro newspaper chain. She has contributed film reviews and interviews to NOW magazine and Eye Weekly in Toronto, Fast Forward Weekly in Calgary, the Director’s Guild of Canada’s magazine, and CBC national radio. She lives in Vancouver, B.C.
George Perry
George Perry, for many years films editor of the London Sunday Times, is a well-known critic, author and broadcaster in the United Kingdom. He has written over 30 books, many on film-related subjects. His next is You Must Remember This, a history of Warner Bros. with Richard Schickel, to accompany a five-part television documentary later this year. He was president of the London Critics’ Circle from 1998 to 2000 and lives in London and Tuscany.
Marco Spagnoli
Marco Spagnoli is an international movie critic, journalist and author, and is currently senior contributing writer for Il Giornale dello Spettacolo. He has been a consultant for RomaFictionFest and codirector of the Taormina Festival.
