AWARDS/
GOLDEN GATE AWARDS
In 1957, the Golden Gate Awards were established to augment the San Francisco International Film Festival’s commitment to recognizing and promoting excellence in independent and world cinema. Fifty-one years later, the Golden Gate Awards continue to recognize and honor filmmakers of the highest caliber. For over five decades, the competition has introduced Bay Area audiences to illustrious filmmakers who have transformed the medium with their award-winning documentary features and animated, narrative, experimental and documentary short films.
Selected from a wide array of entries, these films truly represent the best of the international filmmaking community. Some past recipients of the award include Satyajit Ray, Roberto Rossellini, Roman Polanski and Shirley Clarke, while local luminaries such as Marlon Riggs, Sam Green and Stanley Nelson also have been awarded for their brilliant efforts.
The prestige of the Golden Gate Awards is distinguished in large part due to the participation and expertise of the members of our vital and dedicated Bay Area film and video community. Each year, these filmmakers, journalists, exhibitors, curators and academics devote hours of their time to screen hundreds of entries. Each submission is evaluated by prescreening committees and panels who are responsible for nominating the Official Selections. Three juries will view these works at the Festival and bestow Golden Gate Awards on films in 14 categories.
The Golden Gate Awards are one way we fulfill an important Festival function: to increase attention and resources given to independent filmmakers, and to support the development of international cinema. We invite you to join us in celebrating the accomplishments of every winner from the past 51 years as we look ahead to the next half-century of Golden Gate excellence.
SFIFF 2007 Golden Gate Award Winners
Documentary Feature
Souvenirs
Shahar Cohen and Halil Efrat (Israel)
Bay Area Documentary Feature
The Key of G
Robert Arnold (USA)
Documentary Short
Sari’s Mother
James Longley (USA)
Bay Area Documentary Short
Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott
Betsy Bayha (USA)
Narrative Short
The Tube with a Hat
Radu Jude (Romania)
Bay Area Non-Documentary Short
Muse of Cinema
Kerry Laitala (USA)
Animated Short
Never Like the First Time!
Jonas Odell (Sweden, 2006)
New Visions
Dear Bill Gates
Sarah J. Christman (USA)
Work for Kids and Families
The Fan and the Flower
Bill Plympton (USA)
Youth Work
Focus
Edward Elliott (USA)
TV Documentary Long Form
My Father the Turk
Marcus Vetter, Ariane Riecker (Germany)
TV Documentary Short Form
Josephine Baker: Black Diva in a White Man’s World
Annette von Wangenheim (Germany)
TV Narrative Long Form
Rage
Züli Aladag (Germany)
TV Narrative Short Form
Capelito
Rodolfo Pastor (Spain)
Official Selections 2008
DOCUMENTARY FEATURES
Ask Not (Bay Area)
Johnny Symons, USA
Children of the Sun
Ran Tal, Israel
Dust
Hartmut Bitomsky, Germany
The English Surgeon
Geoffrey Smith, UK
Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans (Bay Area)
Dawn Logsdon, USA
Forbidden Lie$
Anna Broinowski, Australia
A Journey with Peter Sellars
Mark Kidel, France
The Judge and the General (Bay Area)
Elizabeth Farnsworth, Patricio Lanfranco, USA
Recycle
Mahmoud al Massad, Jordan
Secrecy
Peter Galison, Robb Moss, USA
Up the Yangtze
Yung Chang, Canada
DOCUMENTARY SHORT
La Corona
Amanda Micheli, Isabel Vega, USA
Death Valley Superstar
Michael Yaroshevsky, Canada
The Ladies
C.A. Voros, USA
Shelf Life (Bay Area)
Don Bernier, USA
Tellin It Like It Is: The Work of Elouise Westbrook (Bay Area)
Kevin Gordon, USA
NARRATIVE SHORT
Alexandra
Radu Jude, Romania
Coffee and Allah
Sima Urale, New Zealand
The Grand Inquisitor (Bay Area)
Eddie Muller, USA
On the Assassination of the President (Bay Area)
Adam Keker, USA
The Second Line
John Magury, USA
Since You’ve Been Ong (Bay Area)
Frank Yeean Chan, USA
Thick Skinned
Jean-Bernard Marlin, Benoit Rambourg, France
WING, the fish that talked back
Ricky Rijneke, Netherlands
ANIMATED SHORT
Madame Tutli-Putli
Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski, Canada
Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker
Stefan Mueller, Germany
The Pearce Sisters
Luis Cook, UK
Shaun the Sheep: Still Life
Richard Goleszowski, UK
Yours Truly
Osbert Parker, UK
NEW VISIONS
Cabinet (Bay Area)
Todd Herman, USA
Energy!
Thorsten Fleisch, Germany
Number One
Leighton Pierce, USA
Observando el Cielo
Jeanne Liotta, USA
WORKS FOR KIDS AND FAMILIES
The Goat That Ate Time
Lucinda Schreiber, Australia
The Librarian from the Black Lagoon
Galen Fott, USA
My Happy End
Milen Vitanov, Germany
Saint Feast Day
Annelaure Daffis, Leo Marchand, France
When I Grow Up (Bay Area)
Michelle R. Meeker, USA
YOUTH WORKS
10 Italian Lessons (Bay Area)
Alexandra Adams, USA
Change the Nation (Bay Area)
Ruben Palomares, USA
Five Steps to the Beautiful Emotional Highs and Lows of the Fairy Tale Romance (Bay Area)
Melissa Wee, USA
Playing with the Other Tigers
Zachary Lennon-Simon, USA
Writing History with Lightning: The Triumph & Tragedy of America’s First Blockbuster
Charlotte Burger, USA
TELEVISION DOCUMENTARY LONG FORM
Calavera Highway
Renee Tajima-Peña
TELEVISION DOCUMENTARY SHORT FORM
The Mystery of the Second Painting
Muriel Edelstein, France
TELEVISION NARRATIVE LONG FORM
Operation Turquoise
Alain Tasma, France
Documentary Feature Jury
Rob Epstein is a two-time Academy Award–winning director whose feature documentaries include Word Is Out, The Times of Harvey Milk, Where Are We?, Common Threads, The Celluloid Closet, and Paragraph 175. He is currently in pre-production on the feature film Howl, about Allen Ginsberg’s groundbreaking 1955 poem and the obscenity trial that resulted. Epstein is an active member of the Director’s Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Chi-hui Yang is the director of the San Francisco International Asian
American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), a presentation of the Center for Asian
American Media and the nation’s largest showcase for Asian American and Asian cinema. Yang has been a guest curator at festivals internationally, including the Seattle International Film Festival and the Barcelona Asian Film Festival. He also writes on politics and culture for such publications as Giant Robot and Hyphen, and lectures on Asian American cinema.
Juror to be announced
Documentary Short Jury
Robert Arnold is a filmmaker living in San Francisco. His most recent film, The Key of G, won SFIFF’s Golden Gate Award for Best Bay Area Documentary in 2007 and was broadcast nationally on PBS. He studied film production at San Francisco State University and has a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. In addition to making his own films, he works for others as a director of photography and as an editor.
Michael Read is the director of publications at San Francisco’s Film Arts Foundation, the country’s largest regional organization of independent producers. He is the editor of Film Arts, a seminal magazine representing the diverse voices of the independent film community on the West Coast and nationally.
Melinda Stone, Ph.D., is the director of film studies at the University of San Francisco and codirector of Stonelake Farm (stonelakefarm.com), a small off-the-grid homestead in Northern California that hosts artists and interns from around the world. Check out her latest project at howtohomestead.org.
Non-Documentary Short Jury
Critic and journalist Michael Fox has covered the Bay Area film scene since 1987. He contributes to SF Weekly, J., SF360, KQED.org and other outlets. Fox curates and hosts the Friday night CinemaLit series at the Mechanics’ Institute, and also teaches documentary courses at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State. He is a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle.
With nearly 30 years of service to the independent media field, Gail Silva has garnered a reputation as midwife to countless film projects as well as a maverick consultant, curator and gadfly to the establishment. Gail was the primary force behind Film Arts Foundation for over 25 years, first as codirector, then executive director and finally president.
Natalija Vekic is a San Francisco-based filmmaker whose films have screened at the Ann Arbor, Frameline, New York Underground and Mill Valley festivals. A recipient of the Princess Grace Award for film and a San Francisco Individual Arts Commission Grant, she won a Golden Gate Award at SFIFF for her short, Lost & Found. She is currently writing a feature length film script, Solace, which combines documentary and narrative elements to explore the effects of war on women.
