
SUPERFEST XXVII WINNERS
Congratulations to this year's award winners!
The following contains a list and descriptions of the
award-winners for SUPERFEST XXVII (2007).
To browse through photos from the award-winning films, click here.
Superfest XXVII Award Winners' List
Best of Festival
- The Epidemic [51 min.] Producer: Niels Frandsen, Denmark
Excellence Awards
- No Bigger Than a Minute [52:30 min.] Producer: Steven Delano, U.S.
- Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott[26 min.] Producer: Betsy Bayha, U.S.
Achievement Awards
- Headstrong: Inside the Hidden World of Dyslexia and ADHD[26:41 min.] Producers: Chloe Sladden, Ben Foss, Steve Schecter, U.S.
- Stroke [58 min.] Producer: Katarina Peters, Germany
- The Rest of My Life: Stories of Trauma Survivors [25 min.] Producer: Gabriel Ledger, M.D., U.S.
Merit Awards
- Carmela [30 min.] Producer: Guillermo Lopez Perez, Mexico
- Darius Goes West: The Roll of His Life[92 min.] Producer: Roll With Me Productions, U.S.
- Mercury Stole My Fire [12:12 min.] Producer: Anitra Nelson, Australia
- Seeing Is Believing [13 min.] Producer: Tofik Shakhverdiev, Russia
- Symphony of Silence [22 min.] Producer: Yves J. Ma, Canada
Spirit Award
- No Bigger Than a Minute [50:15 min.] Producer: Steven Delano, U.S.
Pamela K. Walker Award
- Planet of the Blind [20 min.] Producer: Sven Werner, Luxemburg
Emerging Artist Award
- Let Us Spell It Out for You [2:36 min.] Producer: Joseph Santini, US.
Descriptions of Award Winners
(CC= CLOSED CAPTIONED; OC= OPEN CAPTIONED)
BEST OF FESTIVAL
The Epidemic
Producer: Niels Frandsen
Director: Niels Frandsen
Contact: [email protected]
Neils Frandsen, producer-director of Best of Festival
winner, The Epidemic, contracted polio at the age of
one in Denmark's last "great epidemic" in 1952. As the
filmmaker decribes it, "I do not remember, but I will
never forget." It is this paradox of uncertain clarity that
charges each frame of this remarkable work with emotional
heft and poignancy. By combing archives and applying them
masterfuly, Frandsen achieves a mesmerizing panorama of the artifacts of
past epidemics: iron lungs and braces, isolation wards,
mass inoculation days, experimental therapies and operations,
specialized seaside hospitals for endless periods of rehabilitation.
Frandsen artfully interweaves the historic materials with poetry read on
the radio on Sunday afternoons, with his family's photographs and
recollections, and with images drawn from the main memories of his own recovery period:
bending linden trees and sculpted tiles from the ceiling
of his local swimming pool. Half-history, half-dream, The Epidemic
is a fully realized memoir. Powerful, compelling and utterly enchanting.
EXCELLENCE AWARD
No Bigger Than a Minute
Producer: Steven Delano
Director: Steven Delano
Contact: [email protected]
Excellence Award winner, No Bigger Than A Minute,
also employs a well-chosen selection of historical
footage to develop a colorful portrait of how dwarves
or people of short stature have been represented on
screen since the silent film era. Producer-director
Steven Delano's personal journey for connection and
identification adds an emotional layer, but he wisely
uses it as a unifying thread only, serving up an
entertaining and irreverent overview, splicing in
cryptic but philosophical commentary by well-known
actors, including Peter Dinklage from "The Station Agent" and Meredith Eaton from "Boston Legal,"
and a short interview with "Short People" composer,
Randy Newman. In recognition of his outstanding
creativity, Steven Delano's lively look at the
imagined lives of Little People, No Bigger Than A
Minute, is the recipient of both an Excellence Award
and a Spirit Award, which is given to a work of exceptional
quality by a filmmaker with a disability.
EXCELLENCE AWARD
Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott CC
Producer: Betsy Bayha
Director: Betsy Bayha
Contact: [email protected]
Earning SUPERFEST's second Excellence Award is
San Francisco-based filmmaker Betsy Bayha's Outsider: The
Life and Art of Judith Scott, a documentary short
about a unique local artist. We meet the art first:
glorious sculptures of twisted yarn and string, layers
of color and texture, haunting shapes--undeniably
powerful art by someone with a gift. Then we meet
Judith Scott: a woman with Down Syndrome who is deaf
and does not speak. It's a huge moment delivered
gently, without the weighty brackets of art and
disability expert explanation. It's filmmaker Bayha's
insistence that we enter Scott's world without expert
guidance or judgment that makes this little film so
compelling. When we see Scott working with intense
concentration on her soaring string and yarn wrapped
found-object sculptures or watch her engaging with
friends and co-workers or involved in affectionate
play with family, we don't need to be told that it is
tragic her first 35 years were lost to
institutionalization. Ultimately, however, Bayha's
Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott is no
tragic tale, but a loving tribute to a remarkable,
tenacious woman and a celebration of her truly
spectacular creations.
ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Headstrong: Inside the Hidden World of Dyslexia and ADHD CC
Producers: Chloe Slader, Ben Foss, Steve Schecter
Director: Steve Schecter
Contact: [email protected]
Headstrong is an aptly named, well-paced documentary
featuring six Americans whose dyslexia or Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have caused
major detours in their lives. The message is clear and
powerful: if people with these conditions are given
timely assessments and the tools of awareness,
self-advocacy and contemporary technology, their
achievements can be unlimited. Along with his own
story, co-producer Ben Foss provides a
superb range of portraits, including: a 44 year old
single mother in Alabama working her way through a top
level university; a heavy-equipment operator who
recounts his historic lawsuit proving disability
discrimination; and a Northern California teenager
struggling with disclosing a disability. Headstrong:
Inside the Hidden World of Dyslexia and ADHD is one of
the first films to tell such a thorough story of the
estimated 20 million Americans with these conditions.
ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Stroke
Producer: Katarina Peters
Director: Katarina Peters
Contact: [email protected]
Stroke documents how a sudden cerebral accident
changes the life of Boris, a young musician, and his
wife, Katrina, the filmmaker. Boris and Katrina are
German, but his devastating stroke and subsequent coma
take place in New York City while visiting friends.
Filming both their New York experiences and several
years of recovery in Germany, Katrina Peters offers
viewers a rare "before and after" clarity about what
Boris is working so hard to reclaim: a high level of
musical creativity, and the physical and mental
capacities of a young man. Raw and gritty, Stroke
shines an unflinching spotlight on the sometimes
brutal realities of recreating a relationship when one
partner has undergone substantial, but involuntary,
changes. Full of surprising moments, complex emotions
and uncomfortable truths, Stroke is a profoundly
moving love story.
ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
The Rest of My Life: Stories of Trauma Survivors
Producer: Gabriel Ledger, M.D.
Director: Gabriel Ledger, M.D.
Contact: [email protected]
The Rest of My Life: Stories of Trauma Survivors is a
gripping documentary short that examines the lives of
a man and woman who rebounded from life-threatening
trauma. The man, a Chippewa sculptor, painstakingly
relearns his craft after a brutal hate crime; the woman, a yoga teacher undergoes a long
recovery from brain surgery after a car crash.
Interestingly, producer Gabriel Ledger was their
attending emergency room physician who tracked
how they were doing three years after treating them.
Using in-depth interviews and scenes from their lives,
Ledger captures their unrelenting focus on rejoining
the world, and gives us a film that honors and
celebrates life.
MERIT AWARD
Carmela OC
Producer: Guillermo Lopez Perez
Director: Guillermo Lopez Perez
Contact: [email protected]
Carmela takes us into the polluted urban sprawl that
is Mexico City, and introduces us to a polio survivor
and her adult son with Down syndrome.
Producer-director Guillermo Lopez Perez allows his
camera an unvarnished view of their lives: Carmela
cleans houses and her son helps her; they live
teetering between poverty and low-income, between
isolation and family involvement. There are some
tender moments, and some amusing ones--they are a
gutsy pair who've worked out a way to survive in a
seemingly inhospitable environment. Thanks to Perez'
unsentimental lens, Carmela is a vibrant, vivid,
slice-of-life gem.
MERIT AWARD
Darius Goes West: The Roll of His Life
Producer: Roll With Me Productions
Director: Logan Smalley
Contact: [email protected]
Darius Goes West: The Roll of His Life is a
high-spirited, coming of age saga by college student
Logan Smalley. Aided by 11 college boys, Darius Weems,
a teenager with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, embarks
on the cross-country road trip of his life.
Determined to experience both the Atlantic and Pacific
while he can still enjoy the voyage, Darius leaves his
home in the deep South for the first time in a big RV,
heading to Hollywood where he and the boys hope to
convince MTV to "pimp Darius' ride" - his motorized
wheelchair. Along the way with Darius, we see the
sights, experience the varied accessibility of
America, and revel in the rowdy camaraderie. Darius
grows up on this trip, and what a pleasure it is to
get to know him.
MERIT AWARD
Seeing Is Believing OC
Producer: Tofik Shakhverdiev
Director: Tofik Shakhverdiev
Contact: [email protected]
Seeing is Believing is Russian director Tofik
Schakhverdiev's upbeat portrait of a Moscow college
student whose blindness does not restrict his capacity
to make friends, get into contact sports, develop a
sense of humor, attract girls or become a computer
geek. We get well-chosen glimpses of Moscow, the boy's
family life, his mobility skills, his pursuit of a
career in information technology and his general ease
with life. This is one of the first Russian
documentaries to emphasize the practical ways young
people with disabilities can invent their own futures.
MERIT AWARD
Mercury Stole My Fire
Producer: Anitra Nelson
Director: Anitra Nelson
Contact: [email protected]
Mercury Stole My Fire is an artistic short in which a
woman's long struggle with environmental illness and
misdiagnosis is beautifully dramatized using mime
performance art and poetic narrative.
Producer-director Anitra Nelson uses the brilliantly
expressive performances of Penny Baron and Nick Papas
to recount how a young woman loses years of health to
an undiagnosed reaction to mercury and other toxins in
her immediate environment, then after a long-awaited
assessment and series of treatments, she slowly
recovers. An unusual and captivating film.
MERIT AWARD
Symphony of Silence OC
Producer: Yves J. Ma
Director: William Eaton
Contact: [email protected]
Symphony of Silence is a Canadian documentary about a
14-year-old award-winning Deaf poet working to create
an ASL poem that will premiere as a joint performance
with a symphony orchestra. Producer-director Yves. J.
Ma, cuts back and forth among scenes of the teenager's
creative process, her family life, preparation by the
30 piece orchestra, and all the anxieties leading up
to a major live performance. A lively and engaging look
at one young girl's extraordinary experience.
SPIRIT AWARD
No Bigger Than a Minute
See "Excellence Award"
PAMELA K. WALKER AWARD
Planet of the Blind
Producer: Sven Werner
Director: Sven Werner
Contact: [email protected]
This award was created in 2006 in honor of one of the
doyennes of disability arts, Pamela K. Walker, and is
bestowed upon an experimental work that expresses
Walker's notion of "creativity unbound." This year's
recipient is German filmmaker Sven Werner's artistic
short, Planet of the Blind, a filmic homage to writer
Stephen Kuusisto's beautifully poetic memoir. Werner
uses blurred and distorted images to create an
experience that simulates the disorientation, beauty
and sense of discovery of living with blindness
expressed in Kuusisto's best-selling book.
EMERGING ARTIST AWARD
Let Us Spell It Out for You OC
Producer: Joseph Santini
Director: Joseph Santini
Contact: [email protected]
SUPERFEST's Emerging Artist Award is designed to
encourage professional development and is given to a
talented filmmaker with potential who has not yet
received official recognition. This year's recipient
is Joseph Santini whose short film, Let Us Spell it
Out for You, is a protest in American Sign Language
about governmental funding cuts for Deaf theater.
In it, impassioned students present a pastiche of folk
songs, spirituals and original writing in ASL to
record their outrage.
For additional information on the films and producers, please contact us
at [email protected].