Grigory Libergal - Programming director, ANO “Internews”, Vice-President of Documentary Film and Television Cuild, producer Nina Zaretskaya - PhD, director of the ArtMediaCenter TV Gallery Nikita Alekseev - artist, art critic, head of the culture department at the Inostranets newspaper Max Vasilenko - TV director, cinematographer, works in documentary and feature film, music videos. Video designer, created “the look” of several TV channels Ivan Zasursky - director of the Media culture and communications laboratory of the journalistic faculty at Moscow State University. The Rambler Social Initiatives and Research Foundation president.
Prize giving ceremony at
MEDIA FORUM 2004
(26/06/2004 at the club Na Brestskoy)
The ceremony began with a few introductory words by Nina Zaretskaya, chairman of the jury. She mentioned the diversity of competition program and the lively debates it aroused while distributing prizes. Some works were specifically mentioned, among them “Baggage” by Eliza Fernbach,
“Wet Chicken” by Galina Myznikova and Sergei Provorov, “To Mom”
by Dusan Gligorov in the Cinema/TV nomination.
In the Internet/multimedia nomination
Borjana Ventzislavova and Miroslav Nicic’s “Luis, I Think!” was specially mentioned. Nina Zaretskaya went on to remark upon the scarcity of relevant works in the latter nomination, which would emphasis the inherent qualities of Internet as a medium, namely,its open, highly ideological nature.
The first prize in the nomination
Internet/multimedia went to Diego Bonilla’s ( Mexico) “A Space of Time”, an internet quest with an ironical view on commercialization of everyday life in all its manifestations. The TV advertisements are replaced here by videos on real life with real people as actors. The work strongly protests against advertisement’s suppression of individuality.
The Cinema/TV nomination was introduced by
Kirill Razlogov, the art director of the Moscow International Film Festival. He said that the nomination’s name was not given in error, as video artists, who work in VHS and DVD format still are adapting the language of cinema for their purposes. The special prize of the Moscow International Film Festival proper was given to Shelly Silver’s (USA) “Suicide” as an example of real cinema, a straight-from-life- film, yet possessing all characteristics of cinematographic art made by a renowned artist.
The third prize in the Cinema/TV nomination was awarded to Evan Siebens (SEVEN; Canada) for the work
“image/Word.not_a_pipe”. The work was introduced by Nikita Alekseev, who remarked on its Magrittean allusions and the subtle interplay of signifier/signified and dancer/dance.
The second prize was awarded to Viacheslav Mizin and Alexander Shaburov’s ("The Blue Noses"; Russia) “Two Against the Russian Mafia”. Nina Zaretskaya, presenting the grenade to Alexander Shaburov, said she was very glad the prize is staying in Russia, possibly to be used in the fight against the mafia and described the work as a lo-tech skit, “our answer’ to commercial TV and mass media. Alexander Shaburov, who has just arrived from Kiev, expressed his gratitude, telling jokes about his stay in Ukraine and self-defining the Blue Noses as provincial by intent.
The first prize, awarded to Bjorn Melhus’s “The Oral Fixation”, was presented by Max Vasilenko. He stated that with most works using TV shows as parody material there is always a danger of creating something of an equally poor quality, but “The Oral Fixation” managed to use “such garbage” with the best possible result, choosing a particular line – an explicit parody of day talk shows. The host here became a priest with a monk-like audience. Max Vasilenko also remarked on the versatile acting by the author, both in this work and in the “Auto Center Drive”, which was also screened at the Media Forum, and on the subtle quality of his humour.
