Winners Announced for FOCAL International Awards

LONDON, May 22: FOCAL
International, the trade body representing members of the global footage
industry, has unveiled the winners of the fifth FOCAL International Awards,
which were held in association with AP Archive.

The judging panel, led by
Jerry Kuehl, a previous FOCAL Lifetime Achievement Awards winner and veteran
history producer, chose winners from 200 submissions from 12 countries. These awards, spanning 16 categories, recognize
productions that have used library archive and stock footage in an innovative
way, and acknowledge the work of key services involved with preservation and
restoration, as well as those archives and individuals who have served the
industry well. The 2008 awards and keynote speech were presented by British
filmmaker Lord Puttnam, FOCAL International’s chair of patrons.

The BBC scooped up three
awards for Best Use of Footage across the factual, arts and sports categories
for Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain, BBC Music Entertainment’s Brasil, Brasil and BBC Birmingham’s Nation on
Film—Caribbean Cricket,
respectively.

French documentary makers
Kuiv Productions and Point du Jour scored the other two winning spots in the
Best Use of Footage in a Factual Production category, with Being Jewish in
France (Etre Juif en France) and The Rape of Nanking, respectively. Italy was also represented, with
MIR Cinematografica’s We Want Roses Too (Vogliamo Anche le Rose)
winning the award for Best Use of
Footage in a Feature-Length Production. The program was produced entirely with
archive footage from the ’60s and ’70s.

Pett TV’s Memoirs of a
Cigarette, which marked the
introduction of the smoking ban in public places in the U.K, earned the prize
for Best Use of Footage in an Entertainment Production. In the Best Use of
Footage in an Advertisement category, Hexstatic’s Diesel 78: Learn Disco
Dance won out. Further highlights
included Vera Productions scooping up the award for Best Use of Footage in a
Short Production for Don't Watch That, Watch This, which also helped towards earning the Jane Mercer
Footage Researcher of the Year Award for Vera’s regular archive specialist, Val
Evans.

BFI National Archive’s Documentary
Centenaries notched up a win in
the Restoration and Preservation category, while the National Archive’s Focus on Film won an award for its
use of web-based electronic media in which film can be investigated and clips
edited in a free-to-access interactive learning experience.

Meanwhile, AP Archive
received the popular vote from FOCAL International members to become Footage
Library of the Year, and this year’s annual Lifetime Achievement Award went to
Elizabeth Klinck. During the past 25 years, Klinck has worked as a producer,
researcher and clearance specialist on numerous award-winning Canadian,
American and British documentary films. She is a member of the FOCAL
International Executive, and is on the boards of the Audio Visual Trust of
Canada, History Makers and the Yorkton Short Film and Video Festival. She is
also the founding chairperson of the Visual Researchers’ Society of Canada.

—By Irene Lew