Winners Announced for Japan Prize

TOKYO, October 30: NHK today announced the winners for the
33rd Japan Prize, honoring achievements in educational programming,
with Braindamadj’d…Take II from Apartment
11 Productions in Canada taking the top Grand Prix prize out of 189 titles
submitted.

The documentary Braindamadj’d…Take II describes the recovery, over a period of ten years,
of a young producer, Paul Nadler, who suffered severe brain damage in a traffic
accident while traveling in Cairo in 1994. The jurors described the special as
“Original. Creative. Stimulating. Powerful.”

In the early education category, the winner was The Nutty
Boy: The Boy With A Pan On The Head, from Associacao
de Comunicacao Educativa Roquette Pinto in Brazil. The animation focuses on a
10-year-old boy who, while doing research for his autobiography, finds an old
photograph of himself wearing a pan on his head, leading him to further explore
photos and toys from his past.

Canada’s Omni Film Productions took the youth education
category for Make Some Noise: Activism Is Everywhere, produced for CBC. The series focuses on young
people who are trying to change the world.

Open Frame: That Year That Day, from Leoarts Communication in India, was awarded the prize in the
issues in education category. It interviews six individuals who were sexually
assaulted as children.

The web division received 23 entries this year. The prize
went to the website A Place of Our Own/Los Ninos en Su Casa (www.aplaceofourown.org), produced by
KCET in Los Angeles. The website is targeted to kids up till the age of 5, and
is available in English and Spanish.

The Japan Prize also offers up $8,000 for new projects.
Sixty-eight proposals were received. The winning entry was One Teacher
Wonder by Harkara Media in India, looking
an Indian school where one teacher is in charge of 150 students, who educate
each other and prepare their own meals.