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Santa Fe International Film Festival 2022 Winners Include ‘Scarborough’, Julian Rubinstein Docu ‘The Holly’

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The 14th Annual Santa Fe International Film Festival has announced its juried award winners for the event which has run from Oct. 19-23.

More than 100 filmmakers have traveled to the Land of Enchantment state to show off their cinematic wares.

Says SFiFF Artistic Director Jacques Paisner, “We play strange movies, small movies and foreign films, and the audience is keen on a chance to see something they wouldn’t otherwise experience.”

Receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award tonight is Qatsi trilogy filmmaker Godfrey Reggio who is here with his new documentary, scored by longtime collaborator Phillip Glass and edited by Jon Kane, Once Within a Time. The pic is billed as a “fantasy of the real with themes of climate change and the perils of technology, and their effects on future generations. It is geared towards children—not the children of the future, children are the future. It is their clarion call to resistance and a call to hope. It asks the evocative question, which age is this, the sunset or the dawn?”

On Sunday night, Twilight filmmaker Catherine Hardwicke is receiving the festival’s visionary award. As part of the fest, she’s holding an actor workshop with local actors today. She recently world premiered her latest movie, Prisoner’s Daughter, at TIFF. Hardwicke is directing three short scenes before an audience, inspired by paintings from three local Santa Fe painters. The experience is to convey what it’s like to prep a movie.

Games of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin is a big supporter of the festival with his Jean Cocteau Cinema a major venue that programs titles. He was on hand on Wednesday night to show off his new feature short production, Night of the Cooters, directed by Vincent D’Onofrio, which is part of a new short film anthology he’s making.

Icelandic Media Installation Artist and Santa Fe resident Steina Vasulka was bestowed with the fest’s Icon Award.

Below are the SFiFF’s award honorees:

Best Narrative Feature presented by Panavision and Light Iron

Scarborough directed by Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson
Logline: The film adaptation of the award-winning novel by Catherine Hernandez. Over the course of a school year, 3 kids in a low-income neighbourhood find community and friendship at a drop-in reading program.

Best Documentary Feature

The Holly directed by Julian Rubinstein
Logline: Docu goes deep inside a gentrifying community in Denver, where a shooting case involving an activist becomes a window into the political machinations of urban development and the city’s gang activity.

Honorable Mention Documentary Feature

The Thief Collector directed by Allison Otto
Logline: In 1985, Willem de Kooning’s Woman-Ochre, one of the most valuable paintings of the 20th century, was cut from its frame at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. 32 years later, the painting was found hanging in a New Mexico home.

Best New Mexico Narrative Feature

Jethica directed by Pete Ohs
Logline: When Jessica’s stalker surprises her in New Mexico, she must seek help from beyond the grave to get rid of him for good.

Best New Mexico Documentary Feature

Acting Like Nothing is Wrong directed by Jane Rosemont
Logline: Docu follows Shameless character actor Jim Hoffmaster and his struggles professionally and personally. The docu explores how he navigates life without a stable upbringing.

Best Narrative Short presented by Panavision and Light Iron

Endless Sea directed by Sam Shainberg

Best International Narrative Short

Stinkfrucht (Taste of Home) directed by Âni Võ

Best Documentary Short

Freedom Swimmer directed by Olivia Martin-McGuire
Logline: A hybrid, poetic documentary interweaving hand-drawn animation and film, which tells the story of a grandfather’s perilous swim from China to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution.

Best Animation Short

The Record directed by Jonathan Laskar
Logline: A traveller gives an antiques dealer a magic vinyl record: “It reads your mind and plays your lost memories”. Obsessed by this endless record, he listens to it again and again.

Best Experimental Short

Your Houseplants Are Screaming directed by Benjamin Roberds
Logline: Human houseplants are held captive by a giant plant creature. Confined to their pots, the houseplants struggle to comprehend the horror of being shelf ornaments in a grotesque hell house made of flesh, meat, muscle and bone.

Best New Mexico Short

The Boy Who Couldn’t Feel Pain directed by Eugen Merher

By Anthony D'Alessandro