At a luncheon celebrating the end of the IFP Market and Filmmaker Conference at NoHo's Chinatown restaurant this Thursday, a number of awards were given to films and filmmakers who were part of the IFP's various programs.

The winners are:

The Fledgling Fund Award for Emerging Latino Filmmakers ($10,000): Vivian Lesnik Weisman.

IFP Market Emerging Narrative Screenplay Award ($5,000, presented by Artists Public Domain): I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, Scott Teems.

IFP Market Documentary Completion Award ($5,000, presented by Artists Public Domain, and $25,000 in-kind support from Alpha Cine, Analog Digital International, Mercer Media, Showbiz Software/Media Services and Splash Studios): Waiting For Hockney, Julie Checkoway.

The Fledgling Fund Award for Socially Cosnscious Documentaries ($10,000): Promised Land, Yoruba Richen.

IFP/Current TV -- VC2 Competition (broadcast license for Current TV): In the Frame, Leah Hamilton; More Than 41 Shots, Derek Koen; Parkour NYC, Shirley Petchprapa.

And then there's the big prize (or big, at least in terms of dollar value): the Chrysler Film Project award was given to Derek Cianfrance and his Blue Valentine, a feature he's been trying to get financed for years. Chrysler and partner Silverwood Pictures awarded Cianfrance and his producers Hunting Lane Films $1 million, and at the lunch, Cianfrance promised that "every dollar would go up on screen."

Here's The Reeler on Cianfrance and the award:

"I've been working on my film for like nine-and-a-half years--hustling it, trying to get it going," he told The Reeler after the awards' ritualistic Giant Fake Check ceremony. "It's been set up like three different times, and in that time of waiting, you prepare. So I'm prepared. I'm ready to go. I feel like I've been in the gym training and I've been hitting that punching bag a million times. Now this is my shot at the title, you know?"

And how! Cianfrance said Valentine --based on the director's short Lately There Have Been Many Misunderstandings--is about the juxtaposition of a couple's happy past with its tenuous future and the prospect of a non existant future. "The physicality of youth versus young adulthood," he explained. "More of a cerebral time of being trapped inside your head. It's all about how when you're young, you have an opportunity to become anything and you make decisions and choices and become something.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/23/2006 03:11:00 PM

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