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CINEVEGAS ANNOUNCES WINNERS FOR 11th ANNUAL FESTIVAL
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Easier with Practice Receives Grand Jury Prize
Godspeed and Etienne! Receive Special Jury Awards
All In: The Poker Movie Awarded Documentary Jury Award
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo Wins Special Documentary Jury Award
The Revenant receives Dramatic Audience Award and
Documentary Audience Award awarded to Winnebago Man
Las Vegas, NV (June 15, 2009) – The 11th Annual CineVegas Film Festival announced its jury award winners at the CineVegas Awards Reception last night, where Jon Voight, Willem Dafoe, George and Mike Kuchar, Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago were also honored.
Festival winners included Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s Easier with Practice, which received the Grand Jury Prize; Godspeed was acknowledged with an Exceptional Artistic Achievement Award for Cory Knauf, Joseph McKelheer and Robert Saitzyk; and Jeff Mizushima with the Filmmaker to Watch Award for his film Etienne!
Additionally, the Grand Jury Prize for Pioneer Documentaries was awarded to Douglas Tirola’s All In: The Poker Movie, with a Special Jury Award for Artistic Vision going to Jessica Oreck’s Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo.
Kerry Prior’s The Revenant won the audience award for best narrative, and Ben Steinbauer’s Winnebago Man won the audience award for best documentary.
Feature Jury Competition
This year’s feature jury was presided over by indieWIRE editor-in-chief and co-founder Eugene Hernandez, writer/director Jody Hill, The Associated Press film critic Christy Lemire and film journalist Glenn Whipp.
The Grand Jury Prize went to Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s Easier With Practice. While on a road trip to promote his unpublished novel, Davy Mitchell finds himself falling for a mysterious phone sex caller.
An Exceptional Artistic Achievement Award was given to Cory Knauf for Godspeed. Directed by Saitzyk, Godspeed is an intense, dramatic thriller set in the lingering light of the Alaskan midnight sun.
Jeff Mizushima was also given a Filmmaker to Watch Award for his film Etienne! After Richard's best and only friend, a dwarf hamster named Etienne, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he decides to take his pocket pet on a bicycle road trip up the California coast to show it the world before he must put it to sleep.
Documentary Jury Competition
Producer/Director Heather Rae, Senior Editor of Features for Variety Sharon Swart and Bob Tourtellotte, editor-in-charge for entertainment for Reuters news service, made up the Pioneer Documentaries Jury.
The Documentary Jury Award went to Douglas Tirola’s All In: The Poker Movie, which tells the story of poker focusing on why one of our nation’s oldest games has had a renaissance in the past decade and why for so many people poker is a way to chase the American Dream.
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, directed by Jessica Oreck, was awarded with a Special Documentary Jury Prize for Artistic Vision. Working backwards through history, Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo solves the mystery of the development of Japan’s cultural obsession with bugs.
Shorts Jury
Emily Doe, associate editor/producer for Wholphin, Denver Film Society Festival Director Britta Erickson and film and culture writer Stu VanAirsdale made up this year’s shorts jury.
Destin Daniel’s Short Term 12 received the CineVegas Short Film Jury Prize while Justin Nowell’s Acting for the Camera won a special Grand Jury Prize in Directing. The jury also acknowledged Markus Kirschner’s Communion with the CineVegas Nevada Short Film Jury Prize.
Audience Awards
CineVegas audiences chose The Revenant to receive the CineVegas Dramatic Audience Award, and Winnebago Man to receive the CineVegas Documentary Audience Award.
The Revenant is a satirical treatise on friendship, regret, and the nature of evil under the guise of a rootin'-tootin' vampire buddy movie.
Jack Rebney’s outrageously funny outtakes from a Winnebago sales video became an underground phenomenon and made him an Internet superstar. In Winnebago Man, filmmaker Ben Steinbauer sets out to find him.
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WINNERS FOR 11th ANNUAL FESTIVAL
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Easier with Practice
(USA, 2009)
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Director: Kyle Patrick Alvarez
Cast: Brian Geraghty, Kel O’Neill, Marguerite Moreau, Jeanette Brox, Jenna Gavigan
While on a road trip to promote his unpublished novel, Davy Mitchell finds himself falling for a mysterious phone sex caller.
Easier with Practice screens at Cinevegas Friday June 12th at 3.30pm and Saturday June 13th at 1pm
at the Brendan Theatres, Palms Hotel
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Godspeed
(USA, 2009)
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Director: Robert Saitzyk
Cast: Joseph McKelheer, Cory Knauf, Courtney Halverson, Ed Lauter, Jesse Ward, Hallock Beals
GODSPEED is an intense, dramatic thriller set in the sublime light of Alaska’s midnight sun. Robert Saitzyk directs with adeptness and precision, turning the familiar framework of the revenge genre into a taut and complicated portrayal of a man’s descent into nightmare.
Charlie Shepard (Joseph McKelheer) is a modern-day faith healer, a man who claims that if you let go and believe, then his power to heal is very real indeed. Charlie ekes out a blue-collar existence from his “healing” sessions to support his wife Rebecca (Jessie Ward) and young son (Ben Loosli). But just as his business starts to fail and an old drinking habit comes back to haunt him his family is brutally murdered by unknown assailants for seemingly no reason.
Six months later, Charlie has abandoned his former life and moves through the summer days without darkness more like a ghost than a man. But then a mysterious young girl named Sarah (Courtney Halverson) shows up in town, looking for Charlie. She will become the link to his family’s murder and lead him straight to the murderers themselves, one of whom is her own brother, Luke (Cory Knauf) . Sarah’s reasons are far from insidious, but just the opposite, as she hopes to save her own brother from a deep darkness while at the same time helping to redeem Charlie from his own grief and loss of faith. Unfortunately for Sarah, bringing the two together only leads to tragic, violent consequences for all.
Buoyed by Joseph McKelheer’s riveting performance and captured in luscious and sensual cinematography, GODSPEED explores faith, grief, and the violent nature that may exist in all of us — where man is as much at the mercy of his own mind as he is at the mercy of the vast Alaskan landscape.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Robert Saitzyk’s first feature film, After the Flood, was awarded the Grand Prize for Best Director at the 2002 Rhode Island International Film Festival. Robert’s second feature film, White of Winter, which starred Anchorage local Brett Roberts, was an official selection to the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. Robert is also a producer, editor, and post production supervisor having produced and edited various music videos and live concert clips for country stars Keith Urban, Deana Carter, and Dierks Bentley.
GODSPEED is Robert’s third feature film.
Godspeed screens at Cinevegas Sat, Jun 13th 6:00 PM, Sun, Jun 14th 3:00 PM at the Brendan Theatres, Palms Hotel
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Godspeed
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about CineVegas
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The CineVegas Film Festival
is a platform for artists and art lovers who are drawn to the edge. Held amidst the unique, unpredictable and intoxicating environment that is Las Vegas, the CineVegas Film Festival pushes the boundaries of cinema. The Festival annually presents work by innovative, uninhibited, and renegade artists to an audience of local and national film lovers, journalists, and film industry representatives.
Robin Greenspun serves as the festival’s President, Trevor Groth serves as Artistic Director and Dennis Hopper serves as the Chairman of the Creative Advisory Board.
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