Fifty years ago, Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali received the first Golden Gate Award for Best Film, establishing the San Francisco International Film Festival’s tradition of recognizing and promoting excellence in international and independent filmmaking. Since 1957, the Golden Gate Awards have continued to recognize and honor filmmakers
of the highest caliber. For five decades, the competition has introduced Bay Area audiences to illustrious filmmakers who have transformed the medium with their award-winning documentary features and animated, narrative, experimental and documentary shorts.
Selected from a wide array of entries, these films truly represent the best of the international filmmaking community. Internationally renowned filmmakers who have received Golden Gate Awards include Roberto Rossellini (Il General Della Rovere, 1959), Roman Polanski (Two Men and a Wardrobe, 1958) and Shirley Clarke (Skyscraper, 1959), while local luminaries such as Marlon Riggs (multiple awards including Tongues Untied, 1990), Sam Green (The Weather Underground, 2002) and Stanley Nelson (multiple awards including Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, 2006) also have been awarded for their brilliant efforts.
The prestige of the Golden Gate Awards is in large part due to the participation and expertise of the members of our vital and dedicated Bay Area film and video
community. Each year, these filmmakers, journalists, exhibitors, curators and academics devote hours of their time to screening hundreds of entries. Every submission is
evaluated by prescreening committees and panels who are responsible for nominating the Official Selections. Three juries will view these works at the Festival and bestow
Golden Gate Awards on films in 14 categories.
The Golden Gate Awards are one way we fulfill the important Festival goals of increasing attention and resources given to independent filmmakers, and supporting
the development of international cinema. We invite you to join us in celebrating the accomplishments of every winner from the past 50 years as we look ahead to another half-century of Golden Gate excellence.
SFIFF 2006 Golden Gate Award Winners
Best Documentary Feature
Workingman’s Death
Michael Glawogger (Austria)
Best Bay Area Documentary Feature
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
Stanley Nelson (USA)
Best Documentary Short
Lot 63, Grave 3
Sam Green (USA)
Best Bay Area Documentary Short
Phoenix Dance
Karina Epperlein (USA)
Best Narrative Short
Love at 4 PM
Sebastián Alfie (Spain)
Best Bay Area Non-Documentary Short
Lost & Found
Natalija Vekic (USA)
Best Animated Short
At the Quinte Hotel
Bruce Alcock (Canada)
Best New Visions Work
Site-Specific: Las Vegas 05
Olivo Barbieri (Canada/Italy)
Best Youth Work
Slip of the Tongue
Karen Lum (USA)
Best Work for Kids And Families
Sirah
Cristine Spindler (USA)
Best Television Narrative Long Form
Seeds of Doubt
Samir Nasr (Germany)
Best Television Narrative Short Form
Bing Can Sing
Elanna Allen (USA)
Best Television Documentary Long Form
They Chose China
Shui-Bo Wang (Canada/France)
Best Television Documentary Short Form
Thornton Dial
Celia Carey (USA)
Official Selections 2007
DOCUMENTARY FEATURES
Audience of One (Bay Area)
Michael Jacobs, USA
Ghosts of Cité Soleil
Asger Leth, Denmark
The Key of G (Bay Area)
Robert Arnold, USA
The Last Days of Yasser Arafat
Sherine Salama, Australia
The Monastery
Pernille Rose Grønkjaer, Denmark
Orange Revolution
Steve York, USA
The Rape of Europa (Bay Area)
Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, Nicole Newnham, USA
Souvenirs
Shahar Cohen, Halil Efrat, Israel
The Third Monday in October
Vanessa Roth, USA
Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project
Jack Youngelson, Peter Sutherland, USA
A Walk to Beautiful
Mary Olive Smith, Ethiopia/USA
DOCUMENTARY SHORT
The Days and The Hours (Bay Area)
Kristine Samuelson, John Haptas, USA
The Fighting Cholitas
Mariam Jobrani, USA
Loss
Kristen Nutile, USA
Making the Balkans Erotic
Richard C. Haber, USA/Serbia
Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott (Bay Area)
Betsy Bayha, USA
Sari’s Mother
James Longley, USA
NARRATIVE SHORT
Greyhounds (Bay Area)
Kelilyn Mohr McKeever, USA
The Last Dog in Rwanda
Jens Assur, Sweden
The Substitute
Andrea Jublin, Italy
The Tube with a Hat
Radu Jude, Romania
Waiting for Yesterday
Julien Lecat, Sylvain Pioutaz, France
We Are Everywhere
Sofía Pérez Suinaga, Mexico
Woman and Gramophone
Johannes Nilsson, Ola Simonsson, Sweden
ANIMATE D SHORT
The Danish Poet
Torill Kove, Norway
Loom (Bay Area)
Scott Kravitz, USA
The Memories of Dogs
Simone Massi, Italy
Never Like the First Time!
Jonas Odell, Sweden
Sheep
Zeina Abirached, France
Tyger
Guilherme Marcondas, Brazil
NEW VISIONS
Breath on the Mirror (Bay Area)
Vanessa Woods, Sarah Friedland, USA
Dear Bill Gates
Sarah J. Christman, USA
The Denazification of MH (Bay Area)
James Hong, USA
The General Returns from One Place to Another
Michael Robinson, USA
Harachov
Matt Hulse, Joost van Veen, Netherlands
The Highwater Trilogy
Bill Morrison, USA
Ignorance Before Malice (Bay Area)
Sandra Davis, USA
Muse of Cinema (Bay Area)
Kerry Laitala, USA
WATERCOLOR AT NIGHT MONTAGE No. 7 (Bay Area)
Paul Clipson, USA
When We Are Big
Eveline Ketterings, Netherlands
WORKS FOR KIDS AND FAMILIES
Dorme
Sylvia Binsfield, USA
The Fan and the Flower
Bill Plympton, USA
Knuffle Bunny
Maciek Albrecht, USA
Ricochet
V. Sarah Gurevick, France
Ride of the Mergansers
Steve Furman, USA
YOUTH WORKS
A Conversation Between Two Miserable People
in Dr. Tourin’s Waiting Room (Bay Area)
Melissa Wee, USA
Desert (Bay Area)
Max Strebel, Ashlyn Perri, USA
Drive
Joseph Procopio, Canada
The Final Frontier: Explorers or Warriors?
Stephen Sotor, Trace Gaynor, USA
Focus (Bay Area)
Edward Elliott, USA
Streetball (Bay Area)
Brian McArthur, USA
The Whole World Was Watching
Charlotte Burger, USA
TELEVISION DOCUMENTARY LONG FORM
My Father the Turk
Marcus Vetter, Ariane Riecker, Germany
TELEVISION DOCUMENTARY SHORT FORM
Josephine Baker: Black Diva in a White Man’s World
Annette van Wangenheim, Germany
TELEVISION NARRATIVE LONG FORM
Rage
Züli Aladag, Germany
TELEVISION NARRATIVE SHORT FORM
Capelito
Rodolfo Pastor, Spain
Documentary Feature Jury
Cara Mertes
Cara Mertes is a longtime advocate for independent media artists and an award-winning filmmaker, programmer, teacher and writer whose work has been featured widely in museums, festivals and on PBS. She currently is the director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program. Previously, Mertes was executive director of American Documentary, Inc. and executive producer of P.O.V., PBS’s critically acclaimed
showcase for independent nonfiction film. She has won five Emmy awards and been nominated for three Academy Awards.
Juror to be announced
Karel Och
Karel Och was born in 1974 in the Czech Republic and studied at Charles University in Prague. Since 2001, he has worked for the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival as a
programmer and a member of the selection committee. In 2005, he curated the Czech Docs Showcase 2000–2004 program for the Chicago International Documentary Festival.
He is a member of FIPRESCI International Federation of Film Critics and has published articles in Cinepur, Cinema and Iluminace.
Documentary Short Jury
Sam Green
San Francisco–based documentarian Sam Green’s film The Weather Underground was nominated for an Academy Award and included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Green
received a master’s in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied with Marlon Riggs. His other award-winning documentaries include lot 63,
grave c, The Rainbow Man/John 3:16, N-Judah 5:30
and Pie Fight ’69.
Carrie Lozano
Carrie Lozano is a documentary filmmaker who recently produced and directed the award-winning film Reporter Zero. She also produced the Academy Award–nominated
documentary The Weather Underground.
Sapana Sakya
Sapana Sakya produced and directed the award-winning documentary Daughters of Everest. Her other works include portraits of rarely filmed Asian American communities. Sapana was born in Nepal, grew up in Bangkok and attended college in the Midwest and the Bay Area. She currently is the media fund director of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM).
Non-Documentary Short Jury
Tim Boxell
Known for his twisted sense of humor, Tim Boxell directed more than 100 short films and commercials for Colossal Pictures. He also is the writer and director of the feature films Aberration, Chasing Destiny and Valley of the Heart’s Delight.
Pam Grady
East Bay native Pam Grady came to San Francisco to study film, and stayed to write about it. A former editor at Reel.com, she is a freelance writer who contributes to Reel.
com, FilmStew, the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications.
Steven Jenkins
Steven Jenkins is a longtime member of the Bay Area film community, having served as executive director of San Francisco Cinematheque, associate director of Frameline and education programmer of Film Arts Foundation. He has served as a curator and juror at film festivals in the U.S. and Asia, and is the author of City Slivers and Fresh Kills: The Films of Gordon Matta-Clark.