IWM Film Festival Awards Ceremony, Tuesday 2 February 2010

Shivaun and I went off to the Imperial War Museum in London yesterday for the film festival awards as our film, Surviving History, had won the audience poll. The directors, Jesse and Daniel, were unable to make it, so we were representing the team. It was really cool to be in the museum after hours, though we had got there early. I went off to explore the Children's War exhibition and it was really really good. I actually felt teary looking at some of the mementoes a few children on the kindertransport had carried with them from Germany to the UK. Imagine if all you had to remind you of your family and of your previous life was a pen? One of the exhibits was a beautiful pen overlaid with mother of pearl and it had an inscription. It was beautiful, but still... ;(

Anyway, as the event was after hours (the museum closes at 6pm), we had time to wander about before we had to head back to the main entrance and wait there. At about 6.30pm we headed to the cinema where we watched other films that had been submitted to the festival.

Above: The evening's program. We were really surprised to see that 'Surviving History' had been scheduled as the first film to be screened, and in its entirety too - all 28 mins of it! We had expected to see short clips of all the films instead.

The cinema at IWM.

The Director General of the War Museum, Diane Lees, kicked off the night with a welcome speech...

 Followed by Richard Melman, Channel Director for History and Bio channels, introducing 'Surviving History'...

  

After which he presented Shivaun with the award.

 

The award was a really nice (and heavy) crystal bowl with an inscription on it.

 

How cool is it to have a reception in a room like this?

Group photo for the three winning entries (from left): Annie Dodds Award for Best Documentary - 'The Things They Carried' , Audience Poll - 'Surviving History' , Best Imaginative Response to the Subject of War - 'Red Letter'; with Toby Haggith, of IWM's Film and Video Archive, and Martin Rogers, of Prime Focus.

Surviving History documentary – 13,478 views to date

The other day, I decided to check out how many people had viewed the preview of our documentary on our distributor, Journeyman Pictures’ YouTube channel. I was really surprised to see that more than 13,000 views were registered. This does not of course include the trailer clips that have been viewed on our organisation Living Imprint’s YouTube channel, about 700+ views to date.

It’s great to see that quite a few people are interested in knowing about the Holocaust. But I must also say that it is really depressing too. It seems that most of the people who seek out documentaries like ours are fairly narrow-minded and have missed the point of Holocaust awareness altogether. They seem determined to find films like ours so they can deride the Jews and go on anti-Semitic rants for the world to see.

One comment even mentioned Madoff. But what has an American white collar criminal got to do with Holocaust survivors who survived World War II? Just because they are of the same race? By that irrational deduction, should we hate all Japanese for the crimes of their forefathers during the same war as well? Should we hate present-day Americans for the napalm bombing of the Vietnamese? Should we hate all Muslims for the murder of Daniel Pearl? The list could go on and on. It is mind boggling that such irrationality should exist and darn right frustrating!

A few comments were enlightened ones – thank God there are people who understand the point of Holocaust awareness tools like our documentary. What a great disappointment that those who missed the point altogether do not seem to understand that what happened during the Holocaust is a symptom, the tip of the ice berg if you will, of intolerance and misplaced hatred gone horribly wrong and warped. These are not just stories about the Jews. This is a reminder of what blind hatred can lead to. There is great injustice in the world, why are there so many people willing to join the mindless masses that perpetrate such conditions? Every time I bump up against such comments I am flabbergasted. Why are we so willfully blind?

If you’d like to see the short trailers, click here

If you’d like to see the Journeyman trailer, click here

If you’d like to watch the film for £1 on Journeyman’s website, click here