2009 Whitehead Award

The Whitehead International Film Festival Jury gave the 2009 Whitehead Award to the American film, The Visitor, citing:

• Its effective use of music, both as background and foreground, to signal the shifts in character development;
• Its highlighting of changes in American hospitality from the Statue of Liberty’s generous welcome of immigrants on Ellis Island, to the parody of this symbol on the walls of a detention center where we forcibly send immigrants back;
• Its portrayal of the dignity of persons from a diversity of cultural, national, and racial backgrounds;
• Its effective demonstration of creative transformation through the main character’s interaction with immigrants, and its call to us individually and nationally to reconsider our relationships to those seeking wellbeing within our borders.

The Jury also gives Special Mention to the outstanding documentary, Heimatklaenge (Echoes of Home) for the way it demonstrates and elicits the music of the earth in all its intense and beautiful variety of forms.

• Visit the official website

Previous Award Winners

2008:  Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
2007:  Tsotsi
2006:  The Syrian Bride
2005:  Barbarian Invasions
2004:  Gaz Bar Blues

2010 Whitehead Award

Departures named 2010 Whitehead Award Winner

9th Annual Whitehead International Film Festival
January 15-18, 2010

The jury determined that of the ten films screened, the one most excellently exhibiting the five criteria for The Whitehead Award is the Japanese film, Departures, directed by Yajiro Takita.

Criteria 1:  Artistic Excellence
The jury applauds the film’s fine cinematography, use of symbols, its creative juxtaposition of indoor/outdoor scenes, its use of music, and its stunning depiction of the sacred ritual of encoffinment.

Criteria 2:  The Common Good
The film dealt with two common themes:  fear of abandonment, and fear of death.  By integrating death naturally into the cycle of life, the film creatively addresses the fears and taboos surrounding death.  It also takes account of life’s spiritual deaths through abandonment, and uses the journey format of the film to speak of the possibilities for reconciliation. 

Criteria 3:  Promoting the Dignity of All
The reverent and caring preparation of the deceased person’s body in the presence of family and loved ones gave a sense of the dignity of death, and the possibilities of completion and peace in the midst of death.

Criteria 4:  Ecological Sensitivity
While this was not foremost in the film, it was nonetheless fostered by the rhythm between the external scenes of beauty as Daigo played the cello outdoors, and the internal scenes of beauty as Daigo ministered to the ones who had died and their families.  The director honored the sacred nature of life’s cycles.

Criteria 5:  Creative Transformation
As Daigo embraces his own transformation in doing casketing, he becomes the agent of creative transformation for others. 

• Visit Departures website

Honorable Mention

The jury also lifts up the excellence of the Canadian film, The Necessities of Life, directed by Benoit Pilon.  The film moves from the open austerity of the northern landscape to the close confinement of a hospital ward.  The use of light, color, and focus skillfully introduced the audience to the complexities of the main characters, each of whom functioned as an agent of transformation for the others.  In the process, the film addressed the cultural barriers that create “outsiders” and “insiders,” and the necessities of communication, hope, and trust for the common good. 

Previous Award Winners

• 2009: The Visitor
• 2008: Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
• 2007: Tsotsi
• 2006: The Syrian Bride
• 2005: Barbarian Invasions
• 2004: Gaz Bar Blues

2011 Whitehead Award

Troubled Water named the 2011 Whitehead Award Winner

The Faith & Film Class Jury selects Troubled Water (Erik Poppe, director) for the Whitehead Award as the film best exemplifying the selection criteria for the Whitehead International Film Festival.  Examples of the film's artistic excellence are the camera's use of diffused focus to mirror the confusion within the characters, and the film's powerful use of music to express the inner turmoil of a main character.  In terms of "celebrating films that promote the common good," Troubled Water explores sin and forgiveness in a movement from abstract theology to faith tested and faith lived.  Each character represents the ambiguity of good and evil, and the real possibility of a "second chance" that creatively transforms personal and communal life.
 
The Class Jury also honors Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois, director) as its second choice.  This powerfully filmed story about a small group of Trappist monks in Algiers conveys the strength of ritual and commitment permeating and strengthening the monks in their communal life, even in the face of suffering and death.  Increasingly, the monks take on an incarnational identity as Christ in the world, ministering as brothers to one another and the wider Islamic community around them. 
 
The Class Jury named the Netherlands film, Kiss (Joost van Ginkel, director), as the outstanding short film.  Difficult to watch, the film is a powerful witness to the trauma of war in its effect on families.  The film asks us to reconsider the logic of war as our response to human conflict.

Previous Award Winners

• 2010: Departures
• 2009: The Visitor
• 2008: Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
• 2007: Tsotsi
• 2006: The Syrian Bride
• 2005: Barbarian Invasions
• 2004: Gaz Bar Blues

2012 Whitehead Award

Whitehead Award of the 11th Annual Whitehead International Film Festival

The jury for the 11th Whitehead International Film Festival determined to give the Whitehead Award in two categories: Feature and Documentary. The films were judged according to the five selection criteria for the festival. 

Feature

The feature chosen meets the criteria for artistic excellence in the way it combines a strong story with simple packaging; it is a beautifully told tale with rich local color.

In terms of its promotion of the common good, the characters in the film honored cultural boundaries at the same time that they transcended these boundaries through simple caring for one another. It shows the power of human community to enable one another’s well-being. Giving is generous and open-handed, with no expectation of return.

Human dignity is a strong value in this film: each person, whatever his or her condition, is valued. Each contributes to the well-being of the whole, and benefits from that well-being.

While ecological sensitivity is not germane to the film’s story, we noted that attention to the small things even in difficult times was exemplified through appreciating the first flowering of a tree in spring.

Our final criteria is the realistic hope for creative transformation. This abounds in the film. The characters meet adversity, disappointment, challenges. Yet because of increasing and increasingly wide bands of love, the characters grow. They exhibit the teachings of the Koran not only through intellectual learning, but through incorporating the Koran’s wisdom into lives of deepening and expanding love. We give the Whitehead Award to the Iranian film directed by Homayoun Asadian, Gold and Copper.

Documentary

Our chosen documentary exhibits artistic excellence primarily in its editing of footage from seven years of filming to present a cohesive and compelling story. We particularly appreciated the way in which the camera focuses on the faces, in a sense caressing the faces as they tell their respective stories.

The common good is pervasive throughout the film: its celebration of pro bono work by lawyers, supported by their firms; its teaching emphasis on domestic violence; its strong suggestion that elections make a difference; its educational elements as it informs its audience about our criminal justice system.

Human dignity is extended even to the “villains” in the film: there is compassion for the abusers as well as for the victims of abuse. There is dignity for the inmates, dignity in the face of apparent failure, and dignity even for the system, where finally and arduously, justice is achieved.

Deborah Peagler is a catalyst for creative transformation throughout the film: not only in her own life, but in the lives of other inmates, in the lives of the families associated with her, and certainly with the two lawyers who take up her case. The lawyers themselves, and the detective they hire, are likewise agents of transformation as they unceasingly work to set Peagler free. And finally, the film itself is a catalyst for creative transformation, informing us of our own duties as citizens to live out our commitments to social justice.

The film, of course, is Yoav Potash’s Crime After Crime.