The 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.

Previous Award Winners

• 2011: Troubled Water
• 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