I have been invited to Met Film School Smart Screen Creative Awards recently. This was an event celebrating the finest student work created over the last four years at the School. The night was held at Ham Yard Hotel in Soho, London and was sponsored by both Twitter UK and The Imaginarium Studios.
Photo: ingiliz filiz
The awards were aiming to highlight younger filmmakers’ talent, passion and sharp perceptions about the world we live in today. I attended the reception before the awards ceremony: I had the chance to meet another blogger while enjoying delicious food and some nice prosecco.
Alongside graduates, students and instructors of the School; Dara Nasr (MD of Twitter UK) and Tony Orsten (CEO of Imaginarium) also attended the ceremony. There were six winners in the following categories: audience engagement, diversity, impact, innovation, entrepreneurship, and creative excellence. From 150 entries, there were 18 finalists.
Monica was a film by Gunnar Tornes about human trafficking in Norway, had a powerful way of delivering an engagement with its audience. Hence it received Audience Engagement award.
Diversity award went to “Williams Syndrome Foundation” by Disharth Hariikumar. Williams Syndrome is a rare neuro-developmental disorder, occurring in 1 in 7,500-20,000 births.
This film was highlighting that ‘everybody is the same’, and has to have the same rights as others. When we say diversity, we normally don’t think of disorders. So it was a clever turn to award this heart-melting film in Diversity category.
Impact Award was won by Roozbeh Misaghi’s “Rightsinfo.” Exploring the birth of human rights in an animation format is a pretty original idea!
“Kalash” by Bachir Abou Zeid won the Innovation award. This was also chosen Best Short Film this year at Chandler International Film Festival, held in Arizona-USA.
Inspired by a true event, this film was focusing on the resistance force against Israeli Invasion of Beirut in 1982. It was in fact a reminder of gratitude for all of us: “We all have to appreciate the life we have.”
I had the opportunity to interview Tony Orsten, who judged the Category and gave the award to Kalash on the stage. He was really impressed that the 29 minutes long film was realised as a single, uninterrupted shot: “Kalash was an extraordinary and thoroughly accomplished piece of work. The techniques used by the director to immerse the viewer are rarely used as they are too difficult. The fact that he did a 29 min. single shot for the whole story is amazing, but to have choreographed all the action so perfectly is unbelievable.”
I cannot share the link to Kalash here unfortunately, because I have watched it through a private link. But here is the trailer:
I must say it was striking in showing us what war really is: the transitions from darkness to light (to only go back to darkness again), from quietness to noise and momentum.
Entrepreneurship award went to “Hot Seat” by Anna Mimi Jayson.
This film had an original scope: we watched the story of two underage girls who are thrown into being sex objects by men. But the girls deal with the authoritative man in quite a funny and intelligent way.
Most of these films were dealing with social issues or dilemmas so had a message to get across to audiences. In this context, I think they were all powerful and real. I am so happy to have met the future film talents of London. Congratulations to all of them! I also would like to thank Met Film School for this invitation! If you’d like more information about them, please visit: https://www.metfilmschool.ac.uk/
Enjoy below a snapshot from the night!
English (UK) 
Türkçe