The awards
Saturday June 6, World Environment Day, was a fitting choice for the Ecocinema awards. The 850-seat National Theater of Rhodes was packed out for the award ceremony. The hard-hitting, multi-award-winning Canadian film «The Corporation,» directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, won over the Ecocinema jury and the audience. The film, which exposes the destructive role of the corporation in society, took first prize for a feature length film, with a purse of 7,000 euros, and first prize from the audience. The runner-up for a feature film was French director Claire Simon’s «Mimi,» while the runner-up for the audience award was «Pyla: Living Together Separately,» Elias Demetriou’s documentary about a village in Cyprus where Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots have lived for years in relative amity. Thierry Dory of Belgium won the 4,000-euro first prize for a short film with «The Traveling Talesman,» and Erik Gandini of Sweden came second with «Surplus,» collecting a prize of 3,000 euros. The Greek Film Center’s awards for Greek films went to «Marseilles: A Greek Profile,» with a prize of 5,000 euros for director Mark Gastin, who explores the dual identity of Greek-French inhabitants of Marseilles, and to «64 Squares, 32 Wooden Sticks,» about blind chess players, by Theodore Kalessis, who won 4,000 euros. The 4,000-euro Ramsar/MedWet award went to «The Turtle People» by Surabhi Sharma of India, and the 5,000-euro MapUnep Award for the best film went to by «Summer Lightning,» by Greek filmmaker Nikos Ligouris. The new 65,000-euro award for a documentary film script, offered by the Greek Film Center and the Hellenic Broadcast Corporation (ERT) was given to a script titled «Sunrise – Sunset» by Angelos Kovotsos.
