53RD AAFF AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER ANNOUNCED!
The people have spoken, the ballots have been counted, and we're very pleased to announce the winner of the 53rd AAFF Audience Award.
Congratulations to Mike Hoolboom; his film Scrapbook (19 min, 2015), which had its World Premiere at the 53rd AAFF, received the Audience Award. The film also received the Pat O'Neill "Perseverance Furthers" Award, which was given by the 53rd AAFF Awards Jury (Jesse McLean, Julie Murray and Joanna Raczynska).
Mike Hoolboom describes Scrapbook in an interview with Michael Pattinson (published October, 2014):
“It was shot in 1967 by my friend Jeffrey Paull, who was working in what’s called a development centre, which is a combination mental hospital and residential daycare. The centre began at a moment when media education was just beginning in North America, and it carried utopian hopes. Jeffrey was brought in to teach the kids—all of whom had various psychological problems—how to make pictures, which meant analogue photographs, darkroom processing and printing, video introductions. These gestures were considered therapeutic, although he wasn’t schooled as a therapist. But the act of producing pictures of each other could address fundamental questions of identity formation. How can you be part of me and separate from me at the same time?"
Mike Hoolboom is a Canadian artist working in film and video. He has made over fifty films and videos. Mike Hoolboom’s films have been included in sixteen editions of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, beginning in 1988. His work has appeared in over four hundred festivals, garnering thirty awards. His work has enjoyed retrospectives at numerous international festivals including Visions du Reel (Switzerland), Vila do Conde Festival (Portugal), the Buenos Aires International Festival (Argentina), among many others. He is a founding member of the Pleasure Dome screening collective and has worked as the artistic director of the Images Festival and as the experimental film co-ordinator at Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre.
