2008

Feature Film Award
Narrative Feature
United States
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
17 minutes
Director:
Adam Galassi

REIFF 2008

Fifteen years ago Raymond Colby claimed he was picked up and carried away by a giant bird, he was then committed to the Salt Creek County mental home. After fifteen years away from the small town Raymond finds himself struggling to convince his family and the local community that his "giant bird" attack was in fact real.

Short Film Award
Documentary Short
United States
Runtime:
35 minutes
Director:
Susan Nussbaum, Salome Chasnoff

REIFF 2008

A daring and humorous investigation into the uncharted intersection between disability and sexuality.

Avery Crounse Award
Documentary Feature
United States
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
15 minutes
Director:
Lee Kazimir

REIFF 2008

Struggling filmmaker Lee Kazimir reads some advice from Werner Herzog, who said that filmmakers should skip film school and instead ‘make a journey alone, on foot, for a distance of 5,000 kilometers, let’s say from Madrid to Kiev.’ Kazimir decides to take the advice literally, walking for six months and through seven countries from Madrid to Kiev while documenting the journey with a videocamera.Along the way he confronts physical struggles and meets a varied cast of characters on the road. He learns some essential lessons, realizing ultimately that ‘before Art, comes Life.’More Shoes is a diary picture that serves both as an account of an artistic coming-of-age and as a snail’s-eye portrait of Europe in the early 21st century.

Juror’s Award, Honorable Mention
Narrative Short
United States
Runtime:
20 minutes
Director:
Ryan Smith

REIFF 2008

When a woman’s only son dies tragically, she turns to technology to help keep his memory alive. But there are limitations, and soon she is caught in a vicious cycle.

Juror’s Award
Documentary Feature
United States
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
29 minutes
Director:
Gary Null

REIFF 2008

This Gary Null, Ph.D. documentary challenges the assumption that vaccines are PERFECTLY safe. The use of heavy metals such as mercury, connections to autism and the high number of vaccines given at a very young age to children are among the arguments presented. The story chronicles the nightmare of parents who lost a child soon after a vaccination series and the father was sent to prison for murdering his child but was later released. Government cover-ups and deceptions with corruption in the scientific community are illustrated by those featured in Vaccine Nation

Juror’s Award
Experimental
United States
Runtime:
7 minutes
Director:
Ronnie Cramer

REIFF 2008

Six-hundred-five film clips are assembled and used to create a piece of electronic music. As the visual component appears in the center of the screen, the original analog audio is sent to the left channel while it is simultaneously converted into digital music data and sent to the right channel. The digital data is also transposed into traditional musical notation and displayed on the screen as it is converted. The film includes an animated ‘chalkboard’ introduction that explains the entire process.

Juror’s Award
Canada
Runtime:
59 minutes
Director:
b.h. Yael

REIFF 2008

Trading the Future is a video essay or hybrid documentary that questions the inevitability of apocalypse and its repercussions on environmental urgencies. Starting with a personal account addressing the Christian narrative for the end of times, the video draws connections to secular apocalypticism and questions our ready acceptance of a cataclysmic end. The video also challenges the philosophical and practical underpinnings of science and progress, the market place, and the symbolic of death while proposing possible alternatives in activism, biodiversity, and the idea of natality.

Honorable Mention
Documentary Feature
United States
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
20 minutes
Director:
David Earnhardt

REIFF 2008

UNCOUNTED is an explosive documentary that shows how the election fraud that changed the outcome of the 2004 election led to even greater fraud in 2006 - and now looms as an unbridled threat to the outcome of the 2008 election. This controversial film examines in factual, logical, and yet startling terms how easy it is to change election outcomes and undermine election integrity across the U.S. Noted computer programmers, statisticians, journalists, and experienced election officials provide the irrefutable proof.

Juror’s Award, Honorable Mention
Narrative Short
United States
Runtime:
20 minutes
Director:
Ryan Smith

REIFF 2008

When a woman’s only son dies tragically, she turns to technology to help keep his memory alive. But there are limitations, and soon she is caught in a vicious cycle.

2009

Best Documentary
Documentary Feature
United States
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
28 minutes
Director:
Brent Leung

REIFF 2009

What is HIV? What is AIDS? What is being done to cure it? These questions sent filmmaker Brent Leung on a worldwide journey, from the highest echelons of the medical research establishment to the slums of South Africa, where death and disease are the order of the day. In this up-to-the-minute documentary, he observes that although AIDS has been front-page news for over 27 years, it is barely understood. Despite the great effort, time, and money spent, no cure is in sight.Born in 1980 (on the cusp of the epidemic), Leung reveals a research establishment in disarray, and health policy gone tragically off course. Gaining access to a remarkable array of the most prominent and influential figures in the field -- among them the co-discoverers of HIV, presidential advisors, Nobel laureates, and the Executive Director of UNAIDS, as well as survivors and activists -- his restrained approach yields surprising revelations and stunning contradictions.The HIV/AIDS story is being rewritten, and this is the first film to present the uncensored POVs of virtually all the major players -- in their own settings, in their own words. It rocks the foundation upon which all conventional wisdom regarding HIV/AIDS is based. If, as South African health advocate Pephsile Maseko remarks, this is the beginning of a war...a war to reclaim our health, then 'House of Numbers' could well be the opening salvo in the battle to bring sanity and clarity to an epidemic clearly gone awry.

Pages