Austin, Texas – March 16, 2011 – The Jury and Audience Award-winners of the 2011 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival were announced tonight at the Festival’s Awards Ceremony, hosted by comedian Owen Egerton in Austin, Texas. Feature Films receiving Jury Awards were selected from the Narrative Feature and Documentary Feature categories. New for 2011, films in competition were also eligible for Jury Awards for Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Score/Music, Best Screenplay (narratives) and Breakthrough Performance (narratives). Films in these categories, as well as Spotlight Premieres, Emerging Visions, Midnighters, Lone Star States and 24 Beats Per Second, were also eligible for 2011 SXSW Film Festival Audience Awards. Only Narrative and Documentary Feature, Spotlight Premieres and Emerging Visions Audience Awards were announced tonight. Lone Star States, 24 Beats Per Second and Midnighters Audience Awards will be announced separately on Saturday, March 19.

SXSW also announced the Jury Award-winners in Shorts Filmmaking and Film Design Awards, and Special Awards, including the Louis Black / Lone Star Award, the SXSW Chicken & Egg Emergent Narrative Woman Director Award and the SXSW Wholphin Award. Details can be found at www.sxsw.com/film.

“It’s been completely exciting to witness the overwhelming appreciation and acclaim for the 2011 SXSW Film lineup,” said Film Conference and Festival Producer Janet Pierson. “The unique combination creative talents from music, film and technology all in the same environment has once again set an electric backdrop for our films, and across the board, the combustion of new talent, fresh perspectives, and the engaged community has been exhilarating. We are happy our Awards can honor even a sliver of the wide-ranging talent we were privileged to host this year.”

The 2011 SXSW Film Festival Juries consisted of:

Narrative Feature Competition: Roger Ebert, Logan Hill, Michelle Satter

Documentary Feature Competition: Mark Olsen, Lisa Schwarzbaum, Sky Sitney

Narrative Shorts: Jon Korn, Jay Van Hoy, Rose Vincelli

Documentary Shorts: Brad Beesley, Jay Duplass, Amanda Micheli

Animated Shorts: Austin Kleon, Bill Plympton, Alison Willmore

Music Videos: Tom Blankenship, John Kunz, Ron Mann

Texas Shorts: Victor Diaz, Megan Gilbride, Adam Roffman

Texas High School Shorts: Cole Dabney, Marcy Garriott, Bart Weiss

Title Design: Ian Albinson, Jenny Lee, Tommy Pallota, Ron Pippin, Kurt Volk

Poster Design: Craig Crutchfield, Craig Denham, Marc English, Tim League, Charlie Loft, Danny Parker

Louis Black / Lone Star: Marjorie Baumgarten, Elvis Mitchell, Robert Wilonsky

For the 2011 SXSW Film Festival, 140 features, consisting of 66 World Premieres, 15 North American Premieres and 15 U.S. Premieres, were selected from a record 1,792 feature-length film submissions composed of 1,323 U.S. and 469 international feature-length films. 153 shorts were selected from 3,089 short film submissions. The nearly 300 films were selected from 4,911 overall submissions; a record number and a 23% increase over 2010. The 2011 SXSW Film Festival Awards were hosted by Ovation TV.

The 2011 SXSW Film Festival Award Winners:

Feature Film Jury Awards

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE COMPETITION

Grand Jury Winner: Dragonslayer
Director: Tristan Patterson

Best Editing: Where Soldiers Come From
Editors: Kyle Henry & Heather Courtney

Best Cinematography: Dragonslayer
Director of Photography: Eric Koretz

Best Score/Music: The City Dark
Music by: The Fishermen Three, Ben Fries

NARRATIVE FEATURE COMPETITION

Grand Jury Winner: Natural Selection
Director: Robbie Pickering

Breakthrough Performances:
Evan Ross – 96 Minutes
Rachael Harris – Natural Selection
Matt O’Leary – Natural Selection

Best Screenplay: Natural Selection
Writer: Robbie Pickering

Best Editing: Natural Selection
Editor: Michelle Tesoro

Best Cinematography: A Year in Mooring
Director of Photography: Elliot Davis

Best Score/Music: Natural Selection
Music by: iZLER, Curt Schneider

Feature Film Audience Awards

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Winner: Kumaré
Director: Vikram Gandhi

NARRATIVE FEATURE
Winner: Natural Selection
Director: Robbie Pickering

SPOTLIGHT PREMIERES
Winner: Becoming Santa
Director: Jeff Myers

EMERGING VISIONS
Winner: Weekend
Director: Andrew Haigh

*Audience Awards for 24 Beats Per Second, Lone Star States, and Midnighters sections will be announced on Saturday, March 19, 2011.

Short Film Jury Awards

NARRATIVE SHORTS
Winner: Pioneer
Director: David Lowery

DOCUMENTARY SHORTS
Winner: Mothersbane
Director: Jason Jakaitis

ANIMATED SHORTS
Winner: THE WONDER HOSPITAL
Director: Beomsik Shimbe Shim

MUSIC VIDEOS
Winner: Hollerado, “Americanarama”
Director: Greg Jardin

TEXAS SHORTS
Winner: 8
Director: Julie Gould & Daniel Laabs

TIME WARNER CABLE & OVATION YOUNG FILMMAKER SCHOLARSHIP for
TEXAS HIGH SCHOOL SHORTS
Winner: ( __ )
Director: Chad Werner

SXSW Film Design Awards

EXCELLENCE IN POSTER DESIGN
Winner: Silver Bullets
Designer: Yann Legendre

Audience Award Winner: Green
Designer: Adrian Kolarczyk

EXCELLENCE IN TITLE DESIGN
Winner: Blue Valentine
Designer: Jim Helton

Audience Award Winner: Blue Valentine
Designer: Jim Helton

SXSW Special Awards

SXSW WHOLPHIN AWARD
Winner: The Eagleman Stag
Director: Mikey Please

SXSW CHICKEN & EGG EMERGENT NARRATIVE WOMAN DIRECTOR AWARD
Winner: Sophia Takal for Green

LOUIS BLACK / LONE STAR AWARD
Winner: INCENDIARY: The Willingham Case
Directors: Steve Mims & Joe Bailey, Jr.

KAREN SCHMEER FILM EDITING FELLOWSHIP
Presented to: Erin Casper

About South by Southwest Film Conference & Festival

The SXSW Film Conference and Festival is a uniquely creative environment featuring the dynamic convergence of talent, smart audiences and industry heavyweights. A hotbed of discovery and interactivity, the event offers invaluable networking opportunities and immersion into the art and business of the rapidly evolving world of independent film.

The Film Conference buzzes as world-class speakers, creative minds, and notable mentors tackle the latest filmmaking trends amidst the unmatched social atmosphere of the SXSW experience. Simultaneously, the internationally acclaimed, nine-day Festival celebrates raw innovation and emerging talent, featuring a truly diverse program that includes provocative documentaries, subversive comedies, DIY narratives, genre standouts and more.

I’ve been trying to get into the audiobook world for years, and finally broke through, getting two books in one month. What I hadn’t fully understood, though, was how taxing the work can be. The latest volume I’ll be reading is thicker than the yellow pages, and we’ve got to get it done in four days.

After several hours of reading aloud, the mind goes numb. Try it some time and you’ll understand. The voice, too, strains and cracks, but that seems minor compared to losing all faculty for language.

But, forever seeking to understand the intersection of my meditative practice and my professional life, it dawned on me that audiobooks were a gift from the heavens. Not only do I enjoy the work immensely, but the recording sessions are a chance to deepen my practice. Time on the cushion and time in the booth are alarmingly similar.

The body is still, erect but not rigid, for a long period. A quiet comes over the room. The mind wanders, and we are asked to bring it back. We notice our discursive thoughts and learn not to judge them, for the judging simply interferes with the task at hand. And when we rise, and shake the stiffness from our bones, we are transformed.

The world outside moves at a different pace. The sounds seems crisper, the angle of the light more acute. And the mind, though exhausted, is refreshed.

I wonder how many other activities in life are equally similar, or at least have that possibility.  I wonder…

The Teamsters ratified their contract several weeks ago. However, four other basic crafts (plumbers, plasterers, electricians and laborers) negotiate alongside the Teamsters. Ratification by those unions was expected and, indeed, the AMPTP said today that the last of those just ratified their contract. Here’s the organization’s press statement:

“The five Basic Crafts Unions have now ratified new contracts with the producers represented by the AMPTP, ensuring that production can continue without interruption for the studios and union members.  The two sides reached a fair deal with gains in wages, benefits and other terms for the unions while recognizing the current economic realities of the industry.  This would not have been possible without hard work and commitment of the leadership of each of the Basic Crafts Unions, whose negotiating committee was chaired by Local 399 Secretary-Treasurer Leo T. Reed.  The five Basic Crafts Unions are International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local No. 40,  Plumbers, Local No. 78, Teamsters, Local No. 399, Studio Utility Employees, Local No. 724, and Operative Plasterers and Cement Masons, Local No. 755.”

Toronto – Wavelengths, the Toronto International Film Festival’s curated presentation of the best in international avant-garde film and video, celebrates its tenth year with its largest programme yet. Curated by TIFF Cinematheque programmer Andréa Picard, this year’s line-up presents six programmes featuring 36 films and videos. Over the years, Wavelengths (which is named after Michael Snow’s seminal film, Wavelength) has developed into an important destination for cinephiles, artists, curators and all audiences interested in the celebration, exploration and experimentation of film and video within the cinema. Running from September 10 through 13, the 2010 line-up includes innovative works by masters such as James Benning, Nathaniel Dorsky, Paolo Gioli, Ken Jacobs and Peter Tscherkassky, as well as outstanding emerging artists like T. Marie, Tomonari Nishikawa, Oliver Husain, Kevin Jerome Everson and Rebecca Meyers.

“There’s much to celebrate and highlight as Wavelengths reaches its decade of existence”, says Picard, film programmer for TIFF Cinematheque and Wavelengths. “Our audiences have grown, the programme has expanded and the field has changed in challenging ways. While moving images have become a mainstay in galleries and museums, it’s increasingly important to present film and video art meant for the cinema, in that very context, with the best possible screening conditions. The works in this year’s programme reveal present-day day concerns like gentrification, the need to protect our natural resources, a complex global political terrain, as well as a harkening back to the origins of cinema concurrent with video’s emergence as an aesthetic medium of its own.”

Wavelengths 1: Soul of the City

As the pace of the contemporary urban experience grows faster and the world becomes increasingly fractured, artists are documenting the vestiges and layers revealed in flux; global updates on the city symphony.

Tomonari Nishikawa’s Tokyo-Ebisu (Japan) is a 16mm in-camera patchwork constructed from multiple viewpoints from the platforms of Tokyo’s busiest railway line, Yamanote, and a masking technique which exposes 1/30th of a frame 30 times in order to capture an image of spectral apparitions. The Soul of Things (U.S.A) from Dominic Angerame presents luscious chiaroscuro images of the construction and destruction of modern structures exposing their inner soul. From Thom Andersen, director of Los Angeles Plays Itself, Get Out of the Car (U.S.A.) is a city symphony exploring Los Angeles’ gentrification through a thoughtful montage of façades and a playful excursus through its musical history. Callum Cooper’s Victoria, George, Edward & Thatcher (United Kingdom) is an ecstatic, taxonomic montage-animation of images of London row-houses shot with an iPhone. With sonic dislocation and frame by frame animation, Eriko Sonoda’s Landscape, semi-surround (Japan) revels in the afterglow of memory. Through a slideshow of abandoned homes and an apocalyptic tale inspired by a massacre in Gaza in the summer of 2006, Basma Al-Sharif’s Everywhere Was the Same (Palestine/Egypt) recounts a city mired and mutilated. Oliver Husain’s Leona Alone (Canada) aesthetically intervenes in a historic Toronto neighbourhood cum suburb, offering gentrification a more wistful look.

Wavelengths 2: Plein-Air

As with painting, natural light and colour are inexhaustible sources of inspiration for film and video artists, whose plein-air shooting radically transforms our scenic views, offering a stirring ephemerality and, in some cases, a poignant intimacy.

In Vincent Grenier’s Burning Bush (Canada/U.S.A.), a virtuosic use of video sets a burning bush alight with crimson colour and spiritual flight. Kaleidoscopic colour, parenting and art-making coalesce in John Price’s domestic life frieze Home Movie (домашнее кино) (Canada), an extended portrait of his children captured with an old Russian 35mm camera and a variety of expired film stock. Ouverture (Canada/France) by Christopher Becks is a serene, yet kinetic in-camera meditation on an old barn in Normandy. Philipp Fleischmann’s Cinematographie (Austria) reinvents the filmstrip by way of an astonishing 360 degree camera obscura construction, which allows for a continuous image to emerge like a scroll. Recently blown-up to 16mm from its original super 8mm, Helga Fanderl’s intimate triptych, Blow-Ups: Portrait, Tea Time, Red Curtain (Germany) is a tender depiction of a love affair. Anne Truitt, Working (U.S.A.) is a portrait of the Minimalist painter and sculptor elegantly observed by Jem Cohen. Madison Brookshire’s Color Films 1 & 2 (U.S.A.) close the programme with winsome wavelength compositions of light.

Wavelengths 3: Ruhr

Exchanging his 16mm Bolex for a high-definition video camera, and straying from his native soil, James Benning heads to Germany with Ruhr (Germany/U.S.A.). Using his medium much like a painter would, Benning creates a monumental and surprising portrait of the Ruhr Valley, the largest urban agglomeration in Germany known for its heavy industry. Split into two parts, with six long takes in the first section and one masterful hour-long take in the second, Benning turns his mathematician’s eye toward the area’s industrial sublime, reinvigorating our viewing experience along the way.

Wavelengths 4: Pastourelle

Nathaniel Dorsky is one of the most gifted 16mm filmmakers of our time and was recently voted “The Best Experimental filmmaker of the Decade” by a poll conducted by Film Comment magazine. Suffused with longing, Dorksy’s three latest films, Compline, Aubade and Pastourelle (U.S.A.) demonstrate a devotional cinema wherein the plasticity of the medium is met by the artist’s consummate expression. Arresting in its twilight beauty and filled with beguiling apparitions, Compline is the final film Dorsky was able to shoot on Kodachrome, his preferred and longtime-used film stock. Aubade, which is a poem evoking daybreak, signals a new beginning, with his shooting on colour negative. Glimpses of Paris – the abstraction of its flickering neon signs, the elegance of its views – appear in both Aubade and Pastourelle, the latter presented here as a World Premiere. The programme concludes with T. Marie’s wondrous digital triptych, Water Lillies (U.S.A.), which evokes Monet’s famous late Impressionist series by meticulously employing the inherent aesthetisizing properties of pixels, working with time and luminosity.

Wavelengths 5: Blue Mantle

The ocean has always been a mythic source of life, as much as it has a legendary call to death.

In the mysterious and melancholic Atlantiques (Senegal/France), winner of the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Tiger Award for Best Short Film) by Mati Diop, a young man speaking in hushed tones describes his high-seas odyssey to friends huddled around a campfire in Dakar. Faint illuminations cast through an ornate gateway to a train platform in an abandoned station from Buffalo’s glory days create hazy, elegiac stained-glass effects, or the blurred vision of escape and disappearance in Eve Heller’s One (Austria); the first roll of film she ever shot, recently revisited and blown-up to 35mm. Resuscitated archival footage of a tragic event is met with contemporary prophecy in Kevin Jerome Everson’s enigmatic 753 McPherson Ave. (U.S.A.). Rebecca Meyers’ blue mantle (U.S.A.) is an ode to the ocean, intercutting between the mesmeric sea with its glistening, beckoning waters and various representations of the deep. Meyers crafts an ambitious treatise buoyed by the breadth of its cast. The apocalyptic sublime of J. M. W. Turner’s 1840 masterpiece The Slave Ship, with its fiery conflagration and strewn debris amid wild waters, is the source for T. Marie’s time-based pixel painting-film Slaveship (U.S.A.). A languorous, searing abstraction with a hot palette updates the classic scene in reference to today’s skewed social hierarchy and the selling of human life. Hell Roaring Creek (U.S.A.) is the latest film by experimental anthropologist Lucien Castaign-Taylor, co-director of Sweetgrass. A static camera records the coming of day as a shepherd leads his flock of sheep across the titular stream in a prismatic, painterly pastoral.

Wavelengths 6: Coming Attractions

Early cinema confronted the spectator like no other art, beckoning a reciprocal engagement and curiosity as both spectacle and document. This programme pairs contemporary experimental works with those from a hundred years ago when cinema itself was a grand experiment.

Celebrated Italian artist Paolo Gioli returns to a tabula rasa with his handmade cameras allowing him to exploit and fashion film’s reproductive means. The exhilarating Photo Finish Figures (Il Finish delle figure) (Italy) relays a sense of the contemporary, sensory “photo-finished” experience using a 35mm stills camera and various masking devices. Ken Jacobs’ The Day was a Scorcher (U.S.A.) sees the Jacobs clan vacationing in Italy in stroboscopic postcards pulsing amid Roman ruins. Then to Torino in 1909, for turn-of-the-century postcards in which a bunch of bambini-in-a-barrel pucker up for the camera, blowing kisses, some through tears of terror, all’italiana in Concorso di bellezza fra bambino a Torino. In Friedl vom Gröller’s Delphine de Oliveira (Austria), a placid young woman is filmed in a Parisian courtyard. Her belle laide looks convey paradoxical and untold mysteries, while a mise-en-abyme furthers the peculiar attraction. Jonas Mekas in Kodachrome Days (U.S.A.) is another timepiece comprised of family photos resuscitated through digital technology, whose pulse harkens back to proto-cinematic devices, giving Mekas an air of a trickster like Segundo de Chomón’s Le Roi des dollars from 1905. (France). Peter Tscherkassky’s Coming Attractions (Austria) is a sly, sartorial comedy masterfully mining the relationship between early cinema and the avant-garde, by way of fifties era advertising. With references to Méliès, Lumières, Cocteau, Léger, Chomette, the film playfully explores cinema’s subliminal possibilities using an impressive arsenal of techniques like solarization, optical printing and multiple exposures. Completing the evening’s attractions is a selection from EYE Film Institute Netherlands’ Bits and Pieces project (Netherlands), which restores and compiles “anonymous, unidentified or otherwise interesting fragments”, saving them from oblivion for our viewing pleasure. The archival prints will be presented with live piano accompaniment by William O’Meara.

Sale to Include Rights in Miramax Film Library, Book Titles and Development Projects

BURBANK, Calif., Jul 30, 2010 — The Walt Disney Company announced today the sale of Miramax Films to Filmyard Holdings LLC for over $660 million subject to certain adjustments. Partners in Filmyard include Los Angeles businessmen Ron Tutor, Tom Barrack, Colony Capital LLC and other individuals. The transaction is subject to certain regulatory approvals and is expected to close between September 10, 2010 and the end of the calendar year.

The sale of Miramax Films includes rights in over 700 film titles, including Academy Award winners like Chicago, Shakespeare in Love and No Country for Old Men. Also included are non-film assets, such as certain books, development projects and the “Miramax” name.

“Although we are very proud of Miramax’s many accomplishments, our current strategy for Walt Disney Studios is to focus on the development of great motion pictures under the Disney, Pixar and Marvel brands,” said Robert A. Iger, Disney’s President and CEO. “We are delighted that we have found a home for the Miramax brand and Miramax’s very highly regarded motion picture library.”

“I am delighted and honored to acquire the Miramax library,” said Ron Tutor. “On behalf of my partners Tom Barrack and Colony Capital, we look forward to sharing this high quality content with the world in every form of media for many years to come.”

Eleven Documentary and Narrative Feature Film Projects Selected for Development, Production
and Post-Production Support

LOS ANGELES, CA – Sundance Institute and Cinereach announced today the 2010 projects awarded grants for development, production, or post-production as part of a $1.5 million, three-year initiative, The Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute. The initiative is designed to support documentary and narrative feature film projects with themes that evoke global cultural exchange and social impact, and projects representing emerging and innovative voices selected for their distinctive and personal storytelling. The Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute is directly supporting eleven projects, each at a critical moment in their development.

In addition to grant awards, The Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute includes core artist support activity at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, Directors Lab, Documentary Edit & Story Lab, Composers & Documentary Lab, the Creative Producing Feature and Documentary Labs, and the Sundance Film Festival.

“The unique partnership between Sundance Institute and Cinereach enables a deeper support of innovative independent film,” said Keri Putnam, Executive Director, Sundance Institute. “The initiative is an extension of the ongoing support provided by the Sundance Institute through our Labs and funding opportunities, dedicated to nurturing artists’ individual voices. We’re thrilled to be working with Cinereach to support these eleven documentary and narrative feature film projects at critical stages in their development.”

“I’m heartened by the breadth of support that has touched a dynamic group of projects in such a short time. Today’s filmmakers are charting their own destinies and it’s critical their custodians adapt alongside them,” said Philipp Engelhorn, Cinereach Founder and Executive Director. “We’re thrilled with our partnership with the Sundance Institute, and I believe the results are indicative of the power of collaboration in uncharted times.”

Projects recently selected as Sundance Institute Cinereach Grantees through the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program include:

The Telluride Film Festival (September 3-6, 2010) is announcing that its 2010 Guest Director is Michael Ondaatje. The celebrated writer has been invited to select a series of films to present at the 37th Telluride Film Festival. The Guest Director program is sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Each year Festival directors Tom Luddy, Gary Meyer and Julie Huntsinger select one of the world’s great film enthusiasts to join them in the creation of the program lineup. The Guest Director serves as a key collaborator in the Festival’s programming decisions, bringing new ideas and overlooked films to Telluride.

“When we first met with Michael to invite him to be our Guest Director, his enthusiasm was infectious and we knew we had made a perfect choice, ‘ said Tom Luddy.

Michael Ondaatje, best known as a novelist and author of The English Patient, has a body of work also encompassing memoir, poetry, music and film. He published a volume of memoir, entitled Running in the Family, in 1983. His collections of poetry include There’s a Trick With a Knife I’m Learning To Do (1979); The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left Handed Poems (1981); The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems (1989); and Handwriting: Poems (1998). His first novel, Coming Through Slaughter (1976), is a fictional portrait of jazz musician Buddy Bolden. The English Patient (1992) won the Booker Prize for Fiction and was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1996. In 2000, Ondaatje was awarded the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, the Prix Medicis, the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, and the Giller Prize for his novel Anil’s Ghost. Ondaatje’s most recent non-fiction work is The Conversations: Walter Murch & the Art of Editing Film (2002). His latest novel is entitled Divisadero (2007). He has directed two documentaries, Sons of Poetry (1970) and The Clinton Special: A Film About The Farm Show (1971).

Julie Huntsinger remembers, “The ideas were already flowing in that first meeting. In the following weeks he asked us to help secure prints for him to screen movies fondly remembered as well as those he had heard about and was curious to consider.”

“The range of Michael’s choices will present audiences with an enthralling program of surprises and discoveries that cover an incredible range of styles, eras and subjects. His introductions promise to be enlightening, “ added Gary Meyer.

Past Guest Directors include Alexander Payne, Salman Rushdie, Peter Bogdanovich, B. Ruby Rich, Phillip Lopate, Errol Morris, Bertrand Tavernier, John Boorman, John Simon, Buck Henry, Laurie Anderson, Stephen Sondheim, G. Cabrera Infante, Peter Sellars, Don DeLillo, J.P. Gorin, Edith Kramer and Slavoj Zizek.

In keeping with Telluride Film Festival tradition, Ondaatje’s film selections, along with the rest of the Telluride lineup will be kept secret and unveiled on Opening Day, September 3, 2010.

Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow took home the Oscar for best achievement in makeup for Star Trek

In the recent round of talk show appearances by actors from the new version of Alice in Wonderland, many of the performers discussed their lengthy stints “getting into costume.”  This is both a travesty and at the same time not surprising.  While costumes have been heralded by cinema onlookers for decades, makeup has only recently been given the respect is has long deserved, both by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and by people who work in movie making alike.

Historically, makeup has only been treated as a marginalized side craft in movie making.  Honorary awards were given sporadically to exceptional makeups in films including The Mummy, created by Jack Pierce in 1932, The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, created by William Tuttle in 1964, and Planet of the Apes, created by John Chambers in 1968.  Unthinkably, an official Oscar for makeup did not exist until 1982 when the first award was given for Rick Baker’s stunning work in 1981’s An American Werewolf in London.

This year, three wildly divergent films were noted by the Academy with an Oscar nomination, drawn from a large field of potential candidates.  In what has become tradition of late, the Academy presents these three films at the Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Symposium – as those two crafts are often intertwined and whose craftspeople belong to the same union, Local 706.

At the March 6 event, elegantly hosted by Leonard Engelman at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater, the outstanding nuances of this craft presented makeup as a truly artistic endeavor as intricate as cinematography, editing, music, or any one of a number of particular jobs within the overall field of motion picture creation.

Vittorio Sodano (makeup effects) and Aldo Signoretti (hairstylist) were responsible for aging the youthful actors for Il Divo

First up was Il Divo, an Italian production featuring character and age makeups, one specialty of makeup artists throughout the decades going back to the earliest films.  In fact, age makeup mastery is often one of the most awarded types of skills for makeup artists, especially in the Academy Awards, including last year’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Greg Cannom), Amadeus (Dick Smith), and a host of films whose work was not awarded due to the lack of an official Oscar category (an example of a glaring omission would be Bob Schiffer’s beautiful work in Birdman of Alcatraz).  In Il Divo, the age makeups were apparently created with the use of old age stipple in favor of prosthetic appliances in many stages, both of which are popular techniques for aging a character.  From Italy, Vittorio Sodano (makeup effects) and Aldo Signoretti (hairstylist) were responsible for Il Divo, with Signoretti commenting to the symposium audience how a lengthy testing period was necessary to properly age the actors in progressive stages.  According to one longtime makeup and hairstyling expert, Sodano also used “very large, extremely thin silicone appliances that wrapped around the face on the main male character, Andreotti.  His wife, played by Anna Bonaiuto, wore the fewest appliances – only one piece.  There was stretch stipple used on others, but they also had bald caps, foam caps with hair punched in and many other subtle things that were undetectable to the untrained eye.” As evidenced by Il Divo’s photo display, many of these age makeups were striking in their appearance and transformation of the youthful actors into believable middle and old-age characters.

Joel Harlow created the makeup for Eric Bana’s Romulan character Nero for Star Trek

Next was Star Trek, director JJ Abrams’ energetic re-imagining of the 44-year-old science-fiction franchise as a wholly new feature film.  Featuring a range of makeup work, including Vulcans and Romulans created by Joel Harlow, aliens designed and created by Barney Burman, and an entire principal cast supervised by makeup department head Mindy Hall, Star Trek – the eventual Oscar winner – required the talents of all three of the recipients to realize the enormous project.  Hall, who has previously department headed other non-science-fiction projects, spoke of the need to approach each character as an individual makeup, whether or not he or she was realized with prosthetics.  Additionally, Hall detailed the time-consuming process of creating eyebrows for her Vulcans by shaving the actors’ actual eyebrows and painstakingly hand-laying new Vulcan eyebrows one hair at a time.  She often collaborated on Vulcans with Harlow, who later added that he created the Romulan characters with large prosthetic headpieces that covered the actors’ foreheads and cheeks which had to be carefully painted and often applied without the benefit of previously lifecasting his actors.  Harlow also created and applied ears for his Vulcan and Romulan characters, breathing new life into the designs originally conceived for the 1960s TV show.

Barney Burman’s Aliens

A third-generation legacy, Burman, whose grandfather, Ellis, Sr., uncle, Sonny, father, Tom, and brother Rob, all trained in creating prosthetics, was tasked with numerous alien manifestations.  Working with a large crew in his Los Angeles-area lab, he took lifecasts of actors, sculpted alien makeups, made molds of the clay sculptures, and fabricated appliances in silicone, one of several materials that prosthetic artists utilize, including foam latex, gelatin, and others.  Certainly, Star Trek was a complex, massive, and classic project for which to create makeup characters, but it is the combined abilities of Hall, Harlow, Burman and their extensive crews which brought the film its richly deserved Oscar.

Makeup and hair designer Jenny Shircore and hairstylist Jon Henry Gordon were responsible for the Oscar nominated hair and makeup for The Young Victoria

Unfortunately, the representatives of the third film, The Young Victoria, were stuck in a travel delay and did not partake in the onstage presentations or interviews about their work in the period film.  Yet, they finally arrived in the post-event reception and spoke about the lengthy process of changing contemporary actors into those from the early 19^th century.  Makeup and hair designer Jenny Shircore mentioned the hours needed to do so with Emily Blunt as the title character while hairstylist Jon Henry Gordon noted that he has been specializing in period hair work since an uncredited turn on 1997’s Titanic.

With extensive insight into this most hands-on of crafts in cinema, the symposium merely contained one major flaw: it only takes place once a year, whereas regularly-held seminars about this crucial aspect of the business would illuminate the machinations of makeup artistry for not only fans and enthusiasts of movies but also for the denizens of people who work inside the business as well.