MIDA：Magnolia International Documentary Awards

中文 | English

NEWS

· MIDA's Night: Eight Awards Announced

Presented by Shanghai Television Festival and Documentary Channel, SMG, the Award Ceremony of Magnolia International Documentary Awards will be held on 10th June, 2010.

“Born in Asia, Communicate the world”. On the night that cherishes the documentary value and embraces the documentary spirit, MIDA is supported by 7 major international awards and carries the passion of numerous documentary directors and devoters.

The 2010 Magnolia International Documentary Awards (MIDA) has four competitive categories: Social Documentary (films that reflect contemporary human social activities and living conditions); History & Biography Documentary (Macro history or biographical films); Nature Documentary (films depicting wildlife in their natural environments or films that arouse public awareness in environmental protection); Asian Documentary (Films that are made in Asia and about Asia). 24 outstanding documentaries were short listed for MIDA 2010.

President of MIDA Jury 2010 and social anthropologist and founding member of the Trickster Publishing Company, Mr. Ralph Thoms, together with jury members including Hyechung, Korean Documentary Scholar; Martin Novosad, Czechic Documentary Producer; Sheng Zhimin, Chinese Director and Producer; Geoffrey Smith, Australian Documentary Producer and Gong Xueping, member of NPC Standing Committee, founder of Shanghai Television Festival and jury member of MIDA 2010 announces 8 winners of MIDA 2010.

Best Social Documentary
Golden Award: Google Baby (Israel)
Awards Review: Although this film deals with very complex and ethical issues, it does so in a charming way. It has a rich cast of global characters, is never judgmental, and maintains a dramatic tension. It is how a good documentary should be made!

Silver Award: The Fortress (Switzerland)
This is an impressive film from the point of access, craft and objectivity. Through a microcosm of one small refugee hostel in a Swiss town, it shows us the reality of our divided world we live in today.

Best Asian Documentary
Golden Award: Blood Relation (Israel)
Awards Review: This film begins as a simple search for a lost relative, but quickly reveals how nothing is simple in Israel. With brutal honesty we discover how one family was torn apart because of cultural differences, yet in trying to heal itself, how all of its members discover how the present political reality has made them powerless to change things.

Silver Award: Old Partner (Korean)
Awards Review: This cinematic film deserves to be seen on the big screen, and forces us to enter a world where the pace of life is dictated by an old ox. The questions this film then ask us about our modern relationships with each other and with nature, are profound ones.

Best History & Biography Documentary
Golden Award: The Picture of The Napalm Girl (Germany)
Awards Review: This film is a tender yet very insightful and analytical look at the relationship between victims and the media during wartime. Although this one single picture may have changed the face of the entire Vietnam War, it also had a profoundly disturbing impact on the woman who was known as Napalm girl.

Silver Award: John Rabe: The Unlikely Hero of Nanking (Germany)
Awards Review: This well made film tells the unknown story of a great humanitarian in Nanking, and importantly we hear from some repenting Japanese soldiers who brutalized the Chinese population in 1937.

Best Nature Documentary
Golden Award: Aoruguya Aoruguya (China)
Awards Review: This delightful film captured our hearts, and broadened our definition of what is a nature documentary. Its universal theme shows us how indigenous people the world over need to maintain their connection with their native territory, and tragically what happens if they have that connection taken away from them.

Silver Award: The Saga on The Primeval Forest (Poland)
Awards Review: This is a very original idea. Through the story of two orphaned Polish lynxes, this film explores the problematic and complex issue of human intervention in such cases.

The predecessor to the MIDA Filmmaker Plan was the DocuChina Filmmaker Plan. It was developed by Shanghai Documentary Channel in 2006 with the aim to support long term documentary film productions in China and included professional training and commissioned projects in documentary films. The theme of 2010 Filmmaker Plan is “Asia Era”, which includes “ “ and “New Face Category”. 22 short listed proposals are selected from over 300 proposals from Asia.

During the Award Ceremony, Christine Choy, the Academy-nominated documentary director, together with other jury members including documentary directors Kang Jianing, Peng Xiaolian, Wang Xiaolong, Zhou Hao and Liu Bingsen, Senior Magazine and Media Professional announces 6 outstanding proposals. All six winners will receive financial and technology support from MIDA to help them realize their documentary dreams.

“Asia “ Category
Yu Guangyi: The Single Man
Awards Review: It’s a story full of content. We applaud the life attitude and photography attitude of the author. Good luck to all the single people in the world.

Gu Tao: Shen Yi
Awards Review: The proposal discusses the traditional belief that is vanishing in this ever changing society and its relation with the entanglement, which takes us into deep thinking.

Xu Tong: Old Tang
Awards Review: The story of Old Tang vividly reflects the complexity of his fate and the changing of society.

Cong Feng: The Italy of Gansu Vol. 3: The Unfinished Life
Awards Review: Great attention was paid to intellectuals in Western China. By recording the life and work of several young teachers in Gansu Province, the story conveys the subtle relations and contradiction between their work and society.

Qu Jiangtao: For Parkour
Awards Review: A group of young people are struggling between reality and dream. The film shows us a great Uighur World.
New Face Category

Liu Yue: Job Hunting
Awards Review: It’s a proposal full of reality. Two characters are representative. The story was told from the angel of one of their peers, and the struggle when college graduates facing the society is fully displayed.

From Documentary Session of Shanghai Television Festival to Magnolia International Documentary Awards; from DocuChina Filmmaker Plan to MIDA Filmmaker Plan; from DocuChina Panorama to MIDA Panorama, every step MIDA has ever taken agglomerates the dreams of Asian documentary makers. MIDA is also supported by 7 major international awards.

Over 50 high quality documentaries from IDFA (Holland); Hot Docs (Canada); DOK Leipzig (Germany); Documentary Edge Festival (New Zealand) and YIDFF（Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Japan）have joined the 2010 MIDA line-up, many of which were warmly welcomed by the audiences.

Presidents from 7 major international documentary festivals join the EAA Forum, which furthers the communication and combination of documentaries from Europe, America and Asia and to promote diversified development of documentaries.
We salute all the documentary directors in the world for what they brought to the world. We salute all the new directors in Asia for their courage to take the responsibility of future Asian documentaries. We salute all the documentary audiences in Shanghai for their applaud in the cinema.

HOME