I went to the Eibunren Awards Ceremony yesterday morning with my family (who came to Tokyo for a 1-week visit). As I've mentioned before, KINGYO had won two awards, the Semi-Grand Prix and the Best New Creator award.
The Eibunren Awards is organized by the Japanese Ministry of Culture and the Japanese Association of Audiovisual Producers usually to honour documentaries or other videos dealing with sociopolitical or ecological issues. KINGYO is the first ever independent narrative short film to receive a major award from them, so they gave me the new individual award called the New Creator award.
Of course, that was a tremendous honour.
It was a bummer that Maiko the Producer was unable to make it yesterday because she had to give a presentation for a thesis. Would have been fun if the entire team were there though. (Lia the Artist/ assistant director/ translator was the only one among the team to be there)
This is me, waiting for the ceremony.
Still waiting.
Finally, I was there to accept my 'NEW CREATOR AWARD'. My speech was largely improvised because I wasn't sure of the allocated time for acceptance speeches. In the end I just spoke out whatever that was in my mind. Yup.
Acceptance speech for NEW CREATOR award. Click here if you cannot view embedded video.
After that, I went up for the Semi-Grand Prix award. You'll see me fumbling with a Chinese proverb I threw out randomly (which was corrected by my sister, who was filming the whole thing)
Acceptance speech for the SEMI-GRAND PRIX award. Click here if you cannot view embedded video.
After that there was a group photo session with the rest of the award winners.
Family photo.
Family + Lia.
My sister is very round and cute.
Team Waseda! My buddies Zhi Feng and Yang Yang (accompanied by Kobayashi-sensei) were also the editors of a documentary called Shaolin Kung-Fu that won a special jury mention. The documentary was a co-production between Waseda University and Beijing Film Academy.
I was happy that my friends, Zhang Qi (left) and Liu Jin (assistant producer of my new film THE WHITE FLOWER) were also there for the ceremony.
When we left the hall for lunch, the sky was clear, glistening in blue, the sun shone brightly. The weather was great.
The Eibunren Awards is organized by the Japanese Ministry of Culture and the Japanese Association of Audiovisual Producers usually to honour documentaries or other videos dealing with sociopolitical or ecological issues. KINGYO is the first ever independent narrative short film to receive a major award from them, so they gave me the new individual award called the New Creator award.
Of course, that was a tremendous honour.
It was a bummer that Maiko the Producer was unable to make it yesterday because she had to give a presentation for a thesis. Would have been fun if the entire team were there though. (Lia the Artist/ assistant director/ translator was the only one among the team to be there)
This is me, waiting for the ceremony.
Still waiting.
Finally, I was there to accept my 'NEW CREATOR AWARD'. My speech was largely improvised because I wasn't sure of the allocated time for acceptance speeches. In the end I just spoke out whatever that was in my mind. Yup.
Acceptance speech for NEW CREATOR award. Click here if you cannot view embedded video.
After that, I went up for the Semi-Grand Prix award. You'll see me fumbling with a Chinese proverb I threw out randomly (which was corrected by my sister, who was filming the whole thing)
Acceptance speech for the SEMI-GRAND PRIX award. Click here if you cannot view embedded video.
After that there was a group photo session with the rest of the award winners.
Family photo.
Family + Lia.
My sister is very round and cute.
Team Waseda! My buddies Zhi Feng and Yang Yang (accompanied by Kobayashi-sensei) were also the editors of a documentary called Shaolin Kung-Fu that won a special jury mention. The documentary was a co-production between Waseda University and Beijing Film Academy.
I was happy that my friends, Zhang Qi (left) and Liu Jin (assistant producer of my new film THE WHITE FLOWER) were also there for the ceremony.
When we left the hall for lunch, the sky was clear, glistening in blue, the sun shone brightly. The weather was great.
