Moondance 2001
Winners

The Moondance International
Film Festival 2001 was held January 19-21, in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, USA.
The winners of the writers & filmmakers competitions were announced January
20 at the gala awards banquet & ceremony.

Moondance 2001
Screenplay Winners

Child in the
Well by Regina Richardson Drama: A feisty youngster, fleeing a pre-arranged
marriage in medieval England, falls under the influence of a mysterious brigand,
a wise crone, a mad child, and a bull of the purest evil.

Moondance
2001 Stageplay Winner

Sappho in Love
by Carolyn Gage

A lesbian Midsummer Night's Dream; comedy in the best Greek tradition. The goddess
of celibacy teams up with the goddess of monogamy to challenge Aphrodite on
the isle of Lesbos. Sapphic poetry abounds, amid meteor showers, midsummer eve
trysts, masquerades and melodramas.

Moondance 2001
Short Story Winner

Beauty
by Lynne Barrett

Pregnant at 36 from sex in a hatchback with a boy who couldn't be more than
23-24, Susan lies on the floor, looking up at row upon row of Barbie dolls her
mother had sewed costumes for, year after year, waiting there, multiplying,
for her to screw up again and come home.

Moondance 2001
Short Film Winner

The Shangri
La Cafe by Lily Mariye

This touching drama weaves an allegorical tale of a Japanese-American family
who conceals their ethnicity and reluctantly adopts discriminatory practices
in order to operate a popular Chinese restaurant during the hostile post-WWII
climate of Las Vegas in the late 1950s. The ultimate decision Emiko must make,
and the effect it has on her young daughter, will profoundly change their lives.

Moondance 2001
Documentary Film Winner

La Frontera
(the Border) by Barbara Martinez-Jitner (USA/MEXICO)

"As we leave our
land, our culture is erased forever". This Latina filmmaker exposes the sad
reality of women fleeing virtual slavery in NAFTA factories in Mexico. Martinez-Jitner
lived in the shacks and instant communities: the shanty-towns of Tijuana, while
filming this documentary, traveled with a Mixtec Indian woman to Oaxaca to bid
farewell to her family forever, and then documented her illegal crossing to
"El Norte".

Moondance 2001
Animation Film Winner

First Person
Singular by Kim Zumpfe (USA) God (whether male or female is unknown) almost
accidentally creates the universe from his/her hands, and in the process, creates
music and even allows a brief cameo appearance by primitive homo erectus. Clay
animation by a talented Boulder animator.

Moondance 2001
Columbine Award Winner

Screenplay: Buenos
Aires by Olga Rojer

WWII-era Buenos Aires, it's atmosphere tumultuous with tango, political intrigue
and Nazis, is the historical setting for this old-fashioned romance between
an outcast of Hitler's Germany and an impassioned Argentine woman.

Short Film: The
Mask Maker by Amy Waddell (US)

During the "Great war", soldiers who were severely disfigured in combat were
asked by the French government not to show their faces in public. A mask-maker
who carries his scars internally helps an ostracized, disfigured soldier, and
in doing so, is healed. A memorable tour de force of an avant garde film.

Documentary Film:
Last Journey into Silence by Shosh Shlam (Israel)

The wall of silence still remains for some Holocaust survivors. The elderly
men & women in this stunning film were hospitalized in mental institutions for
sometimes 40 years, but have now been relocated to a hostel for Holocaust survivors,
imprisoned in the hell of their memories, where they do not even remember the
Holocaust, and emptiness and inner time rule their lives.

Moondance Living
Legacy Award

Dr. Linda Seger
was presented with the first Moondance Living Legacy Award. The award will continue
to be presented annually to honor & recognize women in the film industry who
have contributed most to insuring that women's work is recognized & appreciated
for its worth, who help women achieve success in film, and who have themselves
contributed a vital body of work. Moondance wanted to honor Dr. Seger with the
first of these awards because of her work and to thank her for her most valued
participation in the success of Moondance, which success could not have happened
without her contributions and advice from the beginning.

The Moondance Living
Legacy Award is a pendant necklace in sterling silver just like the Moondance
winners' awards, but with a pearl inside. The pearl in the mermaid pendant represents
the honoree's special contributions to our goals as women. Of course, the pearl
is created in the oyster from a grain of sand and grows into that lovely & luminous
object. This is an allegorical/metaphorical symbol of our struggle to make something
beautiful and valuable from our struggles to overcome the "grain of sand" women
often encounter when trying to express themselves within the film industry,
and that resulting pearl is a reminder to us of what we can accomplish.