5th SHORTCUTZ AMSTERDAM ANNUAL AWARDs

21 January | Eye Film Museum | 20:00

# Dresscode: Festive #

For the fifth year running, we celebrated the best of Dutch short film at the Eye Film Museum, in Amsterdam.

Every year we invite inspiring film personalities to deliver a speech to inspire the new generation to create more and better movies. It’s our way of trying to create an awards ceremony where everybody wins something, at the very least some inspiration.

The 5th Edition of the Shortcutz Amsterdam Annual Awards was held on the 21st of January 2018, 20:00 at EYE, Amsterdam.

We also honourwd a role model who has been inspiring the new Dutch filmmakers and contributed to the prestige of Dutch cinema at home and abroad with the Shortcutz Career Award. This year we are honouring documentary’s living-legend Heddy Honigmann.

This year was also the celebrations of our 5th anniversary and we had an after-party at EYE cafe with actor and DJ Egbert-Jan Weeber DJing for us.

This ceremony we awarded the best of Dutch short film, granting prizes in 10 categories: Best Director, Best Documentary, Best Animation, Best Experimental, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Post-Production, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Film. The latter is awarded €10,000 worth of services by Filmmore and Cam-a-lot, €5,000 each. Cam-a-lot also awards the winner of Mr Zee Best Cinematography with equipment rental worth € 2,500.

The winners of these categories were chosen by our JURY. Shortcutz Amsterdam jury team was this year composed of: actor Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner); producer Jan Harlan (The Shining), actor Tygo Gernandt (Van God Los); director Roel Reiné (Marvel's Inhumans); actress Willeke van Ammelrooy (Antonia's Line); director Eddy Terstall (Simon); producer Pieter Kuijpers (Van God Los); Marina Blok, Head of Drama ntr; actor Vincent van Ommen (Amsterdam Heavy), documentary producer Harmen Jalvingh (Becoming Zlatan), Nederlands Film Festival programmer Claire van Daal, EYE senior programmer and head of acquisitions René Wolf, and street-artist Laser 3.14.

This year, for the first time, Shortcutz Amsterdam went international for the Audience Award. This Award is the audience's favourite film of our screenings made in December and January throughout the world with regional partners: Germany (BERLIN) organized by Shortcutz Berlin, Limburg (MAASTRICHT) organized by CineSud, North Holland (AMSTERDAM) organized by Shortcutz Amsterdam, Portugal (PORTO) organized by Shortcutz Porto, Zeeland (VLISSINGEN) organized by Stichting CAVAK, Brazil (SANTA CATARINA) organized by ShortCutz Santa Catarina, Gelderland (ARNHEM) organized by Gelders DOEK, Friesland (LEEUWARDEN) organized by Gewoon Reservoir Dogs maken & Natte Haring, North Brabant (EINDHOVEN) organized by BROET BASEMENT, Portugal (LISBOA) organized by Shortcutz Lisboa, South Holland (ROTTERDAM) organized by Film Platform Rotterdam and UK (LONDON) organized by Dutch Centre. The winner was also announced at the ceremony.

The winning short films in the categories of best film, best animation, best documentary and best experimental were screened in its entirety.

GUESTS OF HONOUR

This year’s guests of honour list's included:

BERO BEYER, IFFR director and producer (Altantic, Paradise Now)

* OPENING GUEST *

In August 2015 Bero Beyer was appointed as general and artistic director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Before Bero Beyer worked as an independent producer based in the Netherlands. Through his company Augustus Film (created in 2000) he has produced a number of award winning films, like RANA’S WEDDING, which premiered in the Semaine de la Critique (Cannes 2002) and the first Palestinian Oscar nominated feature film PARADISE NOW (2005). In 2008 Bero co-produced the Un Certain Regard selection and Palestinian Oscar submission SALT OF THIS SEA by director Annemarie Jacir, which was sold internationally by Pyramide. From From January 2013 until July 2015 Bero has served a three-year term as Film Consulent for the Dutch Film Fund, with priority field of Arthouse films and International Co-productions. As such he advised on the script and project development and production of feature films by established directors applying for selective funding from the Netherlands Film Fund’s Screen NL scheme and Minority Co-production programs.

photo credits: Boudewijn van den Breemer — *photo credits: Boudewijn van den Breemer*

JAN HARLAN, producer (The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut)

Jan Harlan joined Stanley Kubrick in 1969 for a film on Napoleon, which was unfortunately abandoned.

He later was executive producer for all Kubrick films such as The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut, Barry Lyndon and worked on other unrealised projects with Stanley Kubrick.

After Kubrick’s death in 1999 he worked with Steven Spielberg on “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” and made documentaries on Stanley Kubrick and the actor Malcolm McDowell for Warner Bros.

Jan Harlan is currently co-producing Lech Majewski's Valley of the Gods starring Jaime Ray Newman and John Malkovich.

photo credits: Freek van Asperen — *photo credits: Freek van Asperen*

WILLEKE VAN AMMELROOY, actress (Antonia, the Lift, Ciske de Rat)

Willeke has been seen for decades as one of the biggest movie stars in the Netherlands. She has starred in more than 70 movies, including some 'classics' such as: 'De Lift', 'Ciske de Rat', 'Wan Pipel'. Her feature debut was in Mira (1971) by the hand of Oscar-winner Fons Rademakers, this movie was nominated for a Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival. She played Antonia in the Oscar-winning feminist film 'Antonia's Line', this role also granted her the golden calf for best actress. In 2000 she won a golden calf again for her role in 'Lijmen het been'. In 2006 she played Sandra Bullock's mother in The Lake House starring also Keanu Reeves.

In 2012 she won the Golden Calf Culture Prize (aka the Dutch Honorary Oscar) for her contribution to Dutch cinema.
Willeke also stepped in directing, and she directed several short films, commercials and the feature film 'THE Butterfly lifts the CAT'.

Willeke can be seen in Frans Weisz' upcoming movie 'Het leven is vurrukkulluk'.

photo credits: Bowie Verschuuren — *photo* *credits: Bowie Verschuuren*

JOHANNA TER STEEGE, actress (Spoorloos, Paradise Road)

Johanna ter Steege won the European Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for her movie debut in George Sluizer’s The Vanishing (1988).

Inevitably, her career shifted from the theatre to the cinema. For the past twelve years she has traveled all over the world, acting in different languages and working with renowned directors, such as Robert Altman (Vincent & Theo), István Szabó (Dear Emma, Sweet Böbe), Heddy Honigmann (Goodbye, for which she won Best Actress at the Locarno International Film Festival), Bruce Beresford (Paradise Road) among many others. Johanna has also worked with actors such as Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Frances McDormand, Isabella Rossellini and Tim Roth.

In January 2001 ter Steege played Countess Geschwitz, in the play "Lulu", directed by Jonathan Kent, both in the Almeida Theatre in London and in Washington.

In 1993, she was a member of the jury at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival and was awarded with the Berlinale Camera.

In 1994, after Julia Roberts and Uma Thurman declined, Stanley Kubrick cast her for his adaptation of Louis Begley's novel Wartime Lies. Kubrick abandoned the project after it became clear that Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List would be released first.

MARC VAN WARMERDAM, producer (A gentle Creature, Borgman)

Marc van Warmerdam is a Dutch film and theatre producer. He is leading the Amsterdam based music/theatre company Orkater. With his company Graniet Film he produces the films of his brother Alex van Warmerdam: The Dress, Little Tony, Grimm, Waiter, The Last Days of Emma Blank, Borgman and Schneider vs. Bax. He is the founder of Het Ketelhuis, cinema for the Dutch film in Amsterdam. In 2012 he initiated the Culture Bank; unsold theatre and cinema seats are made available to clients of the Food Bank. Untill 2016 he was for five years chairman of the Dutch Filmproducers Association. In 2013 he won a Golden Calf for Best Dutch Film with feature film Borgman. Among the many prizes and nominations Borgman was nominated for the Golden Palm of the Cannes Film Festival. Schneider vs. Bax premiered at the Locarno Festival 2016. Marc van Warmerdam co-produced A gentle Creature (Golden Palm Competition 2017) and Donbass (2018) by Sergei Loznitsa and Un Ange (2018) by Koen Mortier.

ATE DE JONG, director (Highway to Hell, Drop Dead Fred)

Ate de Jong studied at the Film academy of Amsterdam. He directed 6 feature films in The Netherlands before moving to Hollywood.

His first directing assignment was an episode of Miami Vice (starring Don Johnson, Philip Michael Thomas, James Brown and Chris Rock) His US features include: Highway to Hell (starring Chad Lowe, Kristy Swanson, Gilbert Gotfried and Ben Stiller) and Drop Dead Fred (starring Rik Mayall, Phoebe Cates, Carrie Fisher, Marsha Mason and Bridget Fonda). He made a comedy radio show for NPR broadcasted nationwide in the USA.

Living in London he directed All Men Are Mortal (starring Stephen Rea, Irene Jacob, Chiara Mastroianni and Marianne Saegebrecht) based on the book of Simone de Beauvoir and the sexy thriller Fogbound (starring Luke Perry and Ben Daniels). He produced international pictures Left Luggage (Isabella Rossellini, Maximilian Schell and Topol) and The Discovery Of Heaven (Stephen Fry). He recently made Deadly Virtues: Love. Honour. Obey with Raindance. And Love Is Thicker Than Water starring Johnny Flynn, Lydia Wilson, Juliet Stevenson and Henry Goodman.

GARETH WILEY, producer (Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona)

guest curated by FEST FILM LAB

Gareth has been working as a film producer & executive producer for over a decade.

Since 2004, he has produced independent feature films with budgets totalling over $100 million including four with Woody Allen. Having persuaded the New Yorker to move his 2004 movie to London. the collaboration grew until in January 2009 he won a Best Picture Golden Globe for Woody’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”. This was Gareth’s second Golden Globe nomination in four years, having been previously nominated in 2006 for his first collaboration with Woody Allen, “Match Point”.
In 2013, Gareth launched a new online film finance tool, www.screenadvantage.com. This online application makes all Gareth’s proprietary film financing modelling tools available to the industry as a whole and has been widely praised.'

MEA DOLS DE JONG, director (If Mama Ain't Happy, Nobody's Happy, Nettiquette)

Mea Dols de Jong (1988) graduated at the Netherlands Film Academy in 2014. She received worldwide critical acclaim for her graduation film IF MAMA AIN’T HAPPY NOBODY’S HAPPY which has won 27 (international) awards. In 2016 Mea was named one of the “Top 10 Europeans to Watch” by Variety and listed by leading Dutch newspaper NRC as one of 100 most influential people in the Dutch Cultural sector.

Originally studying to become a fiction director, Mea changed course and switched to documentary directing. The influence of fiction remains a thread throughout her documentary work.

She directed commercials for the Dutch Heart Foundation, retail chain Albert Heijn and eductional institute LOI. She was nominated twice for the the Dutch Directors Guild Award for Most Outstanding Director in the category Commercials, both in 2015 and 2016.

Co-host

RENÉ MIOCH, film journalist

At twenty, René Mioch went to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time and on radio spoke to film stars like Jack Nicholson, Mel Gibson and Nastassja Kinski.

René Mioch has been known as “Mr. Film” for more than thirty years and is considered “A star among stars.”

He was one of the founders in 2005 of FCCE, a company engaged in the production, distribution and exploitation of film-related content. FCCE also produces a daily newsfeed that goes to more than 49 countries. Thirty people work at the company headquarters in Amsterdam. The company has offices in Los Angeles and Beijing as well.

Mioch is also the initiator of the Rembrandt Award, the only online People’s Choice Film Award in the Netherlands.

He won an Emmy Award in 2013 with his business partner Justus Verkerk for The Entertainment Experience, a user-generated concept in collaboration with Paul Verhoeven.

Career Award

The Shortcutz Amsterdam Career Award is given yearly to a film personality whose work has contributed to the development and prestige of Dutch film at home and abroad.

This year’s recipient is documentary living-legend Heddy Honigmann.

Heddy Honigmann is considered one of the world’s best documentary filmmakers. Her films (short & long fictions, short & long documentaries) have traveled all around the world receiving major awards and important retrospectives as in Toronto, the Museum of Modern Art in NY, Paris, Berlin, Minneapolis, Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Ontario, Utrecht, Grasz, Chicago and Berkeley between others.

She has also received many important awards for her entire work, as the Living Legend Award at IDFA (2013), the Dortmund Honorary Award for Documentary Film (2013, the Hot Docs Outstanding Achievement Award (2007), the San Francisco Films Society’s Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award (2007), the J. Van Praag Award from the Humanist Association (2005) Netherlands, the award for her Contribution to the Art of Documentary Filmmaking at the Thessaloniki Film Festival (2004), the Jan Cassies award for her whole oeuvre from the Dutch National Fund for Cultural Films for Television (2003) Netherlands.

When she received in 2007 the San Francisco Persistence of Vision Award, John Anderson (a regular contributor to Newsday, the New York Times, Variety and the Guardian of London), wrote the following about Heddy’s work:

Heddy Honigmann Is Good for You… and her films are appetising antidepressants. Penguins, fast food and fat guys in baseball caps all have been credited with raising the profile of the documentary in recent years, but these are aberrations, stupid pet tricks at the symphony. Among the real artists of nonfiction, Heddy is as responsible as anyone for raising the standards of doc-making worldwide. She flexes the form to meet her purposes, but never sacrifices style or integrity. She champions the dispossessed without sermonising, and she injects just enough of herself in her films to give us a sense of the woman behind the movie without ever eclipsing the subject or the substance, the sense of space or the sense of place (...)

Film critic Hans Beerekamp made a beautiful introduction speech to Heddy Honigmann's career award.

HANS BEEREKAMP, film critic

Hans Beerekamp (Amsterdam, 1952) was a film critic for Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad (1977-2003). Later he wrote a daily column about television and media (2003-17) for the same paper. In 2018 he starts a new weekly column (‘Cliffhanger’) on tv series. He wrote the booklet ‘Docupedia NL’ (2011) on documentary genres in Dutch film.

Check out a short video tribute of Heddy Honigmann's stunning career:

Edited by Magda Lepczyńska

Watch some winning short films

The winning short films in the categories: best film, best animation, best documentary and best experimental, were screened in their entirety.

[AFTER-PARTY] 5th-anniversary

Actor and DJ Egbert-Jan Weeber took care of the DJ activity of our 5th -anniversary after-party.

shortcutz amsterdam's jury team 2017

Shortcutz Amsterdam jury team was this year composed of: actor Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner); producer Jan Harlan (The Shining), actor Tygo Gernandt (Van God Los); director Roel Reiné (Marvel's Inhumans); actress Willeke van Ammelrooy (Antonia's Line); director Eddy Terstall (Simon); producer Pieter Kuijpers (Van God Los); Marina Blok, Head of Drama ntr; actor Vincent van Ommen (Amsterdam Heavy), documentary producer Harmen Jalvingh (Becoming Zlatan), Nederlands Film Festival programmer Claire van Daal, EYE senior programmer and head of acquisitions René Wolf, and street-artist Laser 3.14.

WINNERS & nominees

Here’s the full list of nominees:

MR. ZEE BEST FILM
I WAS ONLY 14 (Froukje van Wengerden)
CHE! (Elsbeth Fraanje)
TABOOK (Dario Van Vree )
BRIDGE (Niels Bourgonje)
ROUTINE (Fokke Mars)
A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY (Jan Verdijk & Kurt Platvoet) ***** WINNER
SKOGAFOSS (Niels Bourgonje)

MR. ZEE AUDIENCE AWARD
I WAS ONLY 14 (Froukje van Wengerden)
CHE! (Elsbeth Fraanje)
TABOOK (Dario Van Vree )
BRIDGE (Niels Bourgonje)
ROUTINE (Fokke Mars)
A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY (Jan Verdijk & Kurt Platvoet) ***** WINNER
SKOGAFOSS (Niels Bourgonje)

MR. ZEE BEST DIRECTOR
Elsbeth Fraanje (CHE!)
Jan Verdijk & Kurt Platvoet (A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY) ***** WINNER
Niels Bourgonje (SKOGAFOSS)
Nils Vleugels (LABOR)

MR. ZEE BEST SCREENPLAY
#TAGGED (Martijn Winkler)
A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY (Jan Verdijk & Kurt Platvoet) ***** WINNER
LABOR (Nils Vleugels)
SKOGAFOSS (Bastiaan Tichler)
SWEET TOOTH (Nico van den Brink)

MR. ZEE BEST ACTRESS
Amélie Bernard (TWO DOLLARS)
Ilke Paddenburg (SWEET TOOTH)
Jacqueline Blom (A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY) ***** WINNER
Jun Jun Liang (GHOST )

MR. ZEE BEST ACTOR
Bart Slegers (PENSIONADO)
Hans Dagelet (SALVATORE)
Raymond Thiry (A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY) ***** WINNER
Yannick Jozefzoon (NETFLIX & CHILL)

MR. ZEE BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
AERTS (Erik Journée)
EVERYTHING IS ENDLESSLY (COMPLEX) (Florens de Graaf)
LABOR (Myrthe Mosterman) ***** WINNER
OSU (Noel Schoolderman)
VIGOR (Joris Bulstra)

MR. ZEE BEST EDITING
AMUSE (Ivo van Aart)
LABOR (Ruben Labree)
OSU (Sjoerd Dekker)
SWEET TOOTH (Xander Nijsten) ***** WINNER

MR. ZEE BEST ANIMATION
PARADE (Digna van der Put) ***** WINNER
ROUTINE (Fokke Mars)
SCRAMBLED (Bastiaan Schravendeel)
SHORT BUT SWEET (Junaid Chundrigar)
TABOOK (Dario Van Vree )

MR. ZEE BEST DOCUMENTARY
CHE! (Elsbeth Fraanje) ***** WINNER
I AM FAMOUS (Ismaël Lotz)
I WAS ONLY 14 (Froukje van Wengerden)
WHAT TIME IS IT? (Karine Versluis)

MR. ZEE BEST EXPERIMENTAL
AMUSE (Jonne Covers & Ivo van Aart)
EIN PROST (Noel Loozen) ***** WINNER
RETINA (Justin Heyl)
UNSEEN (Justin Krul)