THE NILSSON AWARD FOR HARUTYUN KHACHATRYAN
September 1, 2010 16:12
Filmmakers Alliance is pleased to announce that starting in 2010, we have invited Rob Nilsson to curate the film award which bears his name.
The inaugural recipient in 2008, Nilsson will select a filmmaker who, in his judgment, opens up new territory, or transforms the old, with unique artistry and an eye for “the way things seem to be.” The award will be given annually at VisionFest - presented by Filmmakers Alliance in August at the Directors Guild of America.
This year’s award recipient will be Harutyun Khachatryan from Armenia.
Nilsson’s Commentary: “When I saw Harutyun’s BORDER I felt I was seeing an entirely new kind of film. I hadn’t felt that way since John Cassavetes’ SHADOWS in 1960. Neither documentary nor narrative in the usual sense, BORDER comes from a place which bridges past and present in a mysterious way words don’t grasp. This is not an avant garde. film. I would call it après garde, going past the, by now, well trodden surrealist terrain once called ‘experimental’. This film does not experiment. It creates an experience. One which the modern world needs to have”.
Harutyun Khachatryan has made eleven feature films including the recent RETURN OF THE POET (2005), and DOCUMENTARIST (2003), and going back to 1981’s THE VOICES OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
He is also head of the Golden Apricot Film Festival, Armenia’s premiere event each July in Yerevan. His recent honors include retrospectives in Moscow, Montevideo and Tbilisi.
Rob Nilsson: By the end of 2010, Nilsson will have completed 30 feature films. Awards include the Camera d’Or at Cannes (with John Hanson), the Grand Prize at the Sundance Film festival and the San Francisco Critic’s Circle Marlon Riggs Award for 9 @ Night, nine interlocking dramatic features about people on America’s rough edges.
