Tokyo Video Festival

January 30, 2000

JVC Announces Winners of
22nd Tokyo Video Festival
@
:Top prizes go to Hokkaido senior high school and Spanish video author.
:A special 20th Century Grand Prize to veteran Shigeru Kawata.
:Formal announcement and awards ceremony on Sunday, January 30 at Ebisu Garden Place, Tokyo.

Victor Company of Japan, Limited (JVC) awarded 49 prizes for excellence in video during the 22nd Tokyo Video Festival. A total of 2,018 works from 32 countries competed in the contest.

The Awards Ceremony will be held on Sunday, January 30, 2000 at The Garden Hall in Eibisu Garden Place (Tokyo).

This yearƒ†s Video Grand Prize went to 4,000 Pictures Remain(Nokosareta 4000-mai no E), a video by the Moiwa Senior High School Broadcasting Department in Sapporo, Hokkaido. The group received 500,000 in prize money, a JVC video camera, and a VCR. The video was inspired by the Young Artists of Terezin exhibit that was held in Sapporo and showed drawings secretly made by children in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The students used the video to rediscover history and highlight the cruelties of war.

The JVC Grand Prize went to ruido by Pedro Ballesteros of Spain. He received 500,000 in prize money, a JVC video camera, and a 1 week round-trip to Japan. ruido used digital graphics processing to create a humorous depiction of the disasters that strike a salesman, and in doing so provide sharp and insightful social commentary.

The judges also awarded a special 20th Century Grand Prize to Shigeru Kawata, a three-time winner of the Video Grand Prize. He received 500,000 in prize money and a JVC video camera. Kawataƒ†s submission, Growing Old (Oinazumu) was praised by the judges for making excellent use of video, the personal visual medium developed in the 20th century, to create a world of original expression.

This yearƒ†s contributions were remarkable for the number of young artists entering work and for the wide-spread use of digital video processing. A growing number of works made skillful use of videoƒ†s potential as a documentary, expressive, communicative, and entertainment medium to forcefully deliver the messages intended by their creators.

The judges were Nobuhiko Ohbayashi, film director; Hakudo Kobayashi, video artist; Makoto Shiina, novelist; Naoto Takenaka, actor and film director; Fujiko Nakaya, video artist; Susumu Hani, film director; and Shingo Kawata, Associate Director and Deputy General Manager, Video Products Division, JVC. In addition, Mari Christine, cross-cultural communicator, is serving as a guest judge. Live broadcasts of the ceremony will be provided on the internet at http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/tvf/index-e.html from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. today.