Last night saw the announcement in the Schouwburg of the three winners of the Tiger Awards for Short Film Competition. Thirty-one films of up to sixty minutes in length competed.
This year's three Tiger Awards for Short Film were granted to Condolences (Wei Wen) by Ying Liang (China), Atlantiques by Mati Diop (France/Senegal), who also acted in Claire Denis' 35 Rhums (IFFR 2009), and Wednesday Morning Two A.M. by Lewis Klahr (USA).
The international jury was made up of Jeremy Rigsby (programmer of Media City Festival in Windsor, Canada), Shai Heredia (director of Filter India Festival, Mumbai, India) and filmmaker, writer, visual artist and teacher Albert Wulffers (the Netherlands).
The Rotterdam Short Film Nomination for the European Film Awards 2010 went to Out of Love by Brigitte Staermose (Denmark). The NPS New Arrivals Award – an online platform for short films organised by the festival and Dutch broadcasting company NPS – went to Dutchman Robert Jan Vos' Dag buurvrouw (Goodbye Neighbour) (Netherlands). The film can be seen online at www.newarrivals.nps.nl.
IFFR founded its shorts version of the Tiger Awards in 2005 to recognise shorts as a highly influential art form and a realm in which cinema is being democratised and popularised through online and digital developments – a trend clearly illustrated by the fact that Malaysian filmmaker Ho Yuhang, who is one of the three directors taking part in IFFR's Cinema Reloaded audience co-production project, won a Tiger in 2008 for his short As I Lay Dying.