Filminute: Filminute 2012: And the winners are...

LONDON/BUCHAREST/TORONTO, October 10, 2012 – Awards for the 7th edition of Filminute, the international one-minute film festival, were announced today. UK director Ant Blade's dramatic and hilarious animation CHOP CHOP took top honours with the jury, while fellow Brit Ben Jacobson's comic thriller, CANDY CRIME was the favourite selected by Filminute’s voting public.

The 7-member international jury which included Prasoon Joshi, Radu Jude, Arjun Basu, Lenora Hume & Gyorgy Karpati, gave animation its strongest year ever at the festival with Best Filminute as well as 3 of the 5 Jury Commendations going to the animations M/W 9/11 (USA), A HERO'S TALE (UK), and Ant Blade’s second film in the competition, WILDEBEEST (UK). The moving and beautiful Dutch documentary SARINA and the darkly amusing Lithuanian film CUT! rounded out the jury-commended films at Filminute 2012.

The race for the People's Choice award at Filminute 2012 was close right up to the finish with CANDY CRIME emerging as the winner, followed by CIUDAD HELSING (Argentina) and THE KEY (Canada). Audiences from more than 130 countries tuned in to watch this year’s collection.

The Top Rated film for 2012 was won by Georgian director Tamta Gabrichidze. Her stark and provocative film LADY I received an impressive 4.8 rating (out of 5) from the public.

“Comedy-driven animations and challenging dramatic works stood out at Filminute 2012,” said Filminute executive director and head of jury, John Ketchum. “It was also exciting to see the festival’s footprint continue to grow with particularly strong gains in the east - including Lithuania, Georgia, Turkey and Russia – as well as in South America, where Argentina, Colombia and Mexico continue to produce more one-minute films and bigger audiences.

The 7^th edition of the popular online-based short film festival saw social media again demonstrate its power and reach. The festival saw a dramatic increase in the number of festival mentions, reviews of films, and embeds of films on websites, blogs and online media around the world. “Increasingly, independent filmmakers are grasping the power that social media gives them to market their films. Filminute provides an ideal test ground — arguably what works for a one-minute film can work for a feature film when it comes to social media. Both the filmmakers and our festival saw a great return on our social media investments this year,” said co-executive director Sabaa Quao.

Every year, throughout the month of September, Filminute presents an extraordinary array of 25 films online and across a variety of media for festival-goers around the world to enjoy, share and discuss.

More information and full details are available at www.filminute.com. You may follow Filminute on Twitter at http://twitter.com/filminute. On Facebook, follow via http://www.facebook.com/filminute.

Congratulations to the winners!

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Filminute press contacts:

John Ketchum: john.ketchum-AT-filminute.com

Sabaa Quao sabaa.quao-AT-filminute.com
Oana Koulpy filminute2012-AT-gmail.com

LIST OF THE 25 FILMS SHORTLISTED AT FILMINUTE 2012

Argentina

CIUDAD HELSING, Gustavo Cordero

URL http://www.filminute.com/listing.php?type=1&edition=2012&film=171

Belgium

HOL VS. RUS, Piet Sonck

URL http://www.filminute.com/listing.php?type=1&edition=2012&film=191