The Sir Jack Lyons Charitable Trust Student Film Prize was awarded to Einat Gaulan of the Sam Spiegel School and Boris Haimov from the Bezalel Academy
For the eighth consecutive year, the Jerusalem Foundation selected winning films for the Sir Jack Lyons Charitable Trust Award for a short film directed by a second year student or higher. Film schools can each enter up to five short films in the competition with an advantage for films with a Jerusalem connection.
Einat Gaulan from the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, director of “Next Stop” and Boris Haimov, student at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, director of “Parallels”, took home this year’s prizes. Each awardee received $2,500 and a working trip to Canada for meetings with key figures in the Canadian film and television industry and possible screenings in the Toronto Jewish Film Festival and the Montreal Israel Film Festival. Director Shulamit Lipschitz from the Ma’aleh Film School also received honourable mention for her film “Miriam”. For the first time this year, the Jerusalem Development Authority’s Jerusalem Film and Television Fund gave each Lyons Prize winner an additional sum of 6,000 NIS to develop their next project.
The prize committee’s panel of jurists consists of the Jerusalem Film and Television Fund’s director Yoram Honig, documentary director/producer Chanoch Ze’evi, film director and Jerusalem Filmmaker’s Association chairman Benjamin Friedenberg and the Jerusalem Foundation’s Projects Department director Ruth Diskin with observer status on the panel. Nominated this year were a total of 13 films from four leading Jerusalem film schools: the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, the Ma’aleh School of Television, Film & the Arts; Musrara -The Naggar Multidisciplinary School of Art and Society and the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.
“These prizes join a variety of Jerusalem Foundation supported measures to encourage film making in Jerusalem and strengthen institutions of higher education in the arts in the city”, says Anat Tzur, director-general of the Jerusalem Foundation. “We are delighted to have the opportunity to do so thanks to a generous donor who highly values international exposure for Jerusalem art.”
