Prize awarded to Na’ama Shohet from Bezalel Academy for Art & Design
& Shulamit Lifshitz from Ma’ale Film School
For the ninth consecutive year, the Jerusalem Foundation selected winning films for the Sir Jack Lyons Charitable Trust Award for best short film directed by a second year student or higher. Film schools each enter up to five short films in the competition with an advantage for films with a Jerusalem connection.
Naama Shohet’s Dreams of Elsewhere: Fragments from the relationship
between Sary and Naama, an Arab and Jew living together in Jerusalem
Na’ama Shohet from Bezalel Academy for Art & Design, writer, director and animator of the documentary film “Dreams of Elsewhere” and Shulamit Lifshitz from the Ma’ale Film School, writer and director of “Noa”, took home the coveted Lyons prizes for 2019. Each awardee received $2,500 and a working trip to Canada this coming May 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. Already last year, the prize committee gave Shulamit Lipschitz honourable mention for her film “Miriam”, later screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival along with the films of the 2018 Lyons prize recipients. For the second consecutive year, the Jerusalem Development Authority’s Jerusalem Film & Television Fund gave each recipient an additional 6,000 NIS to develop their next project.
Shulamit Lifshitz’ Noa: A young teenager escapes her dangerous
home with some tough decisions to make when her sister is at stake
The prize committee’s panel of jurists consisted of film director Michal Pinsky (winner of this very same award in 2012 for her film “Snow in the Spring”), cinematographer Yoram Milloh, film editor Ora Maimon-Pilevsky and the Jerusalem Foundation’s Projects Department director Ruth Diskin with observer status on the panel. Nominated this year were a total of 15 films from four leading Jerusalem film schools: the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, the Ma’aleh School of Television, Film & the Arts and the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.
“The Jerusalem Foundation is proud to support these and other annual film prizes that help encourage film making in Jerusalem and strengthen our city’s exceptional institutions of higher education in the arts “, says Anat Tzur, the Jerusalem Foundation’s director-general. “We are grateful for the partnership and generous support of the Sir Jack Lyons Charitable Trust that enables us to provide invaluable international exposure to Jerusalem artists.”