There is a link between two of the men nominated for Academy Awards this year. Denis Villeneuve, nominated for Best Director for Arrival, and Theodore Ushev, nominated for Best Animated Short for Blind Vaysha, have received Golden Sheaf awards.
Ushev took home Best of Festival in 2011 for Lipsett Diaries and won Best Animation for Gloria Victoria in 2014. Villeneuve took home Best of Festival back in 1995 with Querer: Cirque du Soleil. They are not the first people to win in Yorkton to go on to get recognition from the Oscars. It’s unlikely that they will be the last. They do highlight the value of the festival overall.
Having an award-winning film opens doors, it gets recognition and it allows the people behind it to continue to get financing, make films and continue their career. This is true whether it’s someone taking home the bigger prizes of the festival or one of the smaller awards. Having an award in your past is a good way to get people to take you seriously.
When I spoke to Ushev after he won the Best of Festival award in 2011, he described the award as the biggest honour he had ever had. He also made a point of talking about how animation sometimes struggles to get taken seriously, and rarely takes home the top award at a festival.
The second point is one of the other ones in favor of the local festival, the Best of Festival award is wide open. Villeneuve’s Golden Sheaf winning film isn’t very similar to Ushev’s – and both are very different from Sex Spirit Strength, which won the most recent Best of Festival award. That means everything is taken seriously. We do ourselves a disservice if we don’t think that animation, for example, is not worthy of being considered the best film. Yorkton’s jury certainly gives themselves a big challenge when they leave the best of festival category so wide open, but it reflects the wide range of voices working in short film in this country.
The Yorkton Film Festival is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, and the careers of its alumni are a good example of what they have accomplished in 70 years. Not just the Oscar winners, any of the filmmakers who have had the opportunity to make more quality work thanks to making the trip to Yorkton for the festival are a part of the festival’s legacy.
I don’t know if anyone nominated in this year’s festival is going to go on to get nominated for an Academy Award. I don’t know if they’re going to have the opportunity helm “one of the most expensive R-rated films ever made” as Villeneuve’s next picture, Blade Runner 2049, has been described. But I do know that every year we get a crop of films from talented people, and I know that the Yorkton Film Festival and the Academy Awards have recognized many of the same people. They frequently win a Golden Sheaf first, and that’s why the festival is important.
