Impakt Awards 2006
After an enervating 17th issue of the Impakt Festival, the time has come to take stock. Under the header “The Great Outdoors” Impakt presented many outdoor projects this year. The first Dutch solo exhibition of the Swiss artist Olaf Breuning, the Panorama program, a retrospective of the Flemish visual artist Hans Op de Beeck and a video program on Street Art offered the public a broad range of films and videos. Many of the works in the Panorama program had their Dutch premiers during the festival. These works were eligible for an Impakt Award. The total prize money was 3000 Euro. For the first time this year, there is also a Juicy Meadows Award of 2000 Euro in kind for the best Dutch production. The Juicy Meadows Award is supported by BeamSystems, Projection and Video, Amsterdam.
The jury consisted of Hilde Teerlinck, Chris Keulemans and Patrick Huber this year.
After having viewed the works and having consulted each other lengthily jurycame to the following decision:

JUICY MEADOWS BEAMSYSTEMS AWARD 2006
2000 Euro in kind
Beginnings
Roy Villevoye (The Netherlands 2005, video, 18:40 min)

GOLDEN IMPAKT AWARD 2006
1500 Euro
Luukkaankangas – updated, revisited
Dariusz Kowalski (Austria 2004, video, 08:00 min)

SILVER IMPAKT AWARD 2006
1000 Euro
Wir sind dir treu
Michael Koch (Germany 2005, 35mm video, 09:05 min)

BRONZE IMPAKT AWARD 2006
500 Euro
Collage
Stina Wirfelt (Sweden 2004, video, 07:25 min)

IMPAKT FESTIVAL 2006
HONOURABLE MENTION
Inch’Allah
Ria Paqcuée (Belgium 2005, video, 18:40 min)

IMPAKT FESTIVAL 2006
HONOURABLE MENTION
Das Modell
Florian Gwinner (Germany 2006, video, 06:14 min)



Impakt Awards Jury Rapport


Juicy Meadows BeamSystems Award
‘Beginnings’ Roy Villevoye

Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden… called Papua. After his previous films in Papua, Villevoye is ready to embark on even deeper explorations. This time not only into the country and its people, but also into questions of history, culture and religion. But no pretensions, no Western superiority. Just a man and a woman, walking naked through nature. The first couple is black, the second white. They move with similar ease, and they keep a similar distance to the Genesis story they resemble so much. Their experiences merge. The Papuans are aware of going naked for the camera’s sake, and negotiate a decent fee. The Western woman is aware of the added meaning to her dream of being bitten by a snake, in this landscape resembling paradise. Since Adam and Eve, humanity is far from innocent; still, Villevoye’s work breathes an atmosphere, a quiet and natural rhythm, that comes very close to innocence – until it flips the viewer’s preconceptions yet again.



Golden Impakt Award 2006
Luukkaankangas – updated, revisited Dariusz Kowalski (Austria)

Every filmmaker dreams of recording what happens in his absence. Webcams make this dream come true. So, what is actually going on, on the highways of Finland, without a filmmaker in sight? Absolutely nothing. Day becomes night, night becomes day. It snows, it rains, the sun shines, it snows. And yet, in Dariusz Kowalski’s vibrating edit of Finnish Road Administration webcam images, the roads come alive. They pulse, breath, crackle and sweep. Kowalski’s editing, the pimping up of the static images and the organic way the electronic music follows and anticipates the movements of nature make this a breathtaking work of art. The irony is that it is exactly the instruments of urban technology – the webcams, the editing, the music – that make this video stand up against any of the best landscape painting. The lure of barren countryside made accessible to 21st century city citizens.



Silver Impakt Award 2006
Wir sind dir treu Michael Koch (Germany)

The crowd animator at FC Basel’s home games doesn’t follow the match. He faces the crowd piling up against the stands in front of him. Michael Koch has a fantastic eye for detail in this pumping, pulsating short piece about power, groups and art – anything but football. The animator is the king, the dictator: the crowd obeys his every move. They chant what he chants, curse what he curses. But the camera catches the anxiety in his face. He cannot let their attention slip for a second. Whatever happens on the pitch behind him, where the real stars are performing, he has to keep the crowd at his control. In the throbbing close-ups of the animator, Koch’s video is also a portrait of the artist at work. There’s no life for him outside this stadium, outside the audience. He is their king, but he is their slave.



Bronze Impakt Award 2006
Collage Stina Wirfelt (Sweden)

A love story about a man, a woman and their yellow car. Compiled from personal archives and internet images, the yellow car and the romantic voyages it once undertook appear, in Stina Werfelt’s sensitive and gently humorous narration, as a part of collective memory. Anyone could have made those trips, or at least imagined them. And as the romantic roadtrip unfolds, it is inevitable that not only faceless, common owners of a yellow car play a role, but also some of the more well-known faces that circulate the internet. Kim Basinger enters and exits just as randomly as do the Russian villagers, the looming trucks and the neighbors on their way for a holiday. Wirfelt weaves the contingency of surfing the internet expertly into her storyline. This is a lighthearted, wise and quirky way of telling a story that wouldn’t have been possible before the net. Which doesn’t save the main characters, however, of ending up where every yellow car lovestory ends up: on the parking place in front of the shopping mall.



Special Mentions


Inch’Allah Ria Paqcuée (Belgium)

At a time when we have so much global material available a mouseclick away, and find it so hard to shape colliding images into a meaningful piece of work, this video comes as a relief. Ria Pacqué traveled through the West and the East, through Europe, North-Africa and the Middle-East, shot her own material, and makes an effort at finding a poetic connection between widely separate images, citing Edmond Jabès: ‘At noon he found himself facing the infinite…’ People everywhere struggle against the storms of extremism, selfdestruction and emptiness. But there is also beauty and the simple pleasures of everyday life. Paqcuée is a sophisticated artist, guiding her material along without becoming a moralist. We hope she will continue her travels.



Das Modell Florian Gwinner (Germany)

Starting at a white horizon, the camera moves slowly closer. On his way, he glides past the first signs of human existence. Gradually, these make way for a church, houses, cars – the widening streets and the highrises of a city. While the model of urban architecture itself is already impressive, the real fascination of Gwinner’s video lies in his paradoxical use of material. On the outskirts of city life, he works in painstaking detail. Once the city looms higher and the buildings get bigger, he starts adding elements in an almost slapdash style. Plastic straws, eggcartons, boxes. Life in the city is made up of throwaway stuff. And then, logical to the eye but amazing to the mind, the trip through urban nowhereland ends up right at your feet, underneath a chair in your room.