8th Annual Adam D. Kamil Media Awards
Friday, 18 May, 2018, 5:30-8:30 p.m.
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, Mandeville Center, UC San Diego
The Kamil family, Department of Visual Arts, and School of Arts and Humanities at UC San Diego invite you to the 8th Annual Adam Douglas Kamil Media Awards Reception. Please join us for an evening of film and creativity to honor the memory of Adam Douglas Kamil and showcase the talent of undergraduate UC San Diego students.
The Adam Douglas Kamil Media Awards were developed to help UC San Diego undergraduates polish their skills in film production and to help them realize their creative potential in this field. Adam was a UC San Diego, Visual Arts Media major with a passion for the power of media to connect people. To honor the memory of their son, who passed away in December 2009, the Kamil family has established the Adam Douglas Kamil Media Awards. The award consists of a grand prize of $2000 and two finalist prizes of $1000 each.
All media submissions will be displayed during the week in the Adam D. Kamil Gallery within the Visual Arts Department. The gallery show will culminate with a recognition ceremony and reception. Winners will be announced at this time and will include a screening of the selected project.
ADAM DOUGLAS KAMIL MEDIA AWARDS EXHIBITION
16 - 18 May, 2018, 12-4 p.m.
Adam. D. Kamil Gallery, Mandeville Center, UC San Diego
Free and Open to the Public
“We hope that through this award, Adam’s creative spirit will inspire others to develop their talents and to grow as sympathetic and sensitive individuals,” stated Elaine Kamil.
Undergraduate students from all majors submit their films to be evaluated by a committee of visual arts faculty and graduate students. In January 2014, the Kamil Family endowed the award and in recognition of this contribution, the department has named the Mandeville Annex Gallery as the Adam D. Kamil Gallery. This gallery is a site for undergraduate art shows and hosts the annual reception and exhibition for students that participate in the Adam Douglas Kamil Media Award.
- Grand Prize- $2,000 total
Lone Pair Prelude - Ryan Bradford & Emily Butler - Runner Up 1- $1,000 total
Case 0000 - Claudius Ansah & Cristina Damse - Runner Up 2- $1,000 total
The Sisters - Boyang Xu & Lan Yao
Grand Prize Trailer: Lone Pair Prelude
Associate Professor Mariana Wardwell on Lone Pair Prelude:
The jury was unanimous and enthusiastic in their verdict of the winner of this year. Ryan Bradford´s Lone Pair Prelude is a striking and stunning Sci-Fi experimental narrative constructed through a sophisticated use of frame and voice over. The poetic and allegorical use of urban landscape and text montage presents the 3 characters trapped on a paranoid-eerie near future were the merging of constructed nature and urban infrastructure erodes memory. The speculative and experimental narrative creates a powerful effect of constant transiency and a subtle sense of poetic terminal anxiety. The jury was captivated by the flawless and uncanny visual poetics of the film.
Runner Up Trailer: Case 0000
Associate Professor Mariana Wardwell on Case 0000:
The tragic and pressing human rights state of emergency at the Mexican-USA border becomes a powerful immersive documentary experience in Case 0000 by Claudius Ansah & Cristina Damse. Following on an elaborated and critical understanding of the strategies of direct cinema, this film provides a vital testimony of the heroic work of the community activist as they attempt to subvert the damage done by current and past administrations in regards to the politicization of the border. The jury recognizes the serious and vital importance of the commitment of our students to engage with the most pressing political issues facing us, while understanding that the formal and the political are interrelated the making of socially engaged media practices.
Runner Up Trailer: The Sisters
Associate Professor Mariana Wardwell on The Sisters:
Lucid, eloquent, intimate and full of empathy, Lan Yao and Boyang Xu documentary The Sisters expands the best tradition of documentary cinema as it takes us in a delicious journey with the fabulous LGBT community activists of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in the San Diego Chapter. The emancipatory and healing power of the ritual of drag presented with a direct and rigorous use cinematography. The film brings back the always latent promise of observational cinema as a tool for creating emancipatory and poetic testimonies.
Special Mentions
Alan Luna, Eddie Muallem, Yaniv Shemesh for A land of Living Rebellion:
The radical tradition of the film essay is expanded and made Latino-American and Indigenous in the Paraguayan derive of A land of Living Rebellion by Alan Luna, Eddie Muallem, Yaniv Shemesh. A reflexive and critical travelogue lush and rich in beautiful observation of the peoples of Paraguay and the rebellious poetics of their everyday. This film is full rebellious visual and textual poetry.
Jimmy Cong for Legally Blind:
Cinema is a powerful tool to explore our senses, body experience and cognitive difference. Jimmy Cong´s Legally Blind is a minimalist, immersive and hallucinatory experimental film that opens unto the possibilities of cinema as a medium for critical and poetic understanding of perspectivism and subjectivity. The jury would want to acknowledge the generous beauty of this film in exploring and subverting vision beyond the constructed understanding of the normative-able body.
2018 Entries:
2 Pieces - Ethan Ma
The Artist: Watched - Kelly "Francesca" Moore
Bharathanatyam: A Culture, A Tradition, An Identity - Janani Hariharan & Jun Hyung Park
CASE 0000 - Claudius Ansah & Cristina Damse
Concern - David O'Neill
Femme Fatale - Shayne Cole, Karina Melchor, & Paola Rosas
Greek Dreams - Michael Fee & Clara Shuler
Half - Kenji Bennett
Hurricane - Jialiman Sun
Imagination at Play - Micky Kowalczyk
Impacts of the Border: Air Quality, Health, & Environmental Injustice in San Diego, CA - Anika Ullah & Javier Martinez
Innocuous - Trae Whyte (Dalas O'Donnell)
A Land of Living Rebellion - Alan Luna, Edward Muallem, & Yaniv Shemesh
Legally Blind - Jimmy Cong
Lionheart - Ashley Schuurman
Listen to Me, Do As I Say - Michael Endow
Lone Pair Prelude - Ryan Bradford & Emily Butler
The Most Precious - Dachan Min
Oraciόn a Difunta Correa - Jacquelene Cristina Verna
Photographs - Wendy Rodriguez
The Prologue - Nolan Valerio
The Sisters - Boyang Xu & Lan Yao
Survivors - Douglas Jung
Warriors of God - Justin McHugh
Event photos by Nick Lesley: