2006 Competions

The Darklight Festival Awards:

Animation Award - Who I Am And What I Want by David Shrigley and Chris Shepherd sponsored by The Laptop Shop, St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre

Honourable Mention - Leviathan by Simon Bogojevic Narath and Collision by Max Hattler

Irish Short Award - Covered Road by Anne Maree Barry sponsored by IFTN and Darklight

Honourable Mention - The Burden of Expectation by Wil Brennan

Long Form Film Award - joint winners - Columbarium by Tony Kenny and From Hell to Heaven by Khaled Abu Ajamia sponsored by Darklight

International Short Award - Fingering and Footing by Catherine Ross sponsored by Adobe

Honourable Mention - New Game: The War by Anna Maliszewska

Student Film Award - December Version 1 by Anita Delaney sponsored by Adobe

Honourable Mention - My Life At 40 by Laurie Hill

Audience Award - Fallen Art by Tomek Baginski sponsored by Krombacher/Noreast Beers

Nokia/Darklight Pocket Movie Challenge - sponsored by Nokia Ireland.

Professional Category: Shed by Paul Barritt
Newcomer Category: Hote You! by Julian Andrade

Runners Up - Ebb Away by Gautam Kansara & Washing Up Liturgy by Leo Earle

Aart Helder (1972)

Aart earned his masters in Art History at the University of Amsterdam. As trainee he worked for a television program of the Dutch broadcast organization NPS and stayed. Aart got involved in several websites on cultural issues and has been surfing the new media wave ever since. He's been running all kind of projects, ranging from cross media covering of festivals like North Sea Jazz to Webdans, a competition he initiated for modern dance and the internet. Since 2001 Aart is co-editing NPS Korte Film Online, the website for short film in the Netherlands. Together with Ingrid Walschots he extended this site with an international public stage for short film, NPS New Arrivals. Recently they launched Xtra Small, a website dedicated to films made with or especially for small screens of cell phones and game consoles.

Aart Helder Links

• www.cinema.nl/kortefilm
• www.cinema.nl/xtrasmall
• www.cinema.nl/newarrivals

John Thomson

John Thomson has been Director of Distribution at Electronic Arts Intermix, New York, since 2000. He is also a co-director and founder of Foxy Production, a leading contemporary art gallery in New York. He has been active in media arts on an international level since the 1980s. Before moving to New York in 2000, he researched media art digitization and distribution for the Lux Centre, London. In 1998 he was Coordinator of Pandaemonium Festival, London, and in 1997 he co-curated the Lux's inaugural moving image exhibition program. He has curated media art programs and exhibitions for the Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley; the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart; Tate Britain, London; The Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Exit Art, New York; and Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, among other venues. He has lectured in media arts at the London Institute, and the School of Visual Arts, New York. He has written for "Mesh", Melbourne; "Art in Culture", Seoul; and has written on media art preservation in "Art Between Zero and One: A Manual of Digital Art", Christoph Kehl and Beat Raeber, eds., Basel (upcoming, 2006).