FOCAL Awards highlights

May 1, 2010 by Barry Walsh

Famed film director Martin Scorsese was among the hundreds of professionals from film and television on hand in London for the FOCAL Awards, presented by The Federation of Commercial Audiovisual Libraries International (FOCAL) in association with AP Archive.

Scorsese picked up an award for best archive restoration/preservation project, for his work on restoring the 1948 film classic The Red Shoes. ‘FOCAL International serves a crucial role in preservation by promoting and highlighting restoration work and recognizing the technical expertise required,’ said Scorsese, who accepted the award along with Fiona Maxwell, ITV director of operations, ITV Global. ‘It’s an honor to be recognized among the excellent group of projects that received nominations this year.’

Also among that group were JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America, produced by New Animal Productions for History, and Under the Banners, produced by France’s AMIP. Both picked up awards for best use of footage in factual productions, as did the BBC’s Crude Britannia: The Story of North Sea Oil.

The BBC fared considerably well, picking up awards for The Great British Foreign Holiday, which claimed the prize for best use of footage in an entertainment production, as well as for Legends: The Motown Invasion (best use of footage in an arts, music or drama production); Empire of Cricket (best use of sports footage) and Witness: Apartheid, South Africa (best use of footage in a corporate or educational production). Adam Curtis’ innovative It Felt like a Kiss, a multimedia project that combined archive footage with live theater, won the award for best use of footage on non-television platforms.

NHNZ’s Shark Nicole picked up the award for best use of wildlife and natural history stock footage. AP Archive was named footage library of the year, while film researcher Barry Purkis (BBC’s ‘Panorama’) earned the Jane Mercer Footage Researcher of the Year award for his work on The Lost World of Communism. A special award was presented by Lord Melvyn Bragg to honor the researchers that had contributed to UK arts program The South Bank Show over its 30 years, while David Atkinson received a lifetime achievement nod for his 50-year career which incorporated work on restoration projects and archive-based programming.

The ceremony was once again hosted by Lord David Puttnam, FOCAL International’s Chair of Patrons, and brought together close to 400 media professionals from the UK and around the world.