TORONTO – Two Canadian documentaries given their world television premiere by VisionTV have earned prizes at the 2005 Columbus International Film and Video Festival.
The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream has received a Silver Chris Awards as best in its division.
The film, written and directed by Gregory Greene and produced by Barry Silverthorn, explains how suburbia has come to embody the aspirations of North American society – and warns of a looming oil crisis that threatens to turn today’s suburbs into tomorrow’s slums.
The End of Suburbia was first broadcast on VisionTV in March 2005. It screens as part of the Columbus Festival on Saturday, Nov. 12.
The Fires that Burn: The Life and Work of Sister Elaine MacInnes, a documentary produced by The May Street Group Film, Video & Animation Ltd. of Victoria, B.C. in association with VisionTV, has also won a Silver Chris.
The film retraces the extraordinary spiritual journey of Sister Elaine MacInnes, a Roman Catholic nun from New Brunswick who has dedicated her life to teaching Zen meditation to men and women in prison. It was directed and edited by Hilary Pryor, who co-wrote and co-produced with Garfield Lindsay Miller.
VisionTV airs The Fires That Burn on Wednesday, Dec. 7 at 10 p.m. ET and Thursday, Dec. 8 at 11 p.m. ET.
Two other documentaries produced in association with VisionTV, Call it Karma and Vendetta Song (a National Film Board of Canada co-production) earned Honourable Mention, as did the network’s current affairs series 360 Vision for the documentary special "One Heart, One Fist," an account of one Toronto priest’s relief convoy to Central America.
The Chris statuettes will be presented at the Columbus Festival awards ceremony on Nov. 12. The festival, now in its 53rd year, is sponsored by the Film Council of Greater Columbus in Ohio. It is recognized as a pre-eminent showcase for outstanding work in film and video.
