PiFan IT PROJECT Wraps Up, Announces Awards For BERANDAL, AM 11:00, NO EXCUSE, PERSONALITY VENDING MACHINE, SMILE FOR ME and CAMERA

Now in it's third year, the It Project is a production market organized by PiFan - the largest genre film event in Asia - and their industry arm NAFF. For those unfamiliar, a project market is a forum for film projects to be presented to interested investors and potential partners, a sort of highly focused meet and greet where the participants are strictly limited and chosen by a board of industry professionals. It's a setup that allows investors to be confident that they'll be seeing the best of the current crop of developing projects and just being selected for a market such of this is a fairly big deal. So I've been rather happy to spend the past five days attending the It Project as a producer on Gareth Huw Evans' upcoming feature Berandal - his second feature built around silat martial artist Iko Uwais. And I'm even happier because this particular production market includes a set of jury-selected awards and Berandal has just won one of them. Here's the full announcement:

Celebrating its third edition with an grand opening past July 18th, an industry program for global genre film professionals, 'Network of Asian Fantastic Films (NAFF2010)' of the 14th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) has closed successfully receiving enthusiastic responses from both PiFan audiences and film industry professionals from Asia and beyond. The closing ceremony, which was held on Thursday, July 22nd, has announced the winners for the core feature program of NAFF, 'It Project', the world's first-ever exclusive genre film project market.

It Project, which has provided 222 meeting opportunities for the production companies and potential investors for the 15 official selections from 8 countries and 4 projects from Taiwan Project Spotlight, has selected the winners from five different sectors.  Award-winning projects at It Project received cash prizes totaling 24,000,000 KRW and post-production sponsorships.

Sponsored by the City of Bucheon, an outstanding project with 10,000,000 KRW cash prize, this year's 'Puchon Award' has been awarded to <Camera> directed by James LEONG from Singapore. A distinguished project selected by PiFan itself providing 5,000,000 KRW for production sponsorship, 'NAFF Award' has been given to the director Daniel CHAN's <Smile For Me> from Hong Kong. By Korea Broadcasting Art School sponsorship with 5,000,000 KRW cash prize, 'Korea Broadcasting Art School (KBAS) Award' went to <No Excuse> by KIM Guang Tae from Korea. From Gyeonggi Performing and Film Commission, giving out 4,000,000 KRW cash prize, 'Gyeonggi Performing and Film Commission Award' has been awarded to <Personality Vending Machine>, which has participated at Taiwan Project Spotlight. And lastly, the 'Post-Production Support Award', which are presented to two outstanding film projects, has been given to Korean director SHIN Terra's <AM 11:00> and <Berandal> by director Gareth Huw Evans from Indonesia. 

Very sincere congratulations to Evans and all of the other award winners, thanks to the organizers and warm appreciation to all of the other participants. It was a great selection of projects and talents here and we were proud to be part of it.