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Best cuts: Scenes from The Journey Unknown by Do Dang Thuong of HCM City grabbed the best script and best film editing prizes. — File Photo |
HCM CITY — Thinking of You by Vietnamese-American Vu Quang Huy has won the Golden Heart prize for best film at YxineFF, Viet Nam's first online short film festival.
The chemical biology student from the University of California (UC) also received prizes for best director and best cinematography at a ceremony held at HCM City's BHD Cinema Star on Sunday.
American student of the UC, Christy Yang won the prize for best actor.
Huy's film, produced in 2009, is a vignette about a quirky flower-shop girl and the elusive "object" of her desire.
He is polishing the script for a movie version of the film he hopes to make in the next two years.
The five-minute version also won the Audience Award at Hidden Genius, a short film competition sponsored by the Vietnamese-American Arts and Letters Association.
It has been screened at various festivals like the Vietnamese International Film Festival and San Diego Film Festival.
At the YxineFF, animated film The Journey Unknown by Do Dang Thuong of HCM City grabbed the best script and best film editing prizes.
The 4-minute-40-second film depicts the journey of an unnamed, faceless character that jumps out of a book's page through the book that takes it through heaven, destruction, urbanisation, and war.
Thuong said he actually created the character and background from paper before resorting to stop motion, an animation technique.
The film is the 23-year-old's first production and was screened at the Future Shorts Festival, which is organised by the global short film community, held in Viet Nam last year.
The organisers of YxineFF, the Sai Gon Media Company and local film aficionados, gave away the Red Heart prize for best film chosen by audiences to L.O.V.E by Vu Ngoc Phuong, an overseas Vietnamese from the Philippines.
Up in the Tree, directed by Bui Quoc Thang of Ha Noi, won the New Heart prize for the film with creative and new ideas.
All the award-wining films can be watched at the festival's website at www.yxineff.com.
The festival, which was launched in May, aims to broaden the independent film-making community in Viet Nam and offer local film-makers an opportunity to promote their works worldwide.
It showed 20 films in the Competition category for 10-minute films, 21 films in the Panorama category for 30-minute shorts made in the last three years, and 12 films made by young directors in the In Focus category. — VNS
