This past weekend, I attended the United Nations Association Film Festival at Stanford University. It was a quick trip to be on a fair use panel on Saturday, but I had the pleasure of attending the full day of events and the standout for me was The Blood of Yingzhou District. Just nominated as a finalist for the 2006 IDA Short Award, I wanted to mention it in case you haven’t had a chance to see it yet.

Ruby Yang (dir.) and Thomas Lennon (prod.) follow the stories of several children whose parents died of AIDS in remote China. Some of the children are HIV positive themselves, others are not; but it doesn’t matter to the villagers who, without proper AIDS education, ostracize these most helpless of individuals. Yang’s work around these issues is geared toward primarily Chinese audiences, and unfortunately, she was not at the screening to talk about how she has been distributing the film or otherwise using it to educate. To those of us who understand how this disease is spread, the film is devastating. The entire IDA Awards List:

2006 IDA Award Feature Finalists are:

Can Mr. Smith Get To Washington Anymore?
Frank Popper, Matt Coen, Mike Kime
Mr. Smith Movie, LLC, Sarah Jo Marks/At Risk Films, Independent Lens, PBS

Deliver Us From Evil
Amy Berg, Frank Donner
Disarming Films, Lionsgate

Iraq in Fragments
James Longley
Typecast Pictures, Typecast Releasing, HBO Documentary Films

SHOWBUSINESS: A Season to Remember
Dori Berinstein
Dramatic Forces

Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars
Zach Niles, Banker White
SodaSoap Productions, P.O.V./American Documentary, PBS

2006 IDA Award Short Finalists are:

ANGEL’S FIRE (Fuego de Angel)
Marcelo Bukin, Julio de la Parra, Francesc Torrens
Rec Stop and Play, Global Humanitaria

The Blood of Yingzhou District
Ruby Yang, Thomas Lennon
The China AIDS Media Project, Thomas Lennon Films, Inc.

The Diary of Immaculee
Peter Le Donne, Steve Kalafer
New Jersey Studios, LLC

A Short History of Sweet Potato Pie & How It Became a Flying Saucer
Nina Gilden Seavey
The Documentary Center at George Washington University, Team Sound and Vision

The Wild Sheep, The Fox and Love
Anne Magnussen
Embla Film As

Congrats to all the nominees, and if you want some analysis, check out AJ Schnack’s recent post on the nominations>>