Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and PUMA.Creative Announce PUMA.Creative Catalyst Award Winners for Second Quarter 2011

Awardees for Quarter Two, 2011

A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness – Ben Russell and Ben Rivers (USA and UK)
Set in Norway, this creative documentary depicts a single character at three disparate moments in his life - as a hermit in the Arctic Circle, as a commune participant in the Lofoten Islands, and as the drummer for a black metal band.

African Ninja – Banker White (USA)
"African Ninja" is a story about survival, hope, and the transformative role that creativity plays in the rehabilitation of war-affected individuals. The documentary follows a group of young filmmakers as they attempt to shoot their first feature film—a kung-fu comedy—in the squatter neighborhoods of Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Bidesia in Bumbia - Surabhi Sharma (India)
The film follows the plight of two ambitious singers in Mumbai who occupy extreme ends of the migrant worker’s vibrant music scene: A taxi-driver chasing his first record deal and Kalpana, the star of the industry trying to get a break into Bollywood. It’s a story of music, migration and mobile phones.

Charlie PELE – F.Simiyu Barasa (Kenya)
Charlie Pele makes people paint their chicks pink, grow vegetables in sacks, inspires Kenyan youth to make peace, develop entrepreneurial skills, and makes them laugh while at it - yet he is only a year old. And he's a cartoon character.

Delivering Possibilities – Varun Chawla (India)
Based in Mumbai, Mirakle Couriers, is true to its name: A postal service where all the 64 delivery employees are deaf adults. A peek inside their transformed world, and how they operate. Rather than victims of sympathies they are now self-sufficient and confident of what they do. Miracle, isn’t it?

Haiti, Billions for a Refoundation – Raoul Peck (Haiti)
Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck takes us in his own personal way inside the colossal rebuilding efforts underway in post-earthquake Haiti, revealing the contradictions and problematics at work in this gigantic international Mass assembled for its reconstruction.

Heralds from the Big World - Tatyana Soboleva (Russia)
Every year in May 20 doctors, men and women, leave their families, sit in a boat and sail through Northern Russia until the autumn. It goes to every place that is not accessible by roads, but only by the river, when the ice goes down. They are envoys of the big world.

The Island of Derek Walcott – Ida Does (Surinam)
This portrait visits Nobelman Derek Walcott in his native St. Lucia, taking his famous poem Love after Love as a focus point and reflecting on his life. The documentary visualizes his ongoing love affair with his island and explore his feelings and thoughts about his Dutch ancestors and his fascinations with the great Dutch masters.

One Meal at a Time – Alessandra Populin (Italy)
One Meal at a Time follows inventor Nat Mulcahy across the world as he pursues his visionary project: A fuel-efficient cooking stove he thinks can change the lives of millions of people in the developing world and in the long run help save our planet.

Media Contacts

Luke Moody, Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, luke@britdoc.org
Danielle Marcus, PUMAVision, danielle.marcus@puma.com

Editors Notes

PUMA.Creative Catalyst Awards

40 PUMA.Creative Catalyst Awards for documentary film are awarded annually of up to 5,000 Euros each. Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, in consultation with PUMA.Creative, makes the quarterly award selection from open submissions. For more information please visit: http://www.britdoc.org/puma

PUMAVision

At PUMA, we believe that our position as the creative leader in Sportlifestyle gives us the opportunity and the responsibility to contribute to a better world for the generations to come. A better world in our vision—PUMAVision—would be safer, more peaceful, and more creative than the world we know today. The 4Keys is the tool we have developed to help us stay true to PUMAVision, and we use it by constantly asking ourselves if we are being Fair, Honest, Positive, and Creative in everything we do.

We believe that by staying true to our values, inspiring the passion and talent of our people, working in sustainable, innovative ways, and doing our best to be Fair, Honest, Positive, and Creative, we will keep on making the products our customers love, and at the same time bring that vision of a better world a little closer every day. PUMAVision looks ahead to a world that is safer, more peaceful and more creative for the generations to come. Through the programs of PUMA.Safe (focusing on environmental and social issues), PUMA.Peace (supporting global peace) and PUMA.Creative (supporting artists and creative organizations), we are providing real and practical expressions of this vision. For more information, please visit http://vision.puma.com

Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation

The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation is a not-for-profit titled sponsored by Channel 4 Television and supported by a number of Foundations both in the UK and the USA. Since 2005, our mission has been to build a creatively ambitious and diverse future for documentary. We do this by creating brilliant films and engaging new partners to ensure that those films have lasting global impact. The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation has in its first five years, co-funded and produced over sixty documentaries—films that have won audience awards at Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca and Edinburgh Film Festivals, played at SXSW, Berlin, Toronto and London Film Festivals. Titles include: ‘Afghan Star’, ‘The End of The Line’, ‘We Are Together’, ‘The Yes Men Fix The World.’ The resulting films that have been shown around the world on C4, Arte, HBO and released by EMI, Dogwoof and Warners in cinemas and on DVD. In addition to our UK Production Fund, The Foundation recently announced a new major partnership with PUMA.Creative which includes a new International Development Fund open to filmmakers all over the world, and the Impact Award—an annual prize honouring the documentary film which has created the most significant social impact. For more information please visit http://www.britdoc.org