British filmmakers have again swept the board at France’s Clin d’Oeil festival of Deaf culture, which was held last weekend, winning four of the seven film awards presented at the festival.
Two years after winning the Best Film award for The End, director Ted Evans repeated the feat with his latest short film, Retreat.
Evans said: “I’m delighted, honoured and humbled to have received the award for Best Film for Retreat. But this is for the whole team. There were so many people involved. This is for them”.
Strangers, a short drama about a boy who is left out in his own family, was awarded the Best Director award for Brian Duffy, who made his directing debut on the short film. The star of the film William Grint won the Best Actor award.
The fourth British award went to Jean St Clair, who won the Best Actress award for her moving performance in the drama Still Here, which was directed by Louis Neethling.
The Clin d’Oeil festival is the largest festival of its kind. More than 9000 festival-goers attended this year’s festival (the sixth edition since 2003) and more than 200 deaf and hearing artists and performers travelled to France to perform, screen or exhibit their artistic creations.
A number of British performers appeared at the festival, from comedian John Smith to dancing groups Deaf Man Dancing and Def Motion.
John Smith said: “Clin d’Oeil has been fantastic! Such a wide variety of performances: theatre, comedy, film… The best thing has been meeting so many people from around the world and how easy it has been to communicate with each other. It will be hard to go back to the real world!”
By Charlie Swinbourne, Editor
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Linda Richards
July 9, 2013
Absolutely delighted for our Deaf talent here in Britain! Especially delighted for Jean St Clair…. she’s an amazing talent which has been consistent, insightful, of a high standard and with such longevity in a very precarious business! Congratulations to everyone! Lmr xx
Aliya
July 9, 2013
Well deserved awards to these fantastic individuals.Evans, Duffy, Grint and St Clair are all absolutely talented individuals and deserve this recognition – well done! xxxxx