FIAT/IFTA Award Winner 2007

Televisió de Catalunya succeeded in the worldwide unique Television Award of FIAT/IFTA.

On Monday night, October 15, 2007, Muntsa Tarrés, editor of Televisió de Catalunya, received the FIAT/IFTA-Award from Edwin van Huis, president of FIAT/IFTA, one of the most potential organizations in the media area , with more than 200 members in more than 70 countries all over the world, for her outstanding documentary "Ramon Perera, the man who saved Barcelona".

The Award Ceremony took place in the Belem Bar Café, one of the "hip locations" in the Portuguese capital Lisbon. The organizer of the Award, Karl Maier, pointed out: "the marvelous outlook on to the bridge of 25th April , which spans the river Tejo, is not only very impressive, but it’s also symbolic for the original idea of FIAT/IFTA, namely to build bridges between cultures, nations and religions".

Next year competition will take place in the Danish capital Copenhagen.

Nominations

14 programmes have been nominated : Download the Nomination list 2007

Shortlisting

On 11th May 2007, the Programme & Production Commission of FIAT/IFTA, representing the pre-jury of the FIAT Award, met in Turin, Italy.

Year by year it becomes more difficult for the jury to select the three shortlisted programmes for screening and afterwards voting for the Award winner under the main aspect: best use of archive material.

The three short-listed programmes were :

- Miss Universe 1929, Lisl Goldarbeiter : a Queen in Wien. Mischief Films (Vienna) & Lumen Film (Amsterdam)
- Chile Intimo. La vida privada del siglo. Television Nacional de Chile (Santiago, Chile)
- Ramon Perera, the man who saved Barcelona. Televisó de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain)

The FIAT/IFTA Award 2007 is a worldwide unique competition for TV programmes, produced and transmitted in 2006. The Award is not monetary.

The final screening will be on Saturday 13 October 2007 in Lisbon. The Award celebration itself will be on Monday 15 October 2007 in Lisbon.

On line viewing

The shortlisted programmes can be viewed on line using :

- Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or newer versions
- Windows media player
- enough bandwidth for the internet connection, as the programmes are in real time streaming.

To access the list of programmes just browse to www.fiatiftaweb.rai.it log in with your usual username and password, and choose "Awards" from the menu.

Once there, you will find the short listed programmes, just click on the row you want to see and you will access the details page with the video streaming. The media player object works as any media player, with "play" "stop" buttons. You can double click on a frame at the bottom (the list of images of that movie) to start the movie from that point.

The citations

Miss Universe 1929, Lisl Goldarbeiter : a Queen in Wien
Director: Peter Forgacs
Producer: Ralph Wieser for Mischief Films (Vienna) & Lumen Film (Amsterdam)
Transmission: ORF2

This poetic documentary has in it all a movie should have: a beautiful heart-breaking lady (the first Austrian chosen as Miss Universe), a never ending love story, glamorous high society life, dramatic personal loss, and a struggle to survive during the Nazi regime.

This film is a supreme example of what can be achieved by, in a creative and wise way, interlacing a private story, as told in old private amateur film collections, with official public-national narrative, as found in old newsreels of the time.

The Jury found this work of Peter Forgacs a masterpiece telling a fascinating story of light and darkness in European 20th century history.

The precise, sensitive and creative editing of the footage, creates a film that stays with you long after watching it.

Chile Intimo: la vida privada del siglo 20. Las vacaciones
Producer: Viviana Flores for Television Nacional de Chile (Santiago de Chile)
Transmission: TNC Channel 7

This programme is part of a documentary series that, using amateur cinema and private films from family archives, shows the transformation in the private life of Chileans during the 20th century. It mixes this footage with actual testimonies and scenes of today life of ordinary people. This episode is dedicated to the evolution of holidays in Chile.

In a creative and humorous way, the documentary shows, through amazing archive material, how Chilean people have enjoyed their rest time. It clearly illustrates how the holiday experience has changed from the high society transatlantic travels to the today tourist tours to Disneyworld, how holidays have become a democratic popular conquest.

But this rich archive material, the telling of the Chilean personal history, is always related and compared with present day life. With a very clever sense of humour, a wide range of testimonies tell us about their holidays, from the Maulelma-Lillo family preparing for their dreamed tour to Disneyworld to the large family who have spent their holidays together in the same country house for more than a hundred years, or the old lady who meets the sea for the first time in her life. This is not only a nostalgia programme ; it is a view to the past that supports a better understanding of the present.

Ramon Perera, the man who saved Barcelona
Directors: Montse Armengou & Ricard Belis
Producer: Muntsa Tarrés for Televisó de Catalunya (Barcelona)
Transmission: TV3

The historical documentary Ramon Perera, the man who saved Barcelona by TV3, Catalonia's public service broadcaster, is an impressive and touching story about a widely unknown hero of the Spanish civil war. As a member of the Catalan government 's civil defence committee, the engineer Ramon Perera designed air-raid shelters and conducted research on bomb-resistant construction materials, thus saving thousands of lives in Barcelona. The programme reveals how the shelters were built in record time by the local civil defence committees. Barcelona was the first city to suffer the new terror bombing against cities which would go on to claim so many lives in the second world war.

In 1939, Ramon Perera escaped to London as Spain fell to the fascists, taking with him as many of the civil defence committees' documents as he could. As a refugee in London, he brought with him his "Barcelona model" of civil defence, but Britain's conservative dominated coalition fiercely opposed his proposals and opted for private shelters instead - a disastrous decision which contributed to the very high death toll during the Blitz.

The 57 minutes documentary contains no fewer than twenty minutes of highly interesting archive footage : footage of British air-raid preparations, rescue services during the Blitz, the effects of bombing of Guernica, colour footage of the civil war and Ramon Perera's unpublished photographs of the Catalonian shelters.

In addition to the archive footage, which comes from IWM, Film Images, Instituto Luce, ITN, Reuters, London Fire Service Film, Visnews, Pathé and last but not least from the production TV3 archive, dramatized reconstructions are used to capture the key points in the story. Witness accounts of the air-raids and shelters in Barcelona as well as in London enrich this highly dramatic and intriguing documentary.