College TV Awards Winners Nab Oscar

®

Noms

Kevin Carter, 9 Honored

Filmmaker Dan Krauss (above), whose The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club documentary was honored at the Television Academy Foundation's 2005 College Television Awards, received an Oscar® nomination for the film this week.

Beverly Hills, CA – The nominees for the 78th Annual Academy Awards announced yesterday included plenty of big-name Hollywood stars and high-profile feature films. Lesser known, but no less worthy of recognition, were two productions whose superior quality was first heralded at the Television Academy Foundation’s 26th Annual College Television Awards, held last March at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel.

The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club, which won second place in the documentary category, as well as the coveted Bricker Family Award, at the 2005 College Television Awards, earned an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Short.

The film, which was produced by Dan Krauss of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, chronicles the brilliant talent and troubled personal life of the titular Pulitzer Prize-winning South African photographer. Carter rose to attention in the 1980s and ’90s as a member of a cadre of passionate photojournalists, dubbed the Bang Bang Club, who documented the plight of starving Sudanese and other grave social issues facing their continent.

The animated short 9, which won last year’s College Television Award for non-traditional animation, has now garnered an Oscar nom for best animated short. It was directed by UCLA graduate student Shane Acker, who completed the visually complex film, set in a forbidding, post-apocalyptic world, over the course of four years, during which he also worked on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Last year it was announced that Acker was developing 9 into a feature film to be produced by celebrated director Tim Burton.

The College Television Awards—which last year selected its winners from 415 entries submitted by students from 139 college and universities in 36 states—acknowledges excellence in nine categories: drama, comedy, documentary, traditional animation, non-traditional animation, magazine shows, newscasts, music and children’s programming. The Bricker Family Award, a special accolade devoted to humanitarian concerns, is also handed out.

Last year’s program, including $30,000 in cash prizes, was sponsored by the Television Academy Foundation. First-place winners received $2,000, second-place winners $1,000 and third-place winners $500. The Kodak Worldwide Student Program, in cooperation with the Television Academy, presented Eastman Product Grants of $2,000 in film stock to the first-place winner in each category and $1,000 in film stock to the second-place winner in each category. The Bricker Family Award winner received an additional $4,000.

This year’s ceremony will be held March 19, 2006, at a black-tie, invitation-only gala on Sunday, March 19, at Culver Studios in Culver City. On Monday, March 20, the winning works will be screened at the Television Academy Foundation's Goldenson Theatre.