Freedom Dance Wins CINE Masters Series Award

Freedom Dance, the animated short documentary co-directed, co-produced, and co-edited by Steven Fischer and Craig Herron, won the CINE Golden Eagle Masters Series trophy for Independent Films last night. The trophy came with an award of $10,000 in post production services from Henninger Media in Arlington, VA.

The 50th anniversary awards gala was held at the Newseum, a brand new $400 million museum on Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, DC. In addition to presenting the Masters Series awards, CINE honored Edward James Olmos, the Oscar nominated actor (Stand And Deliver), with a Cine lifetime Achievement Award, and Gwen Ifill, of television news fame, with a Cine Trailblazer Award.

The evening started with a cocktail party and buffet catered by Wolfgang Puck on the 7th floor terrace of the Newseum overlooking the Capital building and the museums on the mall. Afterwards the awards ceremony was held in one of the many beautiful theaters inside the Newseum.

Steven Fischer, myself and my wife Barbara attended. As usual I was a bit excited at the prospect of our winning. They had all the trophies lined up on a table on the stage (there were only ten awards in addition to the Lifetime and Trailblazer awards). The golden trophies were glowing in the spotlights and I wanted one. Something about trophies glowing in the spotlight makes me crazy.

When they announced that Freedom Dance had won I shouted, "Yes!" maybe a bit too loud -- well, maybe a lot too loud. They showed a clip from the movie and Steven and I took the stage to receive our trophy and the award from Henninger Media. Steven did most of the talking as he is great at public speaking and then I thanked Edward Hilbert, the CINE awards people and Barbara.

Among the many hi-lights of the evening were video clips from famous people in the news and entertainment fields who congratulated the CINE Awards on their 50th anniversary, and the filmmakers on their achievements. My favorites were from Ken Burns, the famous documentary director of WWII, Baseball, Lewis and Clark, The Civil War and many others, and Steven Spielburg, who remembered receiving a CINE Award for his first short and how much it meant to him.

This was truly a wonderful night for Freedom Dance and all the people who helped us win this award. Thanks from Steven and myself to:

• Edward and Judy Hilbert for their wonderful story and Edward's cartoons;
• Mariska Hargitay for narrating this small movie and helping us get attention;
• Diane Leigh Davison, Esq., Attorney at Law who arranged for Mariska to narrate;
• Gregg Landry of Blue Rock Productions for shooting the live action sequences of Edward that formed the structure of the movie;
• Kevin Hill of Studio Unknown for the fantastic sound design of Freedom Dance;
• Phil Rosensteel for the composing (along with Steven) and playing the score;
• Dr. Michael Davidson DDS for the location photography of Hungary and Austria that were turned into backgrounds for the animation;
• John Bintz for setting up our website and keeping it going all this time;
• Barbara Herron for digital paint and enthusiastic support of me and this project;
• Paul Sulky for digital paint and animation;
• Leanna Chamish for being our video host;
• Edy Bondroff for her work on the Gallery show at the Jewish Communtiy Center at Park Heights;
• Claudine Davison, for making the Gallery show and an early screening at the JCC happen;
• Rachel Kreutzinger for digital paint;
• Joel Loukus for digital paint and some animation;
• Marc Gillis for his watercolor paintings that were used as backgrounds; and
• Meaghan Dunn and Jason Bloom for digital paint.