53rd San Francisco International Film Festival 22 April - 6 May 2010

AWARDS/

The Purpose of FIPRESCI Is to Support Cinema as Art
By Klaus Eder

Festivals offer an exciting opportunity to become acquainted with world cinema. As film critics, it is our interest and often our pleasure to support national cinema in all its forms and diversity, considering it an important part of national culture and identity. We do this by writing and talking about cinema in newspapers or specialized magazines, on radio and television or the Internet. And we do it by awarding the best of them (from our point of view) the International Critics Prize (FIPRESCI Prize). This prize is established at international film festivals, and its aim is to promote film art and to particularly encourage new and young cinema. We hope (and sometimes we know) that this prize can help films to get better distribution, or distribution at all, and to win greater public attention.

FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics, has been in existence for more than 65 years. The basic purpose of the organization, which now has members in over 60 countries all over the world (among them, of course, in the U.S., the National Society of Film Critics), is to support cinema as an art and as an outstanding and autonomous means of expression. We do this for cultural, not political, reasons: Our interest is focused only on cinema itself and its artistic development.

FIPRESCI also organizes conferences and seminars and is increasingly playing a part in a number of cultural activities designed to protect and encourage independent filmmaking and national cinemas. We are cooperating with the European Film Academy and are deciding, within the framework of the European Film Awards, a “Felix of the Critics.” It is with pleasure that we come to the San Francisco International Film Festival. We are excited to participate in this event with its precious tradition of half a century.

Klaus Eder is the general secretary of FIPRESCI, which can be found on the Web at www.fipresci.org.

Previous Recipients
2009   Everything Strange and New
2008 Ballast
2007 A Parting Shot
2006 Half Nelson
2005 Private
2004 The Story of the Weeping Camel