Finalists For Rory Peck Awards Announced

The Rory Peck Trust has revealed the nine finalists selected for the 2010 Rory Peck Awards, sponsored by Sony Professional.
The winners will be announced at the Rory Peck Awards ceremony on November 17, 2010 at London's BFI Southbank, which this year is hosted by ITV News's Julie Etchingham.
The Rory Peck Awards is the only competition in the world to recognise the skill and achievement of freelance cameramen and camerawomen in international news and current affairs.
The face of conflict - up close, personal and intimate - dominates the films short-listed for the Rory Peck Award for News and the Rory Peck Award for Features, with stories from Bangkok, Kyrgyzstan, Zimbabwe and both sides of the conflict in Afghanistan.
The struggle of everyday life away from conflict characterises the shortlist for the Sony Professional Impact Award, with stories showing the human face of illegal immigration in the US and Guatemala, the plight of Roma gypsy children forced to steal and beg, and the harsh reality of life for children living on the streets and in the slums of Mumbai.
The finalists for the Rory Peck Award for Features 2010 are: A Violent Response (Hopewell Rugoho Chin'ono), an inside look at Zimbabwe's post-election violence; Behind Enemy Lines (Najibullah Quraishi), a look at day-to-day life with insurgents in Afghanistan; and Taliban: Behind the Masks (Paul Refsdal), an intimate portrait of a group of Taliban fighters.
The finalists for the Rory Peck Award for News 2010 are: Bangkok Street Protests (Roger Arnold), a diary of events in Bangkok during the final week of anti-government protests in May; Kyrgyzstan Aftermath (Robin Forestier-Walker), a report on inter-ethnic violence in the country; and Afghanistan Bomb Disposal (Sebastian Rich), a film detailing how a bomb was made safe in Afghanistan.
The finalists for the Sony Professional Impact Award 2010 are: In The Shadow of the Raid (Greg Brosnan/Jen Szymaszek), a film which explores the devastating economic consequences of a major US immigration raid on a meat-packing plant in Iowa; The Slumdog Children of Mumbai (Nick Read), a film which details the lives of four children living in the slums and on the streets of Mumbai; and Gypsy Child Thieves (Liviu Tipurita), which highlights the plight of Roma children forced to beg and steal by organised criminal gangs from their own communities - and sometimes even by their own families.
Olivier Bovis, Sony Professional's AV Media Business Head and one of the judges for this year's Sony Professional Impact Award, said: "We have three extremely moving films on this year's shortlist. I was particularly impressed with the way the finalists translated the emotion of what they saw through their cameras. Each of them, in different ways, managed to articulate the human dimension of their stories in such a way that they had real impact; that's not easy to achieve."
Tina Carr, Director of the Rory Peck Trust, said: "The standard and range of entries to this year's awards show that the freelance community is vibrant and thriving. Every year we are impressed by the level of commitment, drive and courage that goes into the telling of these stories. Many of this year's finalists worked under extremely difficult circumstances to produce extraordinary stories from around the world. It is important that we recognise their work."
(KMcA)