What Can You Win?
We are honored to have an all-star lineup of filmmakers, producers and distributors serving as jurors for the Walla Walla Movie Crush. Each individual provides a unique perspective, assuring the winners are deemed the best by a diverse and talented group of esteemed industry professionals. Juries evaluate selected finalists to determine top prize winners in each category. There are also awards for curator and audience favorites.
Categories
Best Narrative Short
Best Documentary Short
Best Animated Short
Best Student Short
Best Performance
Curator's Choice Award
Audience Award
Beast of the Crush
The Audience Award is determined by a weighted ballot vote solely from our Iron Ass Jury - audience members who have screened every film in the WWMC lineup, thus making this the only true Audience Favorite award on the film festival circuit.
AWARDS MEDALLIONS
At the Walla Walla Movie Crush, we strive to bring our beloved audience the very best. We program America’s best shorts by America’s best moviemakers, and screen them in America’s best historic venue: the Gesa Power House Theatre. We’ve recruited juries comprised of Oscar® winners and nominees plus some of the most respected names in the industry to select the best of the best, our award winners. Thus, it stands to reason, we would want to gift recipients with the best awards on the festival circuit.
We wanted the Movie Crush awards to be beautiful, elegant… more keepsake and future heirloom than trophy case paperweight. So, we enlisted a visualist, Walla Walla’s own Augusta Sparks Farnum, to collaborate on something new, something special. In cahoots with Artistic Director Warren Etheredge, Augusta determined that she would craft a medallion — an artwork in itself — that could be proudly displayed and even worn, reminiscent of military medals, in light of the Crush’s commitment to The Red Badge Project.
What Augusta created exceeded our expectations, and truly embodies the spirit of the fest. The new design was fabricated to perfection in solid bronze by Walla Walla metalsmith Paul "Smokey" Good. The ribbon it hangs from is a natural avocado-dyed fabric created by Smokey’s wife, Jessica Cook. (Keen eyed observers will note a tiny WWMC watermark hidden on the front, among the laurels.)
Augusta composed the following statement on her work, which she titles: Meditations on Adorations. We at the Crush are grateful for her time and talent!
The Movie Crush Award Medallion
Meditations on Adorations
Augusta Sparks Farnum, June 2018
Throughout my projects I have always traveled with wads of drawing paper or note cards in my bag. Shoved into zip lock bags, I have stacks of imagery around my studio dating back from over a decade ago. And, if I were to unpack those boxes, you know the ones that never get unpacked? They hold papers from throughout my life: wads of Dante’s dogs of hell, ducks, self-portraits, visions out the window from trains, planes, or cars. Processing that which surrounds or the things I saw hours or days or years before. Details parsed out have become side notes, marked with prose and often, even a date.
A moment in between, the far and near together, or just to draw the view... while sitting in traffic, on a bridge in Maine, in a perfect place on a perfect day in the perfect weather in an imperfect situation. Adoration exists.
This show is a kismet celebration of curiosity, and process. Last year when the Walla Walla Movie Crush was initiated, festival founders Warren Etheredge and Nancy Dragun asked for a trophy to celebrate the hard work of their filmmakers. A year later, this show is hung, and the award is in process.
When I finally understood "crush" meant infatuation, and not smooshing grapes in a barrel between your toes, or pulverizing someone’s hopes and dreams... I floated. Thinking about the sweet investigations that the film shorts unfold, I have relooked at my wads, my stacks through the years. The side notes, reconsidered, are love notes. Adoration with my surroundings. A romance with life. Little crushes on a page no bigger then my hand.
So here’s the thing, I have a hell of a time doing that which I don’t like. And when Warren Etheredge asked for a trophy, I kinda grimaced. Truth.
I sat with it, and suggested that perhaps he and Nancy consider the medallion. Worn around the neck or as a pin, it could be etched in classical detail by my hand of rough and raw. There was this pause, and Warren explained, he has traditionally inducted his film makers into "The Short Order." A Knighthood! Kismet!
Did I mention Warren takes notes on little papers, too? Notes placed in a stack, placed in his pocket, with organization of his own kind? Yeah, I grinned, too.
I have been experimenting with plaster for years and this medallion project was a great excuse to start delving into a new bronze etching project. Yes. These are all a part of the million steps I take before I get to where I am going. Plus, amongst the many crush worthy topics, there are dreamy references to my work with Mylar.
Another topic that holds varied visual reference, as if it were one of Warren’s film short segment topics, is the visual representation of Mylar. Pain and survival. Reflector and container. Adventure and disaster. Ripening and stagnant. And the pursuit of silver as the perfect color continues, or in this case Palladium.
All this, I am dowsing amongst the surreal and the adorations, the side glances, and the in between. This work is made with all I have ever been all at once. And this, ladies and gentle humans, makes a very different picture.