FILM FESTIVAL NEWS: The 2019 Louisiana Film Prize's Big $50K Winner is a home-grown musical

The winner of the 8th annual Louisiana Film Prize was announced in front of an enthusiastic, sold out crowd on the rooftop of the Remington Hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana on Sunday, October 6th. The Film Prize’s top award of $50,000 cash – determined by a mixture of audience votes and top film industry judges – went to ANNIVERSARY, directed by James Harlon Palmer.

Palmer, the first local Film Prize winner since the first year of the one-of-a-kind film festival/competition hybrid, said later, “What Gregory Kallenberg, Chris Lyon, and all of the amazing Prize fest staff have created is just beyond words. The Film Prize literally has changed lives for the better. For those who win the Top 20 finalist spots, it opens up a world of opportunities, including networking, meeting wonderful people who become lifelong friends, and more, it all starts a chain reaction of creation and artistic productivity that is so good for this region. It has changed my life, and I could not be more grateful and more proud to be a part of it.”

The films that joined Palmer’s ANNIVERSARY in the Top 5 this year were; Hattie Hagard Gobble’s BLACK PAJAMAS, Blayne Weaver’s GHOSTED, Gabriel Savodivker’s LEO AND GRACE, and Rachel Emerson’s MAVEN VOYAGE.

Richard Kohnke won Best Actor for his performance in Travis Bible’s AND THAT IS WHY I SUCCEED as a youth basketball coach who strays from his halftime speech due to an emotional meltdown over his pending divorce. Best Actress went to Rachel Emerson for her performance in her film MAVEN VOYAGE, as a woman who is struggling to record an audition video to be chosen for a manned flight to Mars. Kohnke and Emerson each received prizes of $1000 to go with their trophies.

**Richard Kohnke (AND THAT IS WHY I SUCCEED) and Rachel Emerson (MAVEN VOYAGE) with their Best Actor and Best Actress trophies (Photo by Chris Gardner)**

Before announcing the films chosen for the jury prize’s $3000 Founders’ Circle Award Grants, Kallenberg was informed that the judges had selected 6 films instead of the expected 5 to be honored. The Founders’ Circle Grants are given to the chosen films to create projects for consideration for next year’s Film Prize competition. Those films included; Gobble’s BLACK PAJAMAS, Savodivker’s LEO AND GRACE, Emerson’s MAVEN VOYAGE, Robert Linsley’s NOWHERE ARKANSAS, Kalah Roberts’ SAME TIME NEXT WEEK, and Sarah Phillips’ SUPPLEMENTS.

See you next year? The Louisiana Film Prize 2019 Founders Circle Award winners: Sarah Phillips, Hattie Haggard Gobble, Robert Linsley, Rachel Emerson, Gabriel Savodivker (Photo by Chris Gardner)

Gobble’s GIRL BLACK PAJAMAS also took home the award for Outstanding Visual Effects/Title Sequence, sponsored by the Digital Media Institute.

“This year was marked by epic growth – more films entered in the competition, another steep climb in audience numbers, our first competing finalists coming from another country, a wider range of genres and styles, and more,” said Gregory Kallenberg, Founder and Executive Director of the Film Prize Foundation. “This record setting year was not only a banner year for the Film Prize, it was also a banner year for independent filmmaking at its highest level.”

This year, the Film Prize had over 100 registrations from all over the nation – and the world, with 2/3 of the entries being from outside of Louisiana. The participating films utilized more than 1,000 individuals in cast and crew. In the process of making those films, over $15 million has been injected into the area over the past 8 years (through the payment of cast, crew, food, lodging and equipment).