Good vs. Wiivil Wins Inaugural Nintendo Film Festival
New York Filmmaker Wins $10,000 Prize, Festival Screening at Top of the Rock
at the Observation Deck at Rockefeller Center
REDMOND, Wash., June 19 /PRNewswire/ -- A film depicting Wii(TM) at the
center of a cosmic battle between benevolent and malevolent forces earned top
honors at the inaugural Nintendo Short Cuts Showcase. The open-call
competition invited aspiring filmmakers to flex their creative skills by
creating a three-to-five-minute Nintendo-themed video or film. New York-based
filmmaker Jack Paccione Jr. wowed festival judges with his short featuring a
hapless ice cream shop worker whose actions are controlled by dueling Wii
Remotes(TM).
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050516/NINTENDOLOGO)
The 10 finalists can be viewed at http://www.nintendoshortcuts.com, where
visitors continue to vote for their favorites. Each of the nearly 200 Nintendo
Short Cuts entries from across the nation was judged on its originality,
creativity and uniqueness. Filmmakers were required only to make their entries
Nintendo-themed in some way. Clips included everything from mockumentaries and
love stories to animated tributes and wild live-action parodies.
"The enthusiastic response to the Short Cuts Showcase proves that users'
love for Nintendo characters and culture extends far beyond their game
systems," says Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime, who served as a
contest judge. "Fostering creativity has always been a huge part of the
Nintendo experience. Nintendo fans are some of the most passionate and
imaginative people on the planet, so it was no surprise to see such a wealth
of inspired submissions."
Additional judges included David Kwok, senior program director for the
Tribeca Film Festival, and Lew Harris, editorial director of Movies.com.
"There was a great pool of finalists," Kwok says. "It's amazing to see
people be so creative in such a short period of time. It shows in the work
that the filmmakers had a fun time making them as well and I'm sure visitors
to the Tribeca Drive-In Short Film Series at Top of the Rock will enjoy them
as much as I did."
"I was impressed not just by the quality of the films but also by the
different ways the participants chose to represent the games themselves, from
film noir to Zelda re-created with humans," Harris said. "A tremendous amount
of originality."
As the best of the bunch, Good vs. Wiivil will be screened along with the
second- and third-place winners as part of the Tribeca Drive-In(TM) Short Film
Series at Top of the Rock(TM), at the Observation Deck at Rockefeller Center.
Director Paccione also will receive a $10,000 cash prize toward his next film,
a Wii system, a Nintendo DS(TM) Lite and Nintendo games. Paccione also
receives a "power lunch" with Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Craig Hatkoff.
Runners-up in the competition included Second Prize winner Marc Duddleson
of Monroe, N.C., whose animated Koopa Force short sets the stage for an epic
Mario(TM)-based battle in the form of a movie trailer. Christopher Preksta of
Pittsburgh took Third Prize for The Nintendo Office, incorporating a host of
classic Nintendo characters into what life might be like at Nintendo HQ. Both
Duddleson and Preksta will be awarded a Wii and a Wii game. Seven additional
finalists will receive a Nintendo DS Lite and a DS game. They are:
-- The Blue Light Zone: Eye of the Mii-holder by Will D'Angelo of
Las Vegas
-- The Legend of Zelda: The Missing Link by Eric Esteb of Seattle
-- The Killing of a No Good Goomba by Cole Evans of Austin, Texas
-- Pretendo by Joshua Mills of Jamestown, N.C.
-- All My Systems by Lee Terwilliger of Lackawanna, N.Y.
-- Nintendo News Network by Adam Stackhouse of Williamsburg, Va.
-- The Last Wii by Sean Schleifer of Sterling, Va.
The worldwide innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment,
Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and
software for its Wii(TM), Nintendo DS(TM), Game Boy(R) Advance and Nintendo
GameCube(TM) systems. Since 1983, Nintendo has sold nearly 2.4 billion video
games and more than 409 million hardware units globally, and has created
industry icons like Mario(TM), Donkey Kong(R), Metroid(R), Zelda(TM) and
Pokemon(R). A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in
Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo's operations in the
Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, visit the company's
Web site at http://www.nintendo.com.
