Over the summer TNC was proud to be able to share with you one of the best competitions we could have wished for, the G-Technology’s Driven Creativity Competition 2010. The standard was high and the submissions where incredible and today the shortlist has been announced.

The Shortlist 2010

The official shortlist of G-Technology’s Driven Creativity Competition – open to aspiring and professional photographers, musicians and filmmakers in the UK, France and Germany – has now been revealed!

Decided using a Bayesian Rating system based on the peer online votes, the fantastically creative shortlist can be viewed here: The Shortlist 2010

The shortlisted entries will now be judged by a jury panel consisting of expert G-Technology creative ambassadors, including Killzone composer, Joris de Man; Grammy award-winning producer (for Sting) Kipper; Academy-award winning filmmaker, Scott Hillier and awe-inspiring photographer, Tim Flach.

The jury panel will base their decision on the uniqueness, quality, creativity and the resourcefulness that went into achieving the end result. Therefore each entry will be judged not only its aesthetic qualities but also for the invention and drive that went into creating it. The panel will decide a winner and runner-up in both the professional and amateur sub-categories of each category (photography, music and film); all winning innovative G-Technology drives and the overall winner awarded €5,000 – all to further drive their creativity.

The winners will be announced at the end of October, with the overall winner revealed at the open evening reception of an exciting week-long gallery exhibition which will showcase winning and selected entries – held at The Brick Lane Gallery on November 16th-22nd, 2010.

As developers of high quality external storage solutions for those looking to push creativity beyond the limits, G-Technology by Hitachi’s Driven Creativity Competition reinforces its commitment to supporting the amazing efforts of the creative community.

For more information visit: www.g-technology.eu/competition

We will be bringing updating our site everyday leading up to the final week with interviews, videos, photos and music from this years shortlist nominees, support these artist what they have produced is proof positive that UK and Europe has no shortage of talented creative individuals.

Cover image by pixelnase

Well it wouldn’t be the Oscar’s if there wasn’t a few nominations for us old Brits and Carey Mulligan has managed to get one out the bag for playing a 16 year old in the critically acclaimed British Film “An Education” (the film also star two time Oscar winner Emma Thompson).

Unlike the other young actress nominated, Gabourey Sidibe, Mulligan has had quite a distinguished acting career and so not taking anything away from her I would say that Sidibe has the upper hand in truly providing a breakthrough performance.

But it would appear that being Oscar nominated doesn’t hold the same kudos as it once did as Mulligan discovered when she called her mum yesterday. On her first Academy Award nomination – her busy mum hung up when she called to break the happy news.

The British newcomer learned on Tuesday she’s in the running for the Best Actress prize at the 2010 Oscars – but when she telephoned her mother Nano, a college lecturer, she was told to call back later.

Mulligan explains, “I phoned up and said, ‘Mum, mum, mum! I got nominated for an Oscar!’ And she said, ‘Oh fabulous, I’m just with a student – can you call me back in 45 minutes?’”

And the 24 year old admits she was so nervous about the nomination announcements, she didn’t get any sleep the night before: “I honestly thought I was going to throw up. It was really, really nerve-wracking. You can have as many people as you like tell you that you’re going to get nominated but it doesn’t feel possible until it happens.”

There are few films this year that stand out as a true original, hard. and harsh piece of cinema than “Precious” based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.  What makes this even more of an event is the lead actress, Gabourey Sidibe has been nominated for every award this year as Best Actress, with the Oscar being one of the young actresses highlights.

What’s more shocking is though the other actesses in the Best Actress catagory are seasoned professionals, “Precious” is Ms Sidibe’s FIRST movie.  The movie has been helped by a sterling performance by Mo’nique who has won every Best Supporting Actress nod, even though she had refussed to do interviews.  And Oprah and Taylor Perry have lent their names to the film which has made sure it has gained a media following!

Precious is a simpler, tougher work than the two preceding films and altogether more effective. The setting is Harlem in 1987, the central character the obese 16-year-old black girl Claireece Jones, known as “Precious”, unforgettably played in her first professional role by the vast, imposing Gabourey Sidibe, daughter of a New York gospel singer and a Senegalese father. Precious is illiterate, aggressive, constantly tormented by fellow high-school pupils and abused, both physically and verbally by her alcoholic mother and father. She has a daughter with Down’s syndrome by her father, who constantly rapes her with the mother’s connivance and is pregnant again by him. Later, it’s revealed that the father has died of Aids.

You might well ask who is in the market for such a film and one thinks of Eliot’s smug statement: “Humankind cannot bear much reality” and those newsreaders who preface horrendous reports from Haiti with the warning: “There are scenes some viewers may find disturbing.” But over the years there have been a number of highly acclaimed pictures of this kind. Just after the Second World War, for instance, there was a widely shown Danish picture called Ditte, Child of Man, about the unremittingly miserable life of an illegitimate, working-class girl with a drunken mother, a brutal stepfather who was raised in poverty, seduced and abandoned.

Precious certainly is unflinching in the presentation of its heroine’s life and prospects. The brief impressionistic scenes in which she’s raped are horrendous and the confrontations with her mother Mary (a performance of extraordinary courage by the stand-up comedienne Mo’Nique) tear at one’s guts through their language and their violence.

But from very early on, Precious invites our sympathy, her first aggressive act being an attack on two boys who disrespect a white teacher she admires. She has an inner life in which she imagines herself a star. Worthy of a love she can’t find, she’s struggling to find meaning in her life.

An understanding principal arranges for her to go to a special school that offers remedial education through a programme called Each One/Teach One, where she encounters an sympathetic teacher and some fellow outsiders. The teacher, Ms Rain (Paula Patton), helps her come to terms with her life through writing about it and to learn she is capable of being loved. The girls in her new class are all bruised and scarred in different ways and involve her in volatile exchanges that are sometimes violent, but also roughly comic. A lot of the film is, indeed, edgily funny, as in a moment where the other girls laugh when Precious says “insect” instead of “incest” and she comes back: “Are you a scientist now?”

Another practitioner of tough love (or what we used to call being cruel only to be kind) is a perceptive social worker, Mrs Weiss (Mariah Carey), whose ethnic identity and social background intrigue Precious. Weiss presides over a final confrontation in her office between Precious and her mother. Earlier, we’ve seen Mary deceive an easily convinced welfare inspector into believing she’s a loving mother. Now, the mother is drawn into a confessional breakdown, explaining how she came to persecute her daughter; Mo’Nique’s handling of the moment is a tour de force.

There are other revealing and moving scenes. Precious, for instance, is introduced to the notion of organic food (though it doesn’t take) by a thoughtful male nurse. His job is as much a revelation to her as the discovery that Ms Rain is in a stable lesbian relationship. More than incidentally, there is on the wall of the gay couple’s apartment a poster for the surprise 1976 Broadway hit, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Ntozake Shange’s landmark “choreo poem” about the social and moral empowerment of African-American women. The show no doubt influenced Sapphire as a writer.

Precious ends on an affirmative note that is sufficiently hopeful to let the audience leave the cinema without rushing to find a strong drink or a lethal dose of arsenic, but is yet consistent with its heroine’s situation. The film does not, however, address itself to any larger social context. We have experienced a story, not read a case history.

Yesterday in London BAFTA the 2009 winner Noel Clarke announced the hotly anticipated nominee list for the Orange Rising Star Award 2010. The award recognises five international actors and actresses whose talent has inspired popular acclaim from the British public.

The 2010 Nominations are Jesse Eisenberg, Nicholas Hoult, Carey Mulligan, Tahar Rahim & Kristen Stewart.

Orange’s accolade for up and coming talent is the only award at the Orange British Academy Film Awards to be voted for by the public. Voting takes place both at orange.co.uk/bafta and via text*. The winner will be announced at the Orange British Academy Film Awards on Sunday 21 February 2010.

To Vote by Text:

Jesse Eisenberg text EISENBERG to 82058

Nicholas Hoult text HOULT to 82058

Carey Mulligan text MULLIGAN to 82058

Tahar Rahim text RAHIM to 82058

Kristen Stewart text STEWART to 82058

Now in its fifth year, the award has set a standard for identifying talent destined for super-stardom. Previous winners include James McAvoy in 2006, Eva Green in 2007, Shia LaBeouf in 2008 and Noel Clarke in 2009.

Noel Clarke, winner of 2009’s Orange Rising Star Award commented:

“Winning the Orange Rising Star Award in 2009 was the highlight of my year. The fact that the award is the only one voted for by the public made it even more special. Since winning I have gone on to direct a brand new feature which is due to be released in the summer and I hope this year’s winner finds the accolade as beneficial to their career as I have.”

We are going to doing weekly profiles of all the nominees this year and wish them all the very best!  Unlike other awards the Orange Risings Star award is something YOU get to have a say in. GET VOTING and support the rising stars of international cinema.