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Jungle Beat Wins at Sprockets

The 9th annual Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children announced its awards at the George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre at Ryerson University. Five awards were decided upon by childrens juries (three designated for feature films, two for shorts), two audience awards were determined by festivalgoers, four awards for Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase were decided by a jury of film industry professionals and one Students Choice Award was determined by high school students attending the festival. Some 24,000 children and family members, an increase of 20% from last year, came out to the festival, seeing 122 films from 29 countries.

"It's our largest, most successful Sprockets ever," said Jane Schoettle, director of youth education and Sprockets. "Were delighted that our Special Presentations, our diverse selection of international films, all our guests, and our new industry initiative Next Generation Now, had such a tremendous response from our audiences.

In the Short Film Category, Jury 2 (ages 10 to 12) awards its prize to Brent Dawes JUNGLE BEAT: IVE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN. The film from Zimbabwe tells the tale of a tortoise that goes to dramatic, extremely funny lengths to cure an incessant itch under his shell.

This years jury included short filmmaker Renuka Jeyapalan; festival manager and outreach coordinator for the Canadian Film Centres World Wide Short Film Festival Eileen Arandiga and filmmaker Andrew Sloss. The Frederick Simpson, Veronica Herman and Gertrude Löwengren awards are generously sponsored by Garrett Herman. The TVOKids Young Filmmakers Award is generously sponsored by TVOKids/TVOntario.

For more information and a complete list of winners, visit www.bell.ca/sprockets.

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Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
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