Animated MIGRATIONS, by filmmaker Alyssa Sherwood, is the inaugural winner of the $10,000 Poetry Film Prize from The Poetry Foundation and Facets Multi-Media. Selected by a jury from more than 80 entrants, the film is based on a poem by Dorian Merina, a Filipino-American poet, journalist and the recipient of a 2008 Pulitzer fellowship. The award was presented last week at the closing night ceremony of the 25th Annual Chicago International Children's Film Festival.
The Poetry Film Prize recognizes excellence in language and cinematography and celebrates the best film based on a poem or poet. It is given to a filmmaker whose use of verse in film opens new artistic vistas and inspires children to an appreciation of poetry. Unique in the field of poetry and in the film industry, the prize was created as part of Reel Poetry, a larger initiative between the Poetry Foundation and the CICFF, created to highlight the possibilities of poetry in film, especially for a young audience.
"Film is a highly concentrated, image-based art form, and so it has a great deal in common with poetry," said Nicole Dreiske, founder and artistic director of Facets. "The merging of these two powerful art forms allows children to discover brilliant poets and poems through a medium they already know and love."
MIGRATIONS employs surreal animation and acute language to connect the Manila Galleon Trade (a 16th-and-17th-century trade route from China to Mexico, by way of the Philippines) with present-day dilemmas of immigration and the movement of people and cultures around the world.
"MIGRATIONS is at once a film of stirring visual and linguistic artistry," said Anne Halsey, media director for the Poetry Foundation. "It is the perfect first recipient of a prize designed to spark the creation of quality films for children based on poetry."
