Asia Pacific Screen Awards - 26 November 2009

I was lucky enough to get invited to the third annual Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) that was held on the Gold Coast last night – coverage can be seen at http://www.asiapacificscreenawards.com/  

The event brings 37 films from 16 countries together to compete for the Asia Pacific region’s highest honour in film.

The night was fantastic and Indira Naidoo and Peter Thompson did a wonderful job hosting the evening (and pronouncing nominees names). Even more exciting was that Australia won two awards - Warwick Thornton's indigenous love story Samson & Delilah  took the Best Feature award and the stop motion animation Mary and Max made by Harvie Krumpet Oscar-winner Adam Elliot, and produced by Melanie Coombs, was judged Asia Pacific's Best Animated Feature film. Other winners can be seen at http://www.asiapacificscreenawards.com/the_awards/winners_2009

After the awards we able to mix and mingle with the winners and it was lovely talking to the lovely AI  (one of the highest selling artist in Japan today) who performed a song from the APSA nominated film, Okuribito (Departures) and a hit song from her current album, Best A.I (which recently debuted at number one in Japan).