The FilmDayton Festival is back for the 5th year with submissions of shorts from around the world, great features you wouldn’t see elsewhere, valuable workshops for professionals or those looking for a behind the scenes view, and the popular Pitch-It contest where you can share your movie plot idea for a chance at cash and prizes. The Festival, headquartered at The Neon, will take place on Fri, Aug 23- Sun, Aug 25.
For the second year as part of the festival, FilmDayton honors talented Miami Valley residents who choose to offer their skills, creativity, innovation and support to the local community. This year’s honorees receiving FilmDayton Awards include:
Jud Yalkut – The Innovation Award – an award for a lifetime of innovation and creativity in filmmaking
A resident of the Dayton area since 1973, Yalkut was Assistant Professor of Art at Wright State University (where he 
founded the film and video area of the Art Department), and taught at Sinclair Community College in Dayton and at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Jud started making video art in the 1960’s and collaborated with Nam Jun Paik on a series of groundbreaking video-film pieces. His work has influenced a number of other video artists and his innovative style broke boundaries between artist and spectator, inside and outside, reality and fantasy.
Jud’s film and video work has been exhibited at such venues as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Miami University Art Museum, and Anthology Film Archives in New York, the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, the Pompidou Center in Paris, and throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan. (Award given posthumously)
Andy Copp – The Filmmaker Award – a career award for excellence in filmmaking
A native of Dayton, Andy’s first feature film, The Mutilation Man (1998) was a gritty, blood-soaked, fever dream set ina bleak, post-apocalyptic near-future. Shot on a mix of film and video, The Mutilation Man paid homage to his filmmaking heroes while presenting his own unique and personal vision. Andy was a fiercely independent filmmaker, as well as an emerging artist and innovative filmmaker.
As an educator and mentor, Andy also made an impact on the Miami Valley’s film community. He taught classes in film history and theory at Sinclair Community College, and presented workshops in various aspects of video production at the Miami Valley Cable Council, KIT-TV in Tipp City, DATV and FilmDayton. Andy teamed up with Rick Martin and horror host Dr. Creep to create Horrorama, an annual horror film marathon, which has raised thousands of dollars for charity since 1997. (Award given posthumously)
Levin Family Foundation –The Key Award- an award for special service to the regional film community
The Levins have supported filmmaking in the Dayton region for decades. Sam Levin’s movie theatre empire consisted of 17 theaters in the Dayton region. In 1964, Sam was driven to improve the quality of movies showing at his theatres and wrote the feature film Girls on the Beach which features major musicians of the day and is still a cult hit today.
Recently, the Levin Family Foundation became involved with film through their generous underwriting of Take Us Home, a documentary depicting the challenges faced by Ethiopian Jews on exodus to Israel.
How to Go:
The public is invited to the 2013 Eichelberger FilmDayton Awards, Sunday August 25 @ 8PM at the Neon Movies. Tickets are $9 and can be purchased at www.filmdayton.com.
