Cleethorpes-based theatre company, Kazbah Theatre has won two awards in a national film making competition. Entering the Bristol 48 Hour Puppet Film Challenge, a team led by Andy Evans created a short film entitled "The Power of Love". It follows the rules of the competition by employing physical puppetry, being under three and a half minutes and including three prompts, an action, an item and a theme. The action was "Open, the object was "Glass" and the theme was "Power". The film was one of seventy entries from around the globe that was screened online on Saturday 23rd September. The film made the Top 10 films and won two awards. The first award was The Puppetry Award where the film was adjudged to be the best use of puppetry. The second was the Audience Choice Award voted for online.
There were two judges who delivered the news and explained why the film won this award. The first was Nicolette Santino who is an actress and puppeteer who has been trained by the Jim Henson Company, Sesame Workshop, The Muppets Studio Workshop, and The Groundlings. Nicolette has worked extensively with Coldplay by puppeteering the character Angel Moon in the 2022 and 2023 Music of the Spheres World Tour.
The second judge was Brian Fisher, an actor, movement artist and puppeteer, and is well-known for his BAFTA winning contribution to Bad Wolf’s adaptation of Phillip Pullman’s fantasy series His Dark Materials. Brian has worked as a puppeteer and movement artist with the likes of Warner Bros., Netflix, HBO, Apple TV and the BBC.
The following is a transcript of the judges comments on the night: Nicolette: "Congratulations to The Power of Love on winning the Puppetry Award. Oh my goodness! *blows a chef's kiss* The puppetry was just gorgeous. It was gorgeous. The bunraku style was very impressive. Its very hard to do that".
Brian: "Sometimes it can be hard to pinpoint why the puppetry stands out and that's often a sign of good puppetry. When there's an intangible quality to it that you can't explain but that affects you emotionally,, that is good puppetry".
Nicolette: "The movement of this film was so fluid and everything was balanced perfectly. The feet weren't over here, the body wasn't over here. It was just very realistic, very perfect".
Brian: "Puppetry is the manipulation of objects to bring them to life, or the ability to listen to the objects and give them the life that they already have. And with these puppets, I felt there was a life within them that was coming out rather than being imposed upon them".
Nicolette: "And I loved how the clown moved on from one circus lady immediately to the next one with the pictures. Like he has two pictures on his desk. I thought that was really funny. I don't know if it was supposed to be funny but I laughed and I... ha ha... I really enjoyed this one. It was very sweet too and very sad and funny. It was great".
Brian: "The specificity and delicacy of the movement was really something special".
Kazbah Theatre was delighted by these comments as none of the puppeteers have received puppetry training prior to joining Kazbah Theatre and feels that it is a tremendous achievement to win these awards in such a short space of time, the company only coming together in February 2023.
Kazbah Theatre now becomes an Associate Artist of Puppet Place in Bristol and looks forward to bigger and better things to come.
Our film, "The Power of Love", is available to view on YouTube at the following link:
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