Cinema Recognition Award

An APPPAH "Excellence in Film" Award was originated in 2005 and will periodically recognize a production reaching a general audience in commercial movie theatres that dramatizes an important issue in the field of prenatal and perinatal psychology and health. The most recent award is on top.
 
                                                                     

2007

“Tsotsi”

 

This year we honor Tsotsi, a beautiful film that dramatizes important issues in the field of prenatal and perinatal psychology and health, such as the redemptive nature of parent-child relationships and the transformational power of love. Tsotsi won the Academy Award in 2005 for Best Foreign Film (South Africa.) 

 

We established this award inspired by the question, Where are the awards for movies about childhood and parenthood, and their healing influence on the human condition? Event co-chairs Thomas Verny and Marcy Axness see Tsotsi to be an extraordinary portrayal of themes that are central to APPPAH’s mission. The story portrays how central a child’s early experience is, not just for his own lifelong social/emotional wellbeing, but for the health of society as a whole It is in the spirit of such impulses toward social healing, that we choose to honor Tsotsi as we kick off this year’s Congress, whose central vision is indeed about the health of our global family. 

 

For the panel discussion following the film screening, we are honored to welcome Sue Kiel, an actor, writer and social activist.  Born in Cape Town, South Africa, and raised during the most brutal years of Apartheid, Sue was a founding member of Market Theater, one of South Africa’s first multi-racial theaters.  Now a Los Angeleno, Sue is delighted to join our discussion of this movie that has been deeply on her mind, as she is developing a one-woman show dealing with growing up white in South Africa.  Joining Sue in comments and reactions to the film is Hollywood actress and activist, Lindsay Wagner. For a review of the film by Marcy Axness, see Tsotsi.

                                                                                          2005

The first award for excellence in film was made at the International Congress of APPPAH in San Diego 2005, and went to the film Loggerheads, a moving film on the issues of adoption which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. We have long known that adoption reveals much about prenatal and perinatal dynamics and continues to influence the members of the adoption triad throughout life. This beautiful film about an adopted man and his two mothers dramatizes and illuminates such APPPAH-related themes as separation and the mother-child bond, connection-discon-
nection and the genesis of self; and the essential nature of love.

The recognition ceremony was a pre-congress event open to the public featuring a screening of the film and a personal address by Writer/Director Tim Kirkman to a large audience in the Regency Ballroom of the Town & Country Hotel. A question and answer period with open discussion followed. Thomas Verny and Marcy Axness, representing the Cinema Recognition Committee, presided over the festivities. Click here to read a brief review of Loggerheads.