New Festival announces winners

The New Festival, New York's gay and lesbian film festival, closed Sunday with a screening of Stanley Kwan's Lan Yu and with an awards presentation, reports indieWIRE.com. Winning the best narrative feature prize was Ferzan Ozpetek's His Secret Life, an Italian drama about a grief-stricken widow searching for her late husband's lover, only to find that his mistress was a mister. Strand Releasing will distribute the film in the United States later this year. Eric Criswell and Martin Bedogne's OUT in the Cold, which deals with homeless GLBT youth in the Bible Belt, took Best Documentary Feature. The Showtime No Limits Award, for "breakthrough or visionary achievement," went to Devin Baggot's Flora's Garment Bursting Into Bloom, and the Vito Russo Award, for the best New York film project in progress, went to Janet Baus and Ara Wilson's The Furies. Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House, Deborah Dickson's portrait of a lesbian couple of a certain age, won the festival's Audience Award, and Jeremy Podeswa's Touch was named Best Short Film. Tom Kalin was this year's recipient of the festival's Peter S. Reed Achievement Award for an established or mid-career filmmaker or videomaker with a significant roster of gay work. Kalin directed Swoon and was a producer on I Shot Andy Warhol and Office Killer, among others.