‘Awavena.’
Lynette Wallworth’s Awavena has been nominated in the Outstanding New Approaches to Documentary category in the International News and Documentary Emmy Awards.
The filmmaker and artist’s Collisions, a virtual reality journey to the land of Indigenous elder Nyarri Morgan and the Martu tribe in the remote Western Australian desert, won that award in 2017.
Supported by the Sundance New Frontiers Artist Residency at The Technicolor Experience Center, Awavena enabled Hushuhu, the first woman shaman of the Yawanawa in the Amazon rain forest, to use VR like medicine as a portal to another way of knowing.
After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and selected for competition at the Venice Film Festival, the work has had extended runs at Carriageworks, ACMI and the Art Gallery of Western Australia. The next planned presentation is at BFI London in January.
“I am so pleased Awavena has received this nomination,” Wallworth tells IF. “It was a feat just to carry all the technology we needed into the Amazon to make this work so to have it acknowledged is a joy.
“It is a story of hope and incredible resilience so I am pleased it is shining through.”
Among the funding bodies were Screen Australia, Create NSW, Ford Foundation, Skoll Foundation, Rauchenberg Foundation, Kendeda Foundation and Pritzker Foundation.
The 41st News and Documentary Emmy Awards honour content from more than 2,000 submissions that premiered in calendar year 2019. They are judged by a pool of 875 peer professionals from across the TV and streaming/digital media industry.
The documentary awards will be presented on Tuesday September 22 US time on the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ (NATAS) viewing platform.
Outstanding New Approaches: Documentary
Apollo’s Moonshot AR Smithsonian Channel
Awavena VR on Demand Viveport
Gone in a Generation The Washington Post
Tracing Addai The New York Times
Vox Missing Chapter- How Florida Legally Terrorized Gay Students Vox
We Are Witnesses: Chicago The Marshall Project