LAT Article Leads Filmmaker to $101,000 Documentary Prize
The LA Times and Kickstarter deserve equal amounts of credit for something that happened in San Antonio this past weekend.
It was a June 2011 LAT article by Southeast Asia correspondent John M. Glionna that first made filmmaker Brian Ivie aware of a South Korean pastor caring for unwanted disabled children. Inspired by the piece, Ivie that fall raised a relatively modest sum to make a feature documentary about the extraordinary man profiled by Glionna and on Saturday The Drop Box claimed a $101,000 Jubilee Award from the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival:
Judge Curtis Bowers, who won “Best of Festival” in 2010 for his film Agenda, remarked: “We saw in this young man [Ivie] someone who loved life so much; that loved the truth; that was willing to defend those that no one cares about and wants to get rid of. If he’s that passionate about that in a movie that he didn’t know if it’s ever going to make money or not . . . we could tell: That’s a young man we want to invest in, because he’s going to change the world with his films.”
The San Clemente-based Ivie, who converted to Christianity while making the documentary, says he is currently in talks with a Hollywood distributor.
