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Posts tagged as “Awards”

Maya Angelou and John Lewis Named 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom Honorees

By goodblacknews on November 19, 2010
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Poet Maya Angelou and civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga, are among the 2010 winners of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.  President Barack Obama will present the awards to them and the other thirteen honorees early next year, the White House announced Wednesday.  Other winners include President H.W. Bush, investor Warren Buffett, plus St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Famer Stan “The Man” Musial, Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma.  Obama’s bipartisan gesture in picking the first President Bush for the honor is not unprecedented. Former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, awarded a Medal of Freedom to former Republican President Gerald Ford.
“These outstanding honorees come from a broad range of backgrounds and they’ve excelled in a broad range of fields, but all of them have lived extraordinary lives that have inspired us, enriched our culture, and made our country and our world a better place,” Obama said. “I look forward to awarding them this honor.”  The medal is presented to people who have made notable contributions to U.S. interests, from cultural achievements to security matters.  The full list of winners:
–George H.W. Bush was America’s 41st president, and previously vice president and CIA director. He also worked with Clinton to raise money for victims Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.
–Merkel is the first woman and first East German to serve as chancellor of a unified Germany.
–Musial is a Hall of Fame first baseman who played 22 seasons for the St. Louis Cardinals.
–Russell is the former captain of the Boston Celtics and first black man to become an NBA head coach.
–Yo-Yo Ma is a world renowned cellist who has won 16 Grammy awards and is known for his interpretations of Bach and Beethoven. He played at Obama’s inauguration.
–Lewis served as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and helped organize the first lunch-counter sit-in. In 1965 he led the Selma-to-Montgomery, Ala., march for voting rights and was brutally beaten along with others in what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
–Buffett, chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, is a famed investor known as the “Oracle of Omaha” for his prescient business sense. He is also a generous philanthropist.
–Angelou is a prominent poet, educator, filmmaker, producer and civil rights activist.
— Jasper Johns, an American artist whose work has dealt with themes of perception and identity. He is considered a major influence on pop, minimal and conceptual art.
–Gerda Weissmann Klein, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who founded Citizenship Counts, an organization that teaches students to cherish the value of their American citizenship.
–Dr. Tom Little, an optometrist murdered last August by the Taliban in Afghanistan as he and nine others returned from a mission to provide eye care in the Parun valley of Nuristan. The award is being given posthumously to Little.
–Sylvia Mendez, a civil rights activist of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent.
–Jean Kennedy Smith, a Kennedy family member who served as U.S. ambassador to Ireland and is the founder of VSA, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that promotes the artistic talents of children and adults with disabilities.
–John Sweeney, AFL-CIO president from 1995-2009.
–John H. Adams, who in 1970 co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council, a prominent environmental advocacy group.
article content via Associated Press and businessweek.com

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian Annette Gordon-Reed Earns 2010 MacArthur "Genius" Grant!

By goodblacknews on September 28, 2010
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Harvard Professor and author Annette Gordon-Reed, 51, whose book “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family” (W. W. Norton) won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History and the 2008 National Book Award for nonfiction, is among the 23 recipients of the $500,000 “genius awards” to be announced on Tuesday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.  Ms. Gordon-Reed investigated the story of the slave family that included Sally Hemings, a slave owned by Jefferson who scholars widely believe bore his children. A New Yorker, Ms. Gordon-Reed teaches law and history at Harvard. Some of her grant will go toward travel expenses as she researches another book on the Hemings, she said.
Twelve men and 11 women, ranging in age from 30 to 72, were named MacArthur fellows this year. All will receive $100,000 a year for five years, no strings attached.  Since the inception of the program in 1981 and including this year’s fellows, 828 people, ranging in age from 18 to 82 at the time of their selection, have been named.
article information via nytimes.com

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian Annette Gordon-Reed Earns 2010 MacArthur “Genius” Grant!

By goodblacknews on September 28, 2010
Macarthur4-popup

Harvard Professor and author Annette Gordon-Reed, 51, whose book “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family” (W. W. Norton) won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History and the 2008 National Book Award for nonfiction, is among the 23 recipients of the $500,000 “genius awards” to be announced on Tuesday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.  Ms. Gordon-Reed investigated the story of the slave family that included Sally Hemings, a slave owned by Jefferson who scholars widely believe bore his children. A New Yorker, Ms. Gordon-Reed teaches law and history at Harvard. Some of her grant will go toward travel expenses as she researches another book on the Hemings, she said.

Twelve men and 11 women, ranging in age from 30 to 72, were named MacArthur fellows this year. All will receive $100,000 a year for five years, no strings attached.  Since the inception of the program in 1981 and including this year’s fellows, 828 people, ranging in age from 18 to 82 at the time of their selection, have been named.

article information via nytimes.com

The Fifth Annual African Movie Academy Awards Help Raise Global Awareness of African Movie Industry

By goodblacknews on May 1, 2010
Bayelsa, Nigeria (CNN) — The stars of African cinema graced the red carpet at the African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), in Nigeria, showcasing the films that could make waves on the global festival circuit.
The African movie industry gathered in Yenagoa, in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, for the fifth annual “African Oscars.”  Set up in 2005 by former lawyer Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, the awards have helped raise the profile of African movies around the world.  “African film has a hard time in getting recognition in most film festivals [outside Africa],” Anyiam-Osigwe told CNN.  “I think one of the biggest achievements of the AMAA is that the main festivals now look upon us as a selection process, and will pick those particular films that we’ve looked at and carry them on to the different festival circuits.
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Gallery: African Movie Academy Awards

“The first Nollywood film that the British International Film Festival showed was ‘Irapada,’ by Kunle Afolayan, which won Best Indigenous Film at AMAA in 2007. ‘The Figurine’ premiered at Rotterdam this year and has gone on to other film festivals and ‘From a Whisper’ traveled the festival circuit based on its win at AMAA.”
“The Figurine,” a thriller about a sculpture with mystical powers, also by Nigerian director Kunle Afolayan, stole the show at this year’s ceremony, claiming five awards in total — including Best Picture.  Afolayan told CNN, “It feels great — like we’ve not worked in vain. It feels like we’ve opened up a new page in African cinema.
For me, a good story will cut across, not just appeal to Nigerians.
–Nigerian Director Kunle Afolayan
In its first years the AMAAs focused on Nigeria’s booming movie industry — known as “Nollywood.” But since then they have become more pan-African. The 24 awards at this year’s ceremony included nominations from across the continent.
Nonetheless, in terms of sheer output, Nigeria dominates African cinema. Nigeria is the world’s second-biggest producer of movies, behind only India. In 2006 it produced 872 movies, compared with 485 major feature films made in the U.S., according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.  Nollywood movies are typically low-budget — often filmed, edited and released within a month. Most don’t end up on the big screen. Instead, they are distributed as VCDs costing about $1 to $2, meaning they are affordable for the mass African market.
But it is Nollywood’s pioneering use of relatively inexpensive digital cameras instead of costly 35mm film that Anyiam-Osigwe says has been its most important contribution to African cinema.  “There is a new wave of African cinema which is mostly the digital revolution, which has gone on from what Nollywood started in the early 90s,” she told CNN.
“Nigeria made people believe they could make films for less [by using digital cameras]. That has spread across the continent and I think that’s a good thing, otherwise Africa would not be able to have any kind of production, because it couldn’t afford it.
“You see a lot of the older generation of filmmakers from Africa who have made only one short film or one feature-length film in their lifetime, because they have not been able to make up the cost of making another film.”
Anyiam-Osigwe said that while some older filmmakers still believe movies should be shot only on 35mm film, directors from Malawi, Kenya, and Johannesburg’s “Joziewood” have now made the switch to digital.  She added that while every African country has its own movie-making style, the themes are often universal.  “Everyone tries to do a film that people in their own community will watch,” she said. “But I’ve found that all over the continent we have similar stories — it’s just how we tell them.”
story via CNN.com

Black Journalists Honor CNN’s Soledad O’Brien

By goodblacknews on April 23, 2010
Soledad O’ Brien (photo: wikipedia commons)

The National Association of Black Journalists named CNN’s Soledad O’Brien Journalist of the Year at its spring Board of Directors meeting.

O’Brien is the impetus of CNN’s acclaimed “In America” franchise, which began with CNN’s “Black In America” in 2008, a groundbreaking documentary, which took an in-depth look at the challenges confronting blacks in America.