AFTRS Artist-in-Residence and 2010 Creative Fellowship recipient Lynette Wallworth has won the International News and Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding New Approaches to Documentary for her work, Awavena – her second Emmy following her win for Collisions in 2017. The award was presented in a virtual live-streamed ceremony held for the 41st annual News and Documentary awards on 21 September.
Also nominated in the category were Apollo’s Moonshot AR (Smithsonian Channel), Gone in a Generation (The Washington Post), Tracing Addai (The New York Times), Vox Missing Chapter- How Florida Legally Terrorized Gay Students (Vox) and We Are Witnesses: Chicago (The Marshall Project).
Supported by the Sundance New Frontiers Artist Residency at The Technicolor Experience Center, the immersive documentary tells the story of Hushahu, the first woman Shaman of the Amazon’s Yawamawa community and the radical reconfiguring of gender relations that takes place following her induction into its spiritual traditions. Made at the invitation of, and in intimate collaboration with, the Yawanawa people, and using a technology that the Yawanawa feel enables them to share their story and visions, this immersive work presents fluorescent and bioluminescent specimens in previously unseen colours from the forest world, to create a vivid, luminous vision. Awavena is the second in a series of mixed-reality works directed by Lynette Wallworth and produced by Nicole Newnham, following their Emmy-winning VR film Collisions.
Accepting the award from US filmmaker Dawn Porter in the virtual ceremony, Wallworth said, “It’s an astonishing win given all of those amazing projects.” She thanked her producer Nicole Newnham (her collaborator on Collisions), co-producers Tashka Yawanawa and Laura Yawanawa and the funding bodies, which included Screen Australia and Create NSW.
“In this moment when we are facing fires all over the world and ecological struggles, the story the Yawanawa felt we needed to hear was one about women’s leadership,” she said. “Beyond everything else they said ‘let us send this story to you. Change the leadership and you change everything.”
“I am so grateful that that message and this story has been heard, and for all of those who gave everything to make this project happen.”
Speaking to Inside Film, Wallworth said a long-form version of Awavena is in the works.
After premiering at Sundance Film Festival and being selected for competition at Venice, 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.
Having just begun her residency at AFTRS, Wallworth is working on a research project exploring the creative potential of audio narratives and offering mentorship to students. The multi-award-winning artist/filmmaker and VR pioneer is the inaugural Artist-in-Residence as part of the program, which invites the most talented, brilliant and creative storytellers in Australia to spend a semester at the School and have the space, support and facilities to reflect on and test their craft.
Read more about Awavena here.
See the full list of International News and Documentary Emmy Awards winners here.
