The Yorkton Film Festival handed out the hardware Saturday and it would be an animated piece which emerged the big winner.
Lipsett Diaries took Best of Festival for producer/director Theodore Ushev, becoming the first animated Best of Festival since The Mighty River in 1994.
Lipsett Diaries was a multiple winner also capturing the Animation Golden Sheaf and the $500 Founder's Award.
The film details "a descent into the maelstrom of anguish that tormented Arthur Lipsett, a famed Canadian experimental filmmaker who died at 49. A diary transmuted into a clash of images and sounds charting a prodigious frenzy of creation, a tableau depicting an artist's dizzying descent into depression and madness: with Lipsett Diaries, Theodore Ushev renews his filmmaking aesthetic and explores what happens when genius is on a first-name basis with madness," detailed the film's website.
Ushev said the Best of Festival Award was totally unexpected.
"It's unbelievable. I'm speechless," he said. "I really didn't expect it."
Ushev said he hopes the award will continue to shed light on the works of Lipsett, who he said have been an inspiration to his own career.
"He's (Lipsett) a great Canadian filmmaker who didn't get a chance to achieve fame when he was alive," said Ushev.
Awards for Ushev's film may provoke interest in Lipsett's works, and that is important, said the animator.
For Ushev the award also validated a film which was created through a deeply personal process of hand-painting every picture.
"It was a really, really dense process," he said, adding he kept to the task for years because he needed to do it for Lipsett as much as for himself. He added he used painted animation because he "just didn't want to do another biography. I wanted to do a personal film.
"I put myself into every drawing and painting of this film. I painted it frame-by-frame."
The Best of Saskatchewan went to Remote Control War from Zoot Pictures. The film also won the Documentary Social/Political Award.
"It's very exciting for us. It's great to be recognized by your peers," said film producer Leslea Mair with Zoot Pictures. "It was a very good night for our picture."
The Golden Sheaf Awards also can't be anything but positive for the film and those involved with it, said Mair.
"It's always a good thing to say you're an award winning director," she said.
Mair said while she knew they had a good film she said she never allowed herself to think about winning anything.
As for the film it looks at "the current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are the world's first Robotic War, with over 7,000 robots in the air and 12,000 on the ground. Warfare has been revolutionized in a monumental shift. Mankind's five thousand year monopoly on war is breaking down. Robotic war is here," explained the company's website.
"But robot soldiers only have the ethics that they are programmed with, and human/robot wars raise many ethical questions. Does the ability to kill anyone, anywhere with a robot amount to lawlessness? What about when robots decide who to kill? Would the military send out an autonomous swarm of micro-robots to kill an enemy?
"Currently the West has the upper hand in technology, but a captured drone can be replicated in months. Very soon all sides will have access to remote control weapons. Will robots be the suicide bombers of the future?
"Warfare is being changed in a monumental shift, unlike anything in our history. Robotic war is here. What is unknown is how this shift will affect warfare, and mankind."
The film took about a year to shoot, said Mair, adding it would usually take longer to finance, but the network "saw potential in the idea right away."
A film from former Yorkton area resident Kenton Vaughn captured the Documentary Nature/Environment Golden Sheaf with Return of the Prairie Bandit.
Vaughn said having grown up in Yorkton the local festival of course holds a special place in his heart.
"To be able to celebrate my industry in my hometown, it's something a lot of people never get to do," he said.
In Vaughn's case the Festival also helped launch his career when he captured the 1998 Social Documentary Award for his first film Turning Away, an award he said holds, "an important part of my heart," adding that film was a difficult shoot.
"This one (Prairie Bandits) was pretty hard too, shot in the middle of the night in the middle of winter."
While admitting the first Golden Sheaf was likely more special, Vaughn said he appreciates this one from a different perspective.
"I'm well-established in the business now, but it imparts some legitimacy to the film. It may give the film more life," he said.
Vaughn said the Golden Sheaf certainly has merit within the industry.
"This festival is one of the best general competitions in the country," he said.
