Fantastic news that Nights Out a short film by Screen Academy graduate Li Gong (MFA Film Directing, ECA) won a New Visions Award at Edinburgh Film Festival 2018 in June. New Visions, an award honouring two outstanding Scottish short films made by young filmmakers aged 14-18 and 19-25 was the inaugural short film competition for EIFF’s youth strand The Young & the Wild.
The winners of New Visions were:
Age group 14-18:
Winner: Ghost by Georgia Ayres & Sam McDonald (Prize of £300 & a paid trip to Glasgow Youth Film Festival)
Jury Special Mention: Home by Amber Grieve
Age group 19-25:
Winner: Nights Out by Li Gong (Prize of £300, work experience with BBC Studios & a delegate pass for EIFF 2019)
Jury Special Mention: A Waste of Time by Libby Cavaye & Eilidh MacKinnon
The New Vision awards commend vision and effort and aim to boost the careers of new voices in filmmaking. The winners were selected by a jury (comprised of Vashti Anderson, Emily Jones & Donal Foreman) from a shortlist of 12 filmmakers curated by the EIFF Youth Advisory Group.
In 2017 Li Gong won a BAFTA scholarship for her study on the MFA Film Directing at Screen Academy Scotland, ECA. Li, who is originally from Lanzhou in Gansu Province in China, was awarded £12,950 for tuition fees, and a £10,000 bursary. Li attended Fudan University in Shanghai, where she majored in journalism and has previously completed an internship at Shanghai Media Group as an assistant director on the documentary, Survival in Shanghai.