After a long and contradictory decision making process, the jury decided to award the Best Czech Documentary award to the surprising and cinematographically impressive depiction of Czech development help in Zambia, the film Solar Eclipse by Martin Marecek.

Lost Land's simple cinematic gestures express a fleeting beauty infused with a knowing sadness -- that questions our own ignorance of the Sahrawi situation. Its political resistance isn't overtly propagandized, but rather modestly presented as a lost series ofprofoundly beautiful images and scenes, which lead the viewer closer and closer to an almost imaginary but all-too-physical wall. To me (James T. Hong), Lost Land is an urgent, aestheticized work of mourning -- a lost memory of a lost people in a lost landscape filmed in a lost format.

We were most fascinated by the film Endeavour which regularly combines the scenes from six cameras placed in a space shuttle. The resulting film is similar to the functioning of the human brain which also interconnects the functioning of the left and right hemisphere into a single whole. Although the film was made by a machine and shows primarily the machine, it is most telling of mankind as such. At the beginning, the spectator watches the camera images, however, the regular rhythm of image and sound provides space for reflection.

By engaging enduring philosophical themes and by constantly tinkering with the crafts of cinema the filmmaker courageously demonstrates how cinema can contribute and enrich the modes of human perception and thinking. The film reveals an uncompromising faith in humanity - especially when recognizing its innumerable failings - and an enthusiastic personal belief in cinema as an inexhaustible form of expression and experience. For its rhapsodic effort to expand the responsibilities of filmmaking the award for Best Central & Eastern Co-production goes to Obscurantist and His Lineage or the Pyramids' Tearful Valleys by Karel Vachek.

With an attentive and personal approach the filmmaker transforms an ordinary microcosm into a unique narrative and playful visual experience. Through an effective and assured cinematic language this film reveals the mood and the spirit of a society struggling with its internal hopes and contradictions. For its respect, artistry and quest for surprise the award for the Best film of "The Between the Seas" Competition goes to Bakhmaro by Salome Jashi.