The 1999 Rory Peck Awards

How we get entries can be nearly as dramatic as the footage.

March 99 - Alert from Committee member Nik Gowing: Fergal Keane has come across an astoundingly brave freelance cameraman. Should he enter for the Rory Peck Awards?

April - Fergal writes about him for the free lens (issue 2)

May - the 1999 Awards are launched.

August - closing date looms. We have managed to track down all our entrants and their footage. But nothing from this cameraman - we don't even know if he's still alive. So we chase. And chase. With the help of BBC News, we finally track him down. But then there's the footage...

September - 17.00 hrs on the closing day of the Awards. A taxi pulls up in Southwick Mews. Out jumps a rain-soaked UN envoy clutching a small, grubby package. We open it excitedly - oh no. Wrong format. But whatever the format it turns out to be this years' winner of the Rory Peck Award

October - Sorious Samura's footage of Freetown, Sierra Leone in the aftermath of the rebels' invasion in January 1999 is shown in full at a special screening following the Awards ceremony. The effect is devastating.

We're glad we bothered.

Issue 4
December
1999

 

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