Kisharon Film wins Innovation Award for Vanilla Films

Vanilla Films scoops Innovation Award for Kisharon Fundraising Film. Film below.

Kisharon Vanilla Award 13125 — LR: Chaim Dovid Rotenberg (supported by Kisharon), Richard Franklin (Kisharon’s director of fundraising and communications), Karen Benveniste (co managing director of Vanilla Films) Debra Sobel, (co-managing director of Vanilla Films) (Photo credit: John Rifkin)

An innovative 12-minute video in which a Jewish man with Down’s Syndrome asks people what they think when they see him has won a prestigious award.

Narrator Eliezer Chontow, a Kisharon support worker, filmed guests’ reactions and answers at the charity’s gala dinner in May, something the judges loved.

The film also follows the lives of people with learning disabilities, including a child at nursery, aKisharonDay School student and a young adult starting his first job in the City.

Debra Sobel and Karen Benveniste, who were commissioned to produce the short film, were overjoyed on their return from the Rosh Hashanah break, when they learnt they’d scooped the EVCOM Clarion Award.

“The Clarion’s Innovation Award is a new category so we’re thrilled to have been the first to win it,” said Sobel, adding that her brief was to make “something a bit different, something edgy and innovative”.

Kisharon’s fundraising manager Richard Franklin echoed those thoughts, saying it had “given a powerful voice to the people we support”.