The Criteria

Best Picture: refers to vision and direction that pay sensitive and keen attention to both the language of cinema (“presentation”) and social reality (“representation”), in the process refunctioning the possibilities of film as progressive art and popular culture. The Best Picture citation is awarded to the Director not so much because he or she is the auteur or the central intelligence of the film, but because his or her work lies at the conjuncture which coordinates filmmaking.

Best Screenplay: refers to the rhetoric of writing for film that articulates the complexity of social life and personal perturbation through narrative logic or
political conviction; or simply through well-thought out dramatic tension that explores contestation between the personal and the political, the individual and the collective, the private and the public. The Best Screenplay award is given to all the writers of the film.

Best Cinematography and Visual Design: refers to the mise-en-scene and its visual/plastic qualities production design, lighting, art direction, visual effects that lend form to whatever representation is projected on screen; and absorb the differences of social forces and cultures in instances of contradiction, confluence, contact, resistance, or affiliation with one another, as well as imbibe the relationship between people and the structures and institutions they mediate through social practice. The Best Cinematography and Visual Design honor is conferred on the cinematographer and the production designer.

Best Editing: refers to the configuration of relationships of time and space among scenes in a film that is able to synthesize, engage in collision, reconcile, or transgress connections through the complex interplay of mise-en-scene and montage. The Best Editing trophy is given to the editors.

Best Sound and Aural Orchestration: refers to the rendering of the auditory aspects of film music, natural sound, sound effects as these are counterposed against or harmonized with the language of image, and so become meaningful sign systems on their own. The Best Sound citation is awarded to the sound engineer and the musical scorer.

Best Performance: refers to acting, to the playing out of a role or character that implicates emotion, feeling, and experience in the social conditions of the personal and in the political economies of habit and gesture and how these forge the body politic. The Best Performance citation is handed to the Performer, whether male or female, adult or child, in major or supporting role, individual or ensemble.

The Young Critics Circle Film Desk departs from many conventions of other award-giving bodies both here and abroad in bestowing cinematic honors. For instance, the award for Best Film of the Year is reserved for the director such that no separate prize for direction is needed. The Best Performance award is most coveted as it is conferred on a screen performer whether male or female, adult or child, individual or as part of an ensemble, in leading or supporting role. To uphold a more dynamic and encompassing way of looking at films, technical honors refer to fusion of outstanding efforts in fields otherwise deemed apart. In this case, the Best Cinematography and Visual Design recognition covers both camerawork and art direction. Similarly, Best Sound and Aural Orchestration encompasses not just sound engineering per se but musical score as well.