Zam Salim's Laid Off, a delightfully strange and funny look at the powerless social strata of the living dead, walks off with a total prize fund of £1500. It made a clean sweep at the 8th Jim Poole Short Film awards, winning both the main prize of £1000 and the Audience Award, voted for by the cinemagoers.
Ian Hoey - general manager of the Cameo Cinema in Edinburgh - illustrated the sheer quality of this year's entrants, and a fondness for the art of packing "as much story in four minutes as many Hollywood films do in four hours."
On the jury were Scottish writer/director Richard Jobson, film writer Eddie Harrison, and Genni Poole, daughter of the late Jim Poole. She was sadly unable to attend due to ill health.
The films in competition were:
- River Child by Damian Wood
- Fritz by Jamie Stone
- Westi by Madevi Dailly
- Meinertzhagen : Undercover Ornithologist by Alice Nelson
- Nowhere, No-one by Ian Waugh
- Laid Off by Zam Salim
- Losing Myself by Alice Nelson
- Sadie’s Story by Pete Martin
- The Eskimo and the Wolf by Jonathon Ley and Mark Henrichsen
- Breaking by Mikey Murray
