Finnish Project "Accidental Lovers" Wins Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund CyberPitch Award at Banff 2003

A creative team from Finland has won the annual CyberPitch Award, awarded each year by the BELL BROADCAST AND NEW MEDIA FUND at the Banff Television Festival.
The interactive program Accidental Lovers was created by Leena Saarinen and Mika “Lumi” Tuomola of CRUCIBLE STUDIO/UNIVERSITY OF ART AND DESIGN in Helsinki, Finland. In a ceremony held June 13, 2003, The Bell Fund awarded $10,000 to the creative team to continue its development of the project.
“The winning show Accidental Lovers pushes the limits of artistic and business models for a new kind of interactive entertainment,” said Bell Fund Board Member and CyberPitch jurist Catherine Warren. “We gave the Bell Fund prize to this creative team for their imagination and audacity in creating a romantic comedy that unites love, death and musical improvisation with live audience participation between cell phones and TV” The project surpassed 23 other international applicants for the prize.

Accidental Lovers is an iTV program about the romance between a 60 year-old artist and a 29 year-old musician whose lives and deaths are determined by the choices of the audience. It is one of several projects currently underway at Helsinki’s Crucible Studio, which aims “to achieve deeper emotional experiences in the interactive media and to create production methods to develop content and technology simultaneously in the multi-talented teams of artists, designers, scientists and technology”. https://crucible.lume.fi/crunet.nsf
The CyberPitch Award is handed out each year at the Banff Television Festival. It is one of a series of three CyberPitches held throughout the country. In May, the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund awarded a CyberPitch prize at the Hot Docs Festival, and the next CyberPitch award will be presented at nextMEDIA, to be held in Charlottetown, PEI, October 22 – 24. In addition to the Bell Fund cash award, winners receive complimentary registration for the next CyberPitch venue, post-festival mentorship from the Banff New Media Institute at The Banff Centre and the opportunity to attend the Banff New Media Institute’s Interactive Screen programme.
The Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund encourages the development and production of content for digital media and television and aims to stimulate partnerships and learning among members of the new media and television industries. The Bell Fund receives annual contributions from Bell ExpressVu as part of its broadcast distribution undertaking (BDU) contributions to the industry. The Bell Fund is incorporated as a not-for-profit organization, governed by an independent Board of Directors representing various sectors of the television and new media industry. The Fund is administered by the Independent Production Fund.
For further information:

Andra Sheffer
Executive Director
Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund
416-977-8154
bellfund@ipf.ca
www.bellfund.ca
Claire Dion
Associate Director
Fonds Bell
514-845-4418
fondsbell@ipf.ca
www.fondsbell.ca