We are proud to announce that 'The Vertical Horizon' by María Molina Peiró has won the AHK Graduation Prize on Monday 27 November, during the award ceremony in the Atrium of the Breitner Academy. This years jury includes Xandra Schutte (editor in chief 'De Groene Amsterdammer'), Dominique Vleeshouwers (co-founder & director Combined Creatives and winner of the Graduation Prize of 2013), Aaltje van Zweden (founder and board member of the Papageno Foundation) and Edwin van Huis (director Naturalis, also member of the AHK Supervisory Board).

The Graduation Prize of the Amsterdam University of the Arts includes a cash prize of €3,000 in the Bachelors and Masters category and an audience award. Five Bachelor and Master projects of 2017, from various academies were nominated. The jury was impressed by the quality of the entries. Without exception, the projects displayed a great desire for innovation, an open view of the future and above all a good command of the discipline. An important criteria upon which the jury evaluated the entries, in addition to them having been assessed as good, was the way in which the graduates made a connection with the outside world and the relevance of their work for the development of the field of study.

Winning Master’s project The Vertical Horizon
Maria Molina Peiró graduated from the Master of Film of the Netherlands Film Academy this year. Her graduation project, The Vertical Horizon. A series into the fear of forgetting in the Digital Age, is an investigation into the fear of forgetting in the digital age. The project has two parts: an investigation into how the fear of forgetting is growing in our increasingly digital society, and an investigation into how positive forgetting could serve as a way to conquer our fear. 

The jury praised Maria for the layered quality of her research project and called it clever, creative and above all extremely beautiful. From the jury report: ‘In our society that is completely dominated by the media, María Molino Peiró makes a heartfelt plea for the power of forgetting. Using new technologies, social media, cinematic storytelling and personal experience, she convincingly demonstrates why forgetting is not necessarily a negative thing.  The Vertical Horizon is a philosophically powerful and layered research project that perfectly reflects the moral questions that our Digital Age raises.'

Winning Bachelor’s project De Louteringsberg (Purgatory)
With de Louteringsberg (Purgatory) Marijn Graven, George Dhauw, Maartje Prins and Marlijn Hemmer, alumni of the Academy of Theatre and Dance, created a theatrical performance about a challenging theme: (self-chosen) death. The audience was invited in the performance to go on a journey together with the creators, in which you were asked to face up to your own death.

From the jury report: ‘A performance that was very successful aesthetically, was the finished article in every respect and exuded a consistently high quality. The creators managed to make the audience part of the performance in an ingenious way, as a result of which a deeply layered quality arose. Due to the unique form, the strong choice of live music and the topical theme, de Louteringsberg was a performance that made a lasting impression.’

Audience award
This years audience award went to Nelson Ogliastri (Master Composing for Film) for his project Danny's Bicycle. Ogliastri received 21% of the total of 1,750 votes. The prize includes a helicopter ride above Amsterdam.