Grand Prix went to "Italy K2", an Italian documentary made back in 1954, Tamara Jishkariani, festival director, said to the Novosti-Georgia news agency. Italy's Alpine Club had sent to the Niamori that excellent movie about Italian mountain climbers, who were the first to negotiate Peak Chogori in the Himalayas, conventionally known as K2, and 8,611 meters high. The vintage movie was first intended for hors concours show, but the jury later determined to add it to the competing films, and nominated it for Grand Prix, Givi Melkadze of the jury, prominent Georgian television camera, said to Novosti-Georgia. "The film ought to come as teaching aid for present-day documentary movie directors," he admiringly remarked.
Switzerland's "Farewell, My Mountain" won in the Man and the Mountains nomination. Another Swiss film, "On the Road to Karakorum", received the festival special prize. Georgia's "At the End of the World" won in the Mountain-Climbing Expedition nomination.
The winners received money prizes jointly established by the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) Caucasian office, and the Zaza Daraseli Foundation. The Grand Prix winners are offered, next August, a fifteen-day tour of the Georgian highlands.
The winners also received each a replica of gold rings from the 5th and 4th centuries, B.C. representing a mountain goat (Niamori, in Georgian-hence the festival name), the jewels were unearthed during archeological excavations in the Van District, in Georgia's west.
Competing in the festival were a total nineteen documentaries-four Swiss, an Italian, a Russian, and thirteen from the host country.
