Premio Maertens 2026: ceremonio por premiito Alekso Miller – "La Estonteco de la Esperanto-Kino"

00:00 Introduction 04:43 Award 06:03 Alex's Speech The Maertens Prize Professor Humphrey Tonkin presents the second Maertens Prize, which recognizes individuals bringing extraordinary energy and innovation to the Esperanto movement, to American filmmaker Alex Miller. The award is named in honor of Gregoire Maertens, a former UEA (Universal Esperanto Association) president who recently celebrated his 102nd birthday. The 1000 euros that came with the award helped Alex fly to Austria to experience the World Esperanto Congress in Graz, where he served as a congress volunteer, translated for a tour guide during a full-day excursion to Slovenia, and emceed the IAV (International Art Evening). Here is Alex's recording of that IAV:    • La Internacia Arta Vespero de la 111-a Uni...   You can donate toward future Maertens award recipients here to help Esperanto artists and activists attend Esperanto events that would otherwise be out of reach: https://uea.org/alighoj/donacoj/maertens The American Good Film Festival Miller uses the ceremony to promote the ongoing 8th American Good Film Festival, urging amateurs and professionals alike to participate in the competition before the October 1st deadline. He highlights the importance of documenting the Esperanto movement and its local clubs and members through these short film entries. Here is the festival’s Telegram group: https://t.me/usonabona Submissions this year must be under 4 minutes long and entirely in Esperanto with at least 10 unique spoken words and feature a ring as a visible prop. More details can be found here: https://esperanto-usa.org/en/the-amer... Miller notes the festival will likely take hiatuses in upcoming years to prepare for a 10th-anniversary event in 2030, which will give him time to work on other larger projects such as the physical Blu-ray release of the Esperanto play "1910" which he filmed in Montreal, publishing a 6th bilingual children's book (like the one he performed at the IAV), and directing a feature-length comedy film in Esperanto. Kick The Ladder (KTL) To alleviate the heavy editing, translating, promoting, and grammar-checking burden on festival organizers, Miller introduces Kick The Ladder (KTL), a weekly micro-filmmaking program created by Isaac Deitz in Atlanta, GA which has produced over 4000 films and encourages regular filmmaking and incremental artistic growth. Here's a video explaining how to play KTL:    • Kick the Ladder | How To Play   Encouraging Esperantists to regularly make a KTL removes the film festival's pressure to police and polish the pronunciation and grammar of each film in order to justify giving out prizes. Each festival film either wins a prize or loses once a year, whereas KTLs are made year-round, they enjoy an immediate physical premiere event each week, and they let people experiment and grow at their own speed with nothing to lose. https://kicktheladder.com/ Isaac has agreed to create an Esperanto version of the game and the KTL website if we can secure a grant to pay for the many hours of translating and troubleshooting that that will require. If Esperanto speakers spend a year or two improving their skills through KTL, then the next film festival will have far more prizes won by people outside of just the Atlanta film community. In effect, KTL can be a cinematic workshop available around the world and throughout the year to every Esperanto speaker for free. Here's the Esperanto KTL film Alex made while in Europe which differed from his original plan while still following the rules of using exactly two locations (Austria and Slovenia) and breaking the fourth wall: https://kicktheladder.com/watch/alexm... Adding Cinema to the Belartaj Konkursoj UEA president Fernando Maia Jr. mentions near the end that their organization's art competition Belartaj Konkursoj sometimes works alongside other projects like Vejdo to include and encourage more art forms. Perhaps adding a microfilm category to the BK could allow cash prizes to be awarded to exceptional KTL films that happen to be made in Esperanto at any time during a given year. Their 1-minute maximum length would certainly make reviewing KTL films far easier than reviewing dozens and dozens of 5-minute films. Thank you to all my patrons on Patreon! To save space, they'll be listed in a pinned comment under the video. If these videos help you, consider becoming a patron. Or you could send a few dollars directly using Venmo or PayPal. Any and all support is appreciated. Typing subtitles for this video was especially tedious so knowing I had some money coming in from Patreon truly kept me going and now it will be forever easier to access the important info from the ceremony because of those subtitles being there. Patreon:   / exploringesperanto   Venmo: https://account.venmo.com/u/AlexMille... PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/AlexM...