The first ever AURORA DVD, Edition One, launched at this year's festival. A special program of 13 new films drawn from the competition selection, the compilation is an exciting mix of artists' film and animation, with treated, re-edited and generated work embodying an understanding of animation as the 'manipulated moving image'.

The DVD has been professionally produced and packaged with a 16pp booklet in a glossy double-gatefold sleeve, which should delight fans of prog-rock band Yes if no-one else. It launched at the festival and was on sale at the festival shop and now on the festival website and other selected outlets.

The following films - many premiering at AURORA this year - are on the disc:

Mercurius (Bret Battey)
Radar (Volker Schreiner)
Expansion (Sara Bjarland)
Clut (Joe Gilmore & Paul Emery)
Energie! (Thorsten Fleisch)
Dove Coup (Ben Rivers)
Krypt (Lars Nagler)
Falsche Freunde (False Friends) (Sylvia Schedelbauer)
Head (Félix Dufour LaPerrière & Dominic Etienne Simard)
Memorija Vrpce (Memory of Tape) (Damir Čučić)
Wie Wir Leben (The Way We Live) (Nikolaus Jantsch)
Cities (Brandon Harrod)
Kaizer (Kaiser) (Kotaro Tanaka)

AURORA: Edition One costs £15 (£12 to full festival passholders) and produced in a limited edition of 1,000. It has been made possible thanks to generous funding from the Film & Digital Media Exchange (FDMX), already a major funder of AURORA.

Please visit the festival website for more details at: http://www.aurora.org.uk

At the meeting of the main competition jury on Friday 9 November, and the Dick Arnall Award jury on Saturday 10 November, it was decided that the following films be awarded prizes at the festival:

Main competition
Music Videos

Best Music Video: Subtle: ‘The Mercury Craze’
by SSSR
"The film intrigues through a creepy aesthetic consistency in a variety of techniques that generates a relentless flow of very intriguing images that draw the viewer into a dystopian place. Its sophisticated sense of continuity playfully binds the musical flow to its strong visual identity."

Special Mention: "Hold On by Hei Cheng"
(Royal College of Art)
"Using a formal ingenuity, the filmmaker develops what initially seems to be a simple concept into surprising double-takes for the viewer. This self-reflexive film incites curiosity by exploring the unreliability of constructed space, time and content in the moving image."

Special Mention: "Series of Experiments"
Directed by: Martin Ruyant (Royal College of Art)
"Elegant and inventive, using mischief and wit, the film displays calculated precision in the construction of its units. Pushing visual music by unexpected syncopations, it transmutes possible musical figures into conceivable visual images."

Best Student Film: "Our Footsteps in the Leaves"
Directed by: Ben Sanders
"With remarkable sensitivity to small and unnoticed gestures of everyday life, through sophisticated use of narrative ambiguity, the film poetically expresses the substance of being young and coming of age."

Short Films

Special Mention:"…as they pass…"
Directed by: Brigitta Bödenauer
The film explores spatial dimensions of the 2D screen through every relevant formal element of film, including colour, movement, light, sound and pace. Abstracting images of the material world, it constructs the immaterial architecture of a mental place.

Special Mention: "Sydameen Katketty" (Learned By Heart)
Directed by: Marjut Rimminen and Päivi Takala
"The digital technique usually lends itself to ostentatious display: in this film, it is used modestly in service of the content. Narrated with an ease of pop culture attitude and with the seriousness of high art, the directors lyrically document the invisibility of women’s contributions in a way that is not bound to geographical or cultural specificity."

Best Short Film: "The Old, Old, Very Old Man"
Directed by: Elizabeth Hobbs
"Revelling in skilful use of minimalist media, low-tech imagery and extending the technique’s visual vocabulary, the film’s compelling narrative line unfolds a story of real compassion and philosophical content. The work of one hand, we are interested to see what’s next."

The main competition jury comprised Suzanne Buchan (UK; chair); Jeff Scher (US); Alicia Guerrero Yeste (ES); Jim Trainor (US); and Robert Buchschwenter (AT).

The Dick Arnall Award, for rogue vision in the manipulated moving image

Special Mention: "Under Construction"
Directed by Zhenchen Liu
"For the fluent and compassionate means by which it exposes the hidden cost of regeneration."

Special Mention: "Crazy Rock"
Directed by Becky James
"For the wit and economy of its singular tale."

Dick Arnall Award: "Nijuman no Borei" (200,000 Phantoms)
Directed by: Jean-Gabriel Périot
"For its extraordinary precision and attention to the potency of the image; for the integrity of its vision and its responsibility to history and the humanity that endures. Here the rogue vision is manifested as calm persistence. A moving and remarkably compelling work."

The Dick Arnall Award jury comprised Gareth Evans (chair); Rose Cupit and Andrew Kötting, with Marjut Rimminen as an observer. It was generously supported by the Royal College of Art, Animate Projects and the National Film & Television School.