ST. PETERSBURG - A documentary that told the Manhattan Casino's story has won several top national and international awards for its producers - the City of St. Petersburg's television station and LiveArts Peninsula Foundation.
Remembering the Manhattan Casino took Crystal Awards of Excellence in the External Communications/History and Documentary categories of the Communicator Awards competition. Philippe Remoussin, video production specialist for WSPF-TV, and LiveArts' Bill and Diana Leavengood put the documentary together.
The Communicator Awards are an international competition honoring excellence in visual communications. WSPF station manager Cathi Brake said 3,242 entries from 48 states, Washington, D.C. and nine other nations competed. Only 13 percent won Crystal Awards, the top honor.
The Manhattan Casino documentary, which traced the nightclub's evolution to its status as an African-American community cornerstone, also won Documentary and Municipal categories in the Southern Sunshine Video Awards competition.
The Southern Sunshine contest recognizes the best in locally produced public, educational and government access programming.
The Manhattan video also won Best Documentary in the Independents Film Festival, produced by the Tampa Educational Cable Consortium. The competition recognizes the best full-length films, shorts and animations.
In the Communicator Awards, WSPF also won Awards of Distinction in the Government/Education category for its video about sewers, called Your City Underground. Remoussin and Robert Clydesdale produced it.
Another Award of Distinction, also in the Government/Education Category, went to WSPF's Bergis Petsch and the University of South Florida St. Petersburg's Kathy Arsenault and James Schnur for St. Petersburg in the 1920s.
Remoussin also had a hand in Youth Art Corps at Wildwood, which won in the Southern Sunshine competition's Arts category. Anne Wykell of the city's Intergovernmental Relations Department was production partner.
Petsch and Fire and Rescue Department retiree Chris Bengivengo won a Southern Sunshine award in the Instructional/Demonstrational category with "Weapons of Mass Destruction: Ready or Not?" The video demonstrated how local emergency services respond to simulated incidents.
