Terra Mater at the New York Festivals: 8 productions awarded

April 2014, New York: 3 gold medals, 5 silver and bronze awards for Terra Mater productions at one of the biggest international TV festivals.

Every year – for the past 57 years – the best TV-productions worldwide are being awarded at the New York Festivals. This year, an Austrian producer dominated the categories ‘Documentary/Information Program’ like probably no one ever had before: eight different productions of Vienna-based Terra Mater Factual Studios (founded in 2011) triumphed in the categories ‘Science & Technology’, ‘Nature & Wildlife’ and ‘History & Society’.

The productions ‘Eyes of the Atacama’, ‘Namibia’s Desert Kingdom’ and the three-part documentary ‘Genius of Nature’ even scored the highly coveted gold medal.

“We now come to see how three years of hard and intensive work have paid off”, says Terra Mater CEO Dr. Walter Köhler and is very pleased: “The international acknowledgement and its vast extent came as a surprise to me. After all, in New York we compete against the cream of the crop of the TV industry from all over the world.”

With these latest awards Terra Mater Factual Studios has reached a peak so far after gaining many international prizes within a very short time. Since the beginning of 2012, the Viennese producers received over 50 international awards.

Last year two of the golden medal-rewarded documentaries also convinced the jury of the CINE Golden Eagle Awards and the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival.

At the latter, ‘Genius of Nature’ won the glorious ‘Nature-film Oscar’. (Read about this celebratory moment here.)
“With our ‘Genius of Nature’-series we seem to have hit a nerve in the industry”, states Dr. Walter Köhler and analyses the latest TV-trends: “Apparently, this production has created a new gold standard with its combination of exciting and newly discovered histories, innovative narrative forms and cinematic realisation of extreme high-quality.”

All of the awarded films at the New York Festivals had already been broadcasted on Terra Mater’s weekly slot on ServusTV (Wednesdays at 8.15pm). Ever since the early beginning in April 2011, rating figures have been growing continuously. Up to 160.000 viewers watch TMFS’ productions on ServusTV during prime time on Wednesdays (a market share of up to 5,1% for viewers over 12 years).
“All this shows that we are on the right track – both internationally and in the German-speaking world. But the best is yet to come”, announces Terra Mater’s Head of TV Sabine Holzer, looking forward to the rest of the year. “In the upcoming months we will complete our first two big series: an opulent four-part adventure through Brazil’s nature and the brilliant four-part documentary about Canada’s wilderness. The aforementioned five-part documentary titled ‘Brazil – A natural History’ will air on ServusTV starting on the 7^th of May, just in time before the upcoming football World Cup.

All the glory at one quick glance:

Gold World Medal:

• ‘Namibia’s Desert Kingdom’ (Category: ‘Nature & Wildlife’)
• ‘Eyes of the Atacama’ (Category: ‘Science & Technology’)
• ‘Richard Hammond’s Miracles of Nature’ (Category: ‘Science & Technology’)

Silver World Medal:

• ‘Stonehenge – Bringing back the Dead‘ (Category: ‘History & Society’)
• ‘Unnatural Selection‘ (Category: ‘Nature & Wildlife’)
• ‘Meteor Menace‘ (Category: ‘Science & Technology’)

Bronze World Medal:

• ‘The Tulip Bubble‘ (Category: ‘Business & Finance’)
• ‘Plants behaving badly‘ (Category: ‘Nature & Wildlife’)