TOKYO, Feb. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The short film Checkmate, in competition at the JVTA festival, was awarded both the Grand Prix Award, and the Best Music award has been given to the multi awarded Russian composer Alexander Shulgin.

The JVTA International Music Film Festival was held in Tokyo on Saturday, January 28th 2017.

Checkmate has been selected between hundreds of films of different genres with submissions coming from every corner of the world. Only a dozen films made the final selection.

Among the JVTA festival guests was Alexander Shulgin, world renowned visionary, composer, producer, investor and EMMY academic.

The film has been directed by English director Jason Bradbury (whose previous short We Once Were Tide has more than 4 million streams on YouTube) and it stars the iconic Italian actress Ornella Muti and BAFTA and Golden Globe award-winning Dame Sian Phillips

Completing the stellar cast are Susanna Cappellaro  and Lachlan Nieober who play the ill-fated lovers, Irina and Dimitri. Nieober is best known for portraying tortured soldier Edward Courtenay in Downton Abbey whilst Susanna appeared in Tim Burton's Dark Shadows and Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio and was recently nominated for best actress at Istanbul Film Festival with feature film Papagajka.

The film, "Checkmate," is the story of two sisters, Penury (Muti) and Prosperity (Phillips) who prepare for an enchanted game of chess that controls the fate of two unsuspecting strangers, Irina and Dimitri.

It was written by Eugenia Caruso, whose latest script is in production with Rook Films and Creative England. Her latest film is Paolo Sorrentino's Youth.

The costumes have been provided by Ulyana Sergeenko and the Ann Demeulemeester's archive.

Checkmate was shot in North Wales. 

JVTA stands for Japan Visual media Translation Academy. It was founded in 1996 by president Naoki Niira and it is a Tokyo based school specialized in training professional translators for visual media content.

The Media Translation Center translates several types of visual media content, such as films and TV programs, from English to Japanese and vice versa.  JVTA has one branch located in LA, California. More than 600 staff members work for JVTA at the present time.

International Music Film Festival was establish by JVTA in 2016.The concept of this festival is new and unique, and similar to that of the recently held ABU International Dance Festival organized by the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union.

Media Contacts: Yulia Gukkina
Tel +79218656585
Email conference@rasia.com 

SOURCE Alexander Shulgin