GAYVN award-winning director/writer Wash West and partner Richard Glatzer received two top awards at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival's closing awards ceremony Saturday night.
Their film, Quinceañera, about disaffected Latino teens coming of age in L.A.'s gentrifying Echo Park area, won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the Independent Film Competition: Dramatic category. It is the first time in the festival's history that both awards have gone to the same film.
In bestowing the award, the Grand Jury cited West and Glatzer for molding "their mostly unknown ensemble into a tender portrait of a changing world and in doing so, have illuminated modern realities of family and hope."
West, whose most recent GAYVN win was for the 2003 Jet Set Productions blockbuster The Hole, has been winning screenplay, directing, editing, and videography awards since 1997. His most noteworthy productions are Naked Highway (BIG), Animus (All Worlds), and Technical Ecstasy (Odyssey).
West and Glatzer also co-directed 2001's The Fluffer, an unrated (but not XXX) movie about the gay adult film industry. It is available from TLA Video.
A softcore version of The Hole was released by TLA in 2005.
