JON KAMEN GIVEN PRODUCTION INDUSTRY’S HIGHEST HONOR
JUNE
16, 2004, NEW YORK, NY - Jon Kamen, chairman of production
company @radical.media was the 2004 recipient of the Jay B.
Eisenstat Award at last night’s premiere of the 13th
annual AICP Show, which took place at The Metropolitan Museum
of Art. Matt Miller, president and CEO of the Association
of Independent Commercial Producers, presented the award which
is given for “distinguished service to the television
commercial production industry.”
“Jon Kamen has been an active member of AICP for over
twenty-five years, devoting countless hours to the commercial
production industry, all while building a successful international
company,” said AICP President and CEO Matt Miller. “His
contributions to the industry as a whole and to AICP in particular
merit this special award, and we’re delighted to have
been able to honor him before an audience of his colleagues.”
Kamen was national chairman of the association in 1991 and
1992, and was instrumental in the establishment of the AICP
Show, The Art & Technique of the American Television
Commercial, a compendium of brilliant commercial filmmaking,
that is one of the most prestigious advertising awards programs
in the country. Commercials in the AICP Show become part of
the permanent film archives of the Department of Film and
Media of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), a distinction that
is unique among advertising awards, and a relationship that
was forged by Kamen, who is the only person to have chaired
the Show twice once in 1994 and again in 2001 for the event’s
tenth anniversary.
In addition to his AICP honor, Kamen has been a recipient
of New York City’s Crystal Apple Award for his outstanding
contributions to city’s film production industry. His
company has twice won the Palme D’Or at Cannes, presented
to the top production company at the International Advertising
Festival. And this year, his company produced director Errol
Morris’s Academy Award-winning documentary “Fog
of War.”
The Jay B. Eisenstat Award is named for one of the founders
of AICP, who got together with a handful of executive producers
in 1972, and formed an organization that created order from
the chaos that was then the commercial production industry.
Today, AICP has almost 600 members, national offices in New
York and Los Angeles, and regional offices around the country,
and has emerged as a powerful voice in the $5.5 billion commercial
production industry.