El Toro took home the top prize. (publicity photo)

TIVA-DC wasn't the only organization handing out film awards this past weekend: Judges for the Rosebud Film & Video Festival selected five winners on Sunday, awarding each filmmaker $1,000 and a pretty disc of etched glass. Winning "best of show" was El Toro, directed by H. Paul Moon, who had never submitted to a festival before. "It was a surprise, which is a cliché, but it was," he says. "I really didn't think it was going to receive any attention." The film, an experimental short that juxtaposes a Madrid bullfight with Catholic iconography, draws an implicit connection between the modern brutality of slaughter-as-sport and the original brutality at the heart of Catholic worship: the crucifixion.

Moon, an attorney living in Clarendon, says he took up documentary filmmaking recently because of its accessibility and flexibility. "Only in the past few years is it possible to make fairly professional, cinematic-looking footage with modest equipment and lots of post-production work in a home studio," he says. "People can really do these things without giving up other career pursuits."

The full list of winners:

Best of Show

El Toro, H. Paul Moon

Rosebud Awards

Out in the Silence, Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson

For Memories’ Sake, Ashley Maynor and Paul Harrill

Minding, Julie Haberstick

Molly, Steven Vagias, Michael Leonberger and Spike Scarberry

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While El Toro isn't available online, here's another short film by Moon called Eye, which employs the human-ant technique (also known as tilt-shift) that the Internet kids go crazy for these days.