CineEurope to honour Weststrate

CineEurope will awards its UNIC Achievment Award this year to Ad Weststrate, who is himself president of UNIC (the International Union of Cinemas) as well as an independent cinema owner, distributor and entrepreneur.

He will collect the honour during CineEurope’s opening ceremony on June 24 in Barcelona.

The UNIC Achievement Award is given each year to an outstanding person for his or her dedication and service to European cinema exhibition. Past recipients include Lene Løken of Film&Kino Norway, Jean Labé of Fédération Nationale des Cinémas Français and John Fithian of National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO).

“We are delighted to give this year’s UNIC Achievement Award to our President Ad J. Weststrate, who has played such an important role in strengthening the voice of international cinema exhibition in the past decade,” said Jan Runge, CEO of UNIC. “Ad helped steer UNIC through a phase of considerable change and helped ensure its increasing influence. He managed to do so by bringing together a rare combination of skills - leadership, business sense, diplomatic tact and a great deal of empathy for those around him. We want to express our gratitude to Ad and look forward to continuing to work with him in the future.”

“We are equally delighted that UNIC has decided to award this prestigious honor each year at CineEurope and we extend our congratulations to Ad Weststrate on this auspicious occasion,” added Robert Sunshine, Managing Director of CineEurope.

Weststrate is an independent cinema owner and entrepreneur with more than 40 years’ experience in the Dutch and the international cinema industry.He runs three Dutch cinemas and also works with distribution via A-Films. He runs a local TV station as well as being the founder of fsetival Film by The Sea and co-founder of magazine Holland Film Nieuws. He is also working with a group to open a cinema in the Kingdom of Buthan. He’s also on the board of Dutch exhibitors association NVB.

CineEurope runs June 24-27.