LAWRENCE BENDER, JIM WALTON, MATTHEW WEINER, IAN SANDER & KIM MOSES, DIANE LADD, SHONDA RHIMES, JILLIAN MICHAELS AND STEPHEN NEMETH
AMONG THOSE HONORED

Los Angeles, CA, June 5, 2009 - Many of Hollywood’s best and brightest in film, television and music will descend upon the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, on Saturday, June 27 for the star-studded, 36th Annual Vision Awards ™. The gala fundraising event, which has become an annual Hollywood tradition, honors entertainment and business luminaries as well as medical professionals who have exhibited exceptional gifts of sight, foresight and insight in the creative arts, related technologies and medical research.

Presented by RP International, the nation’s leading non-profit fighting Retinitis Pigmentosa and other blinding eye diseases, this year’s awards will once again be led by legendary Daily Variety columnist, Army Archerd, and will feature a presentation by Larry King and a musical performance by actress and music artist, Taryn Manning (HUSTLE AND FLOW).

Honorees include Leader of Vision, Jim Walton, President of CNN Worldwide, Film Artist of Vision: Diane Ladd (RAMBLING ROSE, WILD AT HEART); Film Producer of Vision: Lawrence Bender (INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS); Producer of Vision – Documentary: Stephen Nemeth (FIELDS OF FUEL, FLOW: FOR LOVE OF WATER); Producers of Vision – Television: Ian Sander and Kim Moses (GHOST WHISPERER), Matthew Weiner (MAD MEN); Woman of Vision – Entertainment: Shonda Rhimes (GREY’S ANATOMY); Woman of Vision – Fitness & Motivation: Jillian Michaels (THE BIGGEST LOSER); Screenwriter of Vision: Grant Nieporte (SEVEN POUNDS);  Lester Sill Award-Composer/Editor of Vision: John Ottman (VALKYRIE) and Film of Vision: TWILIGHT (producers: Wyck Godfrey, Greg Mooradian, Mark Morgan and Guy Oseary). 

The Vision Awards is produced by RP International, the nation’s leading non-profit fighting degenerative eye diseases. RPI was founded by blind activist, Helen Harris, a Woodland Hills housewife who, in 1972, was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a degenerative blinding disease, along with her two young sons. Physicians told Harris that there would be no hope, no help and no cure. Harris and her family set out to prove them wrong, and to prove that a cure for blindness could become a reality. Today, due to Harris’ ongoing efforts, and those for the international organization that she founded, more than 200 celebrities, producers, directors and other luminaries are helping to bring the cause to the public’s attention.

The 2009 Vision Awards also celebrates the ongoing work of RP International’s descriptive TheatreVision ™, which Vision Awards founder and president Helen Harris developed in 1994, to allow blind movie goers the ability to enjoy described films inside a motion picture theatre. The first such film was Paramount Picture’s FORREST GUMP. Since that time, Ms. Harris’ TheatreVision ™ has described nearly 500 programs via patented technology.

This year’s Theartre Vision Description Awards honorees are:

FILM
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
SEVEN POUNDS
TWILIGHT
VALKYRIE

TELEVISION
DAMAGES
GREY’S ANATOMY
MAD MEN
RECOUNT
TWO AND A HALF MEN

The primary medical award being given out at the Vision Awards this year will be the Jules Stein Living Tribute Award, which goes to Dr. Shalesh Kaushal, MD. Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Massachusetts, Kaushal was the first investigator in the world to use complement inhibitor molecules to treat patients and is a principal investigator for a complement inhibitor research study for wet age-related macular degeneration. Most recently, he has published research on the use of gene therapy to treat a type of congenital human blindness known as Leber Congenital Amaurosis.

RP International raises funds to support facilities that specialize in all degenerative eye research, including Retinitis Pigmentosa, Macular Degeneration and Usher’s Syndrome.  Previous Vision Awards honorees include James Cameron, Todd Field, Wes Craven, Andy Garcia, Malcolm McDowell, George Romero, Roone Arledge, Phil Collins, Jim Carrey, Robert Halmi, Sr., Katie Couric, Bob Hope, Norman Jewison, Stephen King, David Letterman, Oliver Stone, Gene Roddenberry, Martin Landau, Stacy Keach, Vin Scully, Aaron Spelling, Lorne Michaels, Matt Damon, Robert Wise, Jon Voight, The Blind Boys of Alabama and Jim Henson. 

For ticket information and contributions, please visit www.VisionAwards.org, call 1-800-FIGHT-RP, or write to P.O. Box 900, Woodland Hills, California 91365.  Fax 818-992-3265.

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Press contact:
John Wildman, jswildman@hotmail.com, 323.600.3165