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The Interrupters Takes Two Top Awards at 5th Cinema Eye Honors

Posted Thursday, January 12th, 2012 - Comments Off on The Interrupters Takes Two Top Awards at 5th Cinema Eye Honors
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Steve James named Outstanding Director, Clio Barnard receives Outstanding Debut for The Arbor, Errol Morris’ Tabloid wins two awards, Buck takes Audience Choice Prize

Wim Wenders, Danfung Dennis and Tim Hetherington Among This Year’s Cinema Eye Winners

January 11, 2012

For Immediate Release

New York – The Interrupters, Steve James’ epic portrait of violence mediators in Chicago, took two top awards at the 5th Annual Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens tonight.  Esther Robinson and AJ Schnack, who serve as Co-Chairs of Cinema Eye Honors, returned as this year’s co-hosts.

James took the prize for Outstanding Achievement in Direction just before the film was named as this year’s winner for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking.  It is the first time that a film has received both the Feature Film and the Directing award in the history of Cinema Eye.  “Tonight, I don’t care about the Oscars!” James said.

Academy Award-winner Michael Moore presented James and producer Alex Kotlowitz (—and the Interrupters—) with the award for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking. Moore also roused the audience with talk of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences’ new Best Documentary Oscar nominating rules.

Moore, elected to the Board of Governors of the Oscars last year, said he wanted to introduce a Democracy movement to this branch. “This is a much more open, transparent process, and the old days of secret committees are gone,” Moore said.

Cinema Eye presented honors in six craft categories in addition to awards for Outstanding Feature, Debut Film, International Film, Legacy Award and Audience Choice. For the second time, Cinema Eye presented an award for Nonfiction Short Filmmaking, going to the late Tim Hetherington’s Diary (accepted by his parents), as well as the Heterodox Award for Narrative Filmmaking, going to Mike Mills’ Beginners, that recognizes a narrative film that imaginatively incorporates nonfiction strategies, content and/or modes of production.  And for the first time, Cinema Eye presented its Hell Yeah Prize to Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Paradise Lost trilogy.

Documentaries vying for the top Nonfiction Feature prize included Clio Barnard’s The Arbor, Steve James’ The Interrupters, Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia for the Light, Leonard Retel Helmrich’ Position Among the Stars, James Marsh’s Project Nim and Asif Kapadia’s Senna. The award went to The Interrupters.

This year’s Legacy Award was presented to the landmark 1967 documentary, Titicut Follies, a stark and graphic portrayal of the conditions that existed at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts.  The Legacy Award is intended to honor classic films that inspire a new generation of filmmakers and embody the Cinema Eye mission: excellence in creative and artistic achievements in nonfiction films.  The Legacy Award celebrates the entire creative team behind the chosen film.  Filmmaker Frederick Wiseman accepted the award on behalf of the film.

“Making these movies is a great adventure,” Wiseman said. “I’m extremely pleased and proud to have this award for this first film I did.”

Cinema Eye also awarded its first-ever Hell Yeah Prize, given to filmmakers who have created works of incredible craft and artistry that also have significant, real-world impact, to Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky for their HBO Documentary Films trilogy Paradise Lost, which played a critical role in securing the release from prison of the wrongly prosecuted and convicted West Memphis Three. Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky and Jason Baldwin, one of the West Memphis Three, accepted the award

“The Hell Yeah Award, right! It’s always been no, no, no,” said Baldwin. “Since August, my life has begun.”

“It’s been a dream come true for us,” said Berlinger. “You can make a difference when you make these films. We’ve had this amazing journey the past 20 years. We’re really appreciative of HBO.”

The complete list of Cinema Eye Honors winners for 2012:

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking

The Interrupters

Directed by Steve James

Produced by Alex Kotlowitz and Steve James

Presented by Michael Moore

Outstanding Achievement in Direction

Steve James

The Interrupters

Presented by Alex Gibney

Audience Choice Prize

Buck

Directed by Cindy Meehl

Presented by Robert Krulwich

Outstanding Achievement in Production

Gian-Piero Ringel and Wim Wenders

Pina

Presented by Peter Davis and Andrea Meditch

Outstanding Achievement in Editing

Gregers Sall and Chris King

Senna

Presented by Peter Davis and Andrea Meditch

Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography

Danfung Dennis

Hell and Back Again

Presented by Kirsten Johnson and Darius Marder

Spotlight Award

The Tiniest Place

Directed by Tatiana Huezo Sánchez

Presented by Kirsten Johnson and Darius Marder

Heterodox Award

Beginners

Directed by Mike Mills

Presented by Kimberly Reed and Alrick Brown

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Short Filmmaking

Diary

Directed by Tim Hetherington

Presented by Nanette Burstein and Josh Fox

Outstanding Achievement in an Original Music Score

John Kusiak

Tabloid

Presented by Nanette Burstein and Josh Fox

Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design and Animation

Rob Feng and Jeremy Landman

Tabloid

Presented by Jeff Malmberg and Chris Shellen

Outstanding Achievement in a Debut Feature Film

Clio Barnard

The Arbor

Presented by Jeff Malmberg and Chris Shellen

Hell Yeah Prize

Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky

The Paradise Lost Trilogy

Presented by Jason Baldwin

Legacy Award

Titicut Follies

Directed by Frederick Wiseman

Presented by Steve James

About the Cinema Eye Honors and the 2012 Awards

The Cinema Eye Honors were founded in 2007 to recognize excellence in artistry and craft in nonfiction filmmaking.  It remains the only international nonfiction award to recognize the whole creative team, presenting annual craft awards in directing, producing, cinematography, editing, composing and graphic design/animation.  The 5th edition of the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking will be held January 11, 2012 at New York City’s Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens.  Nominees for the 2012 awards were announced on October 26, 2011.  A full list of nominees can be found at www.cinemaeyehonors.com.

Cinema Eye is headed by a core team that includes Co-Chairs Esther Robinson (director, A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory; Cinema Eye nominee for Outstanding Debut, 2008) and AJ Schnack (director, Kurt Cobain About A Son and founder of Cinema Eye), Producer Nathan Truesdell (producer, Convention), Nominations Committee Chair Sean Farnel (Former Head of Programming, Hot Docs Film Festival), Advisory Board Chair Andrea Meditch (executive producer, Buck and Man on Wire) and Filmmaker Advisory Board Chair Laura Poitras (director, The Oath; Cinema Eye winner for Outstanding Direction, 2011).

For more information about Cinema Eye, visit the website at http://www.cinemaeyehonors.com and follow Cinema Eye on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/cinemaeyehonors.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

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My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon