By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Cinema Eye Honors Announces 2013 Heterodox Nominees, Launches Voting for 2013 Audience Choice Prize

Posted Tuesday, December 11th, 2012 - 1 Comment »
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 11, 2013

The Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking today announced the five nominees for its third annual Cinema Eye Heterodox Award, sponsored by Filmmaker Magazine. The Cinema Eye Heterodox Award honors a narrative film that imaginatively incorporates nonfiction strategies, content and/or modes of production.

The five films nominated for the 2013 Heterodox Award are: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s Ceasar Must Die (Cesare deve morire), Craig Zobel’s Compliance, Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours, Pablo Larraín’s No, and Terence Nance’s An Oversimplification of Her Beauty.

These films illuminate the formal possibilities of nonfiction filmmaking while raising provocative questions about ongoing documentary orthodoxy and the perceived boundaries between narrative and nonfiction filmmaking. Previous winners of the award were Matt Porterfield’s Putty Hill (2011) and Mike Mills’ Beginners (2012).

The 2013 Heterodox Award will be presented at the 6th Annual Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking on January 9 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York.

“For the first two years, the Heterodox Award has felt like an exciting experiment,” said Cinema Eye Honors Co-Chair Esther Robinson. “Would there be enough films pushing through the barriers between fiction and non-fiction films to justify the award? Would the filmmaking community embrace this conversation? With the arrival of the third year, we can answer both questions with a resounding ‘yes!’ Filmmakers continue to blend genres, push structures and delight our nominators with work that challenges staid divisions between fiction and nonfiction films.”

Ten finalists for the Heterodox Award were selected in voting by the Cinema Eye Honors Nominations Committee. The ten finalists were then viewed and five nominees selected by the writers and editors of Filmmaker Magazine.A jury will watch the five nominees and choose a winner that will be announced on January 9.

“In the third year of the Heterodox Award, our nominated filmmakers explore the interstices of documentary and fiction in fascinating and diverse ways, from situating their characters within the confines of real-life locations (museums, prisons) to exploring within dramatic contexts the aftermath of real crime and social injustice,” said Filmmaker Magazine Editor-in-Chief Scott Macaulay. “Giving all five of these films their extra kick is our knowledge, and sometimes confusion over, the nature of the reality they represent.”

The Five Nominees for the 2013 Cinema Eye Heterodox Award:

Caesar Must Die (Cesare deve morire)

Directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

In Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s bracing and politically astute blend of documentary and fiction, real-life Italian inmates of a high-security prison audition for, rehearse and stage a version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Through its fascinating recontextualization of Shakespeare’s classic, Caesar Must Die explores criminal identity while reflecting the larger tensions of Italian society itself.

Compliance
Directed by Craig Zobel

Drawing its dialogue from phone records and real-life court transcripts, writer/director Craig Zobel’s Compliance turns the true story of a prank phone caller and sexual predator into a disturbing meditation on the politics of authority.

Museum Hours

Directed by Jem Cohen
In Jem Cohen’s lovely meditation on culture, friendship, and the dialogue carried across centuries through art, a lonely woman and quiet museum guard strike a quiet bond while while surveying the paintings of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. Cohen’s camera captures the subtlety of their interaction while also evoking the majesty of this museum and its collection.

No

Directed by Pablo Larrain

Detailing the 1988 ouster of Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte via constitutional referendum, Pablo Larrain’s No uses footage from the referendum’s actual advertising campaign along with an artfully lo-fi U-matic camera aesthetic to recall the politics as well as the media of its era.

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty

Directed by Terence Nance

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty engagingly obsesses over the filmmaker’s “friend-zone’d” relationship with a charismatic young woman, played in the film by the real-life object of his affection. “One-sided non-fiction” is how Nance describes his picture, which mixes multiple formats as well as animation to present an exhilarating portrait of love, longing and artmaking in the digital age.

In addition, Cinema Eye announced that voting is now open for the 2013 Audience Choice Prize, the Cinema Eye Honor that is decided by the votes of the public. Ten films, including a number of the most talked-about and debated documentaries of the year, are amongst this year’s Audience Choice nominees. Last year, more than 10,000 people voted for the award, which went to Cindy Meehl’s Buck.

This year’s nominees for the Cinema Eye are: 5 Broken Cameras (Directed by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi), Beauty is Embarrassing (Directed by Neil Berkeley), Bully (Directed by Lee Hirsch), How to Survive a Plague (Directed by David France), The Imposter (Directed by Bart Layton), Jiro Dreams of Sushi (Directed by David Gelb), Kumaré (Directed by Vikram Gandhi),Marina Abramović The Artist is Present (Directed by Matthew Akers), Searching for Sugar Man (Directed by Malik Bendjelloul) and Trash Dance (Directed by Andrew Garrison).

The public can vote for the 2013 Audience Choice Prize on the Cinema Eye Honors website atwww.cinemaeyehonors.com/audiencechoice2013 or by sending a message to @cinemaeyehonors on twitter with the name of the film of their choice. [For example: @cinemaeyehonors I vote for Buck!]. Voting will be open through Monday, January 7, 2013.

About Filmmaker Magazine

Published by IFP, Filmmaker Magazine is a quarterly publication and daily-updated website covering the art, business and craft of independent filmmaking. Visit Filmmaker Magazine at http://filmmakermagazine.com .

About the Cinema Eye Honors and the 2013 Awards

The Cinema Eye Honors were founded in 2007 to recognize excellence in artistry and craft in nonfiction filmmaking. It was the first and 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.

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, Caucus), 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).

Nominees for the Cinema Eye Honors feature awards are determined in voting by the top documentary programmers from throughout the world. This year’s Nominations Committee included Charlotte Cook (Hot Docs), David Courier (Sundance), Heather Croall (Sheffield Doc/Fest), Joanne Feinberg (Ashland Film Festival), Tine Fischer (CPH:DOX), Elena Fortes (Ambulante), Ben Fowlie (Camden International Film Festival), Tom Hall (Sarasota Film Festival), Doug Jones (Los Angeles Film Festival), Amir Labaki (It’s All True, Brazil), Grit Lemke (DOK Liepzig), Caroline Libresco (Sundance Film Festival), Artur Liebhart (Planete Doc Review), David Nugent (Hamptons Film Festival), Veton Nurkollari (DokuFest Kosovo), Janet Pierson (SXSW), Thom Powers (Toronto International Film Festival, DOC NYC), Rachel Rosen (San Francisco), Charlotte Selb (RIDM Montreal), Sky Sitney (Silverdocs), Genna Terranova (Tribeca), Sadie Tillery (Full Frame), David Wilson (True/False) and Brit Withey (Denver).

HBO Documentary Films is the Premiere Sponsor of the 2013 Cinema Eye Honors. Venue partner for the 2013 Cinema Eye Honors is the Museum of the Moving Image. A&E IndieFilms is a Major Sponsor of Cinema Eye. Festival partners for Cinema Eye are AFI FEST, Camden International Film Festival and Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival. Supporting sponsors include Filmmaker Magazine, the LEF Foundation and Union Docs. Additional sponsors will be named in the coming weeks.

Tickets for Cinema Eye Honors at the Museum of the Moving Image on January 9 are $75 for non-members and $50 for Museum Members. A limited number of tickets are available and include a post-ceremony reception. Call 718-777-6800 to reserve tickets or purchase online at:http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2013/01/09/detail/cinema-eye-honors-2013

For more information about Cinema Eye, visit the website at http://www.cinemaeyehonors.com. Follow Cinema Eye on Twitter at @cinemaeyehonors and on Facebook at facebook.com/CinemaEyeHonors.

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Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | 1 Comment »

One Response to “Cinema Eye Honors Announces 2013 Heterodox Nominees, Launches Voting for 2013 Audience Choice Prize”

  1. Tan Vampire says:
    January 4, 2013 at 4:14 am

    Compliance (2012) – Movie Review
    The Dumbest Movie Ever

Quote Unquotesee all »

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.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

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