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IDA To Honor Alex Gibney, Laura Poitras and Geralyn Dreyfous

Posted Wednesday, September 25th, 2013 - Comments Off on IDA To Honor Alex Gibney, Laura Poitras and Geralyn Dreyfous
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International Documentary Association To Honor Alex Gibney, Laura Poitras and Geralyn Dreyfous at 29th Annual IDA Awards Gala on December 6, 2013  At the Director’s Guild in Los Angeles

 LOS ANGELES, September 25, 2013 – The International Documentary Association (IDA) announced top honorary awards for the 2013 IDA Documentary Awards today. The 29th Annual IDA Documentary Awards will be held on Friday, December 6th at the Director’s Guild in Los Angeles.

The IDA will present its prestigious 2013 Career Achievement Award to Academy Award®- and Emmy Award-winning director, producer and writer Alex Gibney. Gibney is prolific filmmaker known for his uncompromising and in-depth profiles of influential public figures and his investigation of critical topics of our times. He premiered two films in 2013, including: The Armstrong Lie, an exposition of the myth and reality of Lance Armstrong, and We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, a profile of the controversial media figure Julian Assange. Included in Gibney’s award-winning body of work are feature documentaries: Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2012), which recently won three Emmy Awards including the award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking 2013; Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010), for which Gibney received a DGA Award nomination for Best Director; and Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), which won an Oscar® for Best Documentary Feature, an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Research, a Best Director nomination from the DGA and a Writer’s Guild Award for Best Screenplay. Gibney also received an Academy Award® nomination for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005).

 

The IDA Career Achievement Award is given to a filmmaker who has made a major impact on the documentary genre through a long and distinguished body of work. In previous years, the IDA has bestowed its Career Achievement Award on documentary luminaries such as Barbara Kopple, Errol Morris, Michael Moore and Werner Herzog.

 

The organization’s Amicus Award will be presented to Geralyn Dreyfous. Dreyfous’ executive producing and producing credits include the Academy Award®-winning Born Into Brothels (2004), the Academy Award®-nominated The Invisible War (2012), the Emmy-nominated The Day My God Died (2003) as well as 2013’s The Square and The Crash Reel. Dreyfous is the Founder/ Board Chair of the Utah Film Center, a charter member of the Utah Coalition for Film and Media, and co-founder, with Dan Cogan, of Impact Partners Film Fund, an organization that brings financiers and filmmakers together to create documentaries focused on social change. Impact Partners has been involved in the financing of over 30 films, including several Academy Award®-winning documentaries. Dreyfous has a wide background in the arts, long experience in consulting in the philanthropic sector and is active on many boards and initiatives.

 

The IDA Amicus Award acknowledges friends of the documentary genre who have contributed significantly to our industry. This significant award has been given only three other times in the 29-year history of the IDA Documentary Awards, to Michael Donaldson, John Hendricks and Steven Spielberg.

 

Laura Poitras will receive IDA’s Courage Under Fire Award, in recognition of “conspicuous bravery in the pursuit of truth.” This award is presented to documentary filmmakers by their peers for putting freedom of speech—represented in the crafts of documentary filmmaking and journalism—above all else, even their own personal safety. Along with Glenn Greenwald, Poitras broke the story of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealing the PRISM program.  Poitras is working on a trilogy of films about America post 9/11.  The first film, My Country, My Country (2006), was nominated for an Academy Award®, Independent Spirit Award and Emmy Award.  The second film, The Oath (2010), received a Gotham Award for Best Documentary, the Sundance Film Festival Award for Excellence in Cinematography for Documentaries and the award for Outstanding Achievement in Direction at the Cinema Eye Honors.  She is currently editing the third film of the trilogy, a documentary about NSA surveillance.

 

Past recipients of the Courage Under Fire Award include Jonathan Stack and James Brabazon, Andrew Berends, Saira Shah and Christiane Amanpour.

 

“The outstanding individuals IDA has chosen to honor this year represent the very best of our thriving documentary filmmaking community,” said IDA Executive Director Michael Lumpkin. “The dedication of Gibney, Poitras and Dreyfous to the art and craft of nonfiction storytelling has contributed greatly to expanding our understanding of the shared human experience and creating a more informed, compassionate and connected world.”

A full list of nominees for the IDA Documentary Awards will be announced in late October with winners announced at the December 6th IDA Documentary Awards Gala.

For more information on the IDA Documentary Awards, tickets and sponsorship opportunities go to:

http://www.documentary.org/awards2013

 

About the IDA Documentary Awards

The annual IDA Documentary Awards Gala is the world’s most prestigious award event solely dedicated to documentary film. For almost three decades, IDA has produced this annual celebration to recognize the most groundbreaking documentary films of the year. In addition to honoring both individuals and organizations for outstanding achievements in documentary filmmaking and contributions to the field, the IDA Documentary Awards also recognize the year’s best documentary productions.

 

About the International Documentary Association

Founded in 1982, the International Documentary Association (IDA) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) that provides resources, creates community, and defends rights and freedoms for documentary artists, activists, and journalists.Our major program areas are: Advocacy, Filmmaker Services, Education, and Public Programs and Events. We provide up-to-date news, information and community through our website, documentary.org, our various special events, and our quarterly publication, Documentary Magazine.

 

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