By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

CITIZENFOUR Takes Best Feature At IDA Documentary Awards

Posted Saturday, December 6th, 2014 - Comments Off on CITIZENFOUR Takes Best Feature At IDA Documentary Awards
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 Winners in the International Documentary Association’s 2014 IDA Documentary Awards were announced during tonight’s program at the Paramount Theatre, giving Laura Poitras’s CITIZENFOUR top honors with the Best Feature Award. The third in a trilogy about post 9/11 America, CITIZENFOUR reveals the disturbing level of surveillance of civilians through whistleblower Edward Snowden and others.


Also announced in the ceremony was the Best Short Award, which honored TASHI AND THE MONK, directed by Johnny Burke and Andrew Hinton. Additionally, the film garnered the Pare Lorentz Award, which recognizes films that demonstrate exemplary filmmaking while focusing on environmental and social issues. TASHI AND THE MONK is a moving story of love and redemption told through the relationship of Buddhist monk Lobsang Phuntsok and his 5-year-old charge Tashi Drolma.

Emmy® Award-nominated writer and comedienne, Carol Leifer, hosted the ceremony, which included the debut of three new series awards.  The OWN program OUR AMERICA WITH LISA LING received the IDA’s inaugural Best Episodic Series Award. NPR’s multi-platform series PLANET MONEY MAKES A T-SHIRT received the first Best Short Form Series Award. ITVS’s documentary showcase INDEPENDENT LENS received the new Curated Series Award. Winner of the Best Limited Series was Showtime’s compelling portrayal of the end of life, TIME OF DEATH.

IDA’s Career Achievement Award was presented to Robert Redford. Acclaimed as a filmmaker and actor, ardent conservationist and environmentalist, Redford is the founder of The Sundance Institute and its Documentary Film Program.  His work in documentary film began with the Academy Award® nominated short THE SOLAR FILM, and includes the award-winning YOSEMITE: FATE OF HEAVEN, and feature documentaries INCIDENT AT OGLALA and THE UNFORESEEN. In 2012, Redford formed Sundance Productions, and nonfiction work produced under its banner includes the Emmy® nominated ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN REVISITED, nonfiction series CHICAGOLAND and DEATH ROW STORIES for CNN, and the 3D film CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE: THE SALK INSTITUTE with executive producer Wim Wenders.  Presenting the award to Redford was Academy Award winning filmmaker, and recipient of the IDA Career Achievement Award in 2010, Barbara Kopple.

Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, founders of World of Wonder Productions were recipients of IDA’s Pioneer Award.  Presenting the award was Monica Lewinsky, the subject of their film MONICA IN BLACK AND WHITE.  With the simple belief that we are living in a World of Wonder, award-winning filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato set up their production company in 1991 to tell the often stranger-than-fiction stories of real life people: from real estate agents (MILLION DOLLAR LISTING) to twerkers (BIG FREEDIA: QUEEN OF BOUNCE). They made a name for themselves with compelling documentaries about characters over-exposed yet under-revealed; from THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE to INSIDE DEEP THROAT. Declaring themselves screen agnostic, they have set up a strong digital presence with their blog, The Wow Report (www.worldofwonder.net), Youtube channel and MCN WOW Presents.

IDA’s Preservation and Scholarship Award was presented to Rithy Panh, the co-founder of the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center located in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The Bophana Center collects film, television, photography and sound archives on Cambodia from around the world and grants free access to the public.  The Center also provides vocational training in film and media and produces contemporary fiction and documentary work, with the goal of developing the audiovisual sector in Cambodia. Panh’s film THE MISSING PICTURE was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film.

2014 IDA Documentary Awards Honorees and Winners

CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Robert Redford

PIONEER AWARD
Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato

PRESERVATION AND SCHOLARSHIP AWARD
Rithy Panh

EMERGING DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER AWARD sponsored by Red Fire Films and Modern VideoFilm
Darius Clark Monroe

BEST FEATURE AWARD
CITIZENFOUR
Director: Laura Poitras
RADiUS-TWC, Participant Media, and
HBO Documentary Films

BEST SHORT AWARD
TASHI AND THE MONK
Directors: Andrew Hinton, Johnny Burke
HBO Documentary Films

BEST CURATED SERIES AWARD
INDEPENDENT LENS
Executive Producer: Sally Jo Fifer
Deputy Executive Producer: Lois Vossen
Independent Television Service (ITVS) in association with PBS

BEST LIMITED SERIES AWARD
TIME OF DEATH
Executive Producers: Cynthia Childs, Dan Cutforth, Casey Kriley, Jane Lipsitz, Alexandra Lipsitz
Co-Executive Producer: Miggi Hood, Sandy Shapiro
Showtime
BEST EPISODIC SERIES AWARD
OUR AMERICA WITH LISA LING
Executive Producers: Amy Bucher, Gregory Henry, Lisa Ling, David Shadrack Smith
OWN

BEST SHORT FORM SERIES AWARD
PLANET MONEY MAKES A T-SHIRT
Executive Producer: Alex Blumberg
NPR

DAVID L. WOLPER STUDENT DOCUMENTARY AWARD
MY DAD’S A ROCKER
Director: Zuxin Hou
University of Southern California

HUMANITAS DOCUMENTARY AWARD
LIMITED PARTNERSHIP
Director: Thomas G. Miller
PBS / Independent Lens

PARE LORENTZ AWARD
TASHI AND THE MONK
Directors: Andrew Hinton, Johnny Burke
HBO Documentary Films

ABCNEWS VIDEOSOURCE AWARD
1971
Director: Johanna Hamilton
Independent Lens/ PBS

CREATIVE RECOGNITION AWARD WINNERS

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY presented by Canon
ELEVATOR
Cinematography By: Hatuey Viveros Lavielle

BEST EDITING
LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM
Editing By: Don Kleszy

BEST MUSIC
ALFRED AND JAKOBINE
Music By: Nick Urata

BEST WRITING
FINDING VIVIAN MAIER
Written By: John Maloof & Charlie Siskel

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 <http://www.documentary.org> , our various special events, and our quarterly publication, DocumentaryMagazine.
Follow us at
Documentary.org <http://www.documentary.org>
Twitter.com/IDAorg <https://twitter.com/IDAorg>
Facebook.com/Documentary.org <https://www.facebook.com/documentary.org>

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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.

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