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AFI DOCS FILM FESTIVAL AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS:

Posted Monday, June 22nd, 2015 - Comments Off on AFI DOCS FILM FESTIVAL AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS:
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Best Feature goes to WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE?
Best Short goes to A CONVERSATION WITH MY BLACK SON

Festival Convenes Global Filmmakers With
U.S. and International Leaders

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Washington, DC, June 22, 2015 — AFI DOCS announced today its Audience Award winners, concluding the five-day festival in the Washington, DC area. This year’s Audience Award for Best Feature went to WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? directed by Liz Garbus (THE FARM: ANGOLA, USA). This year’s Audience Award for Best Short went to A CONVERSATION WITH MY BLACK SON directed by Blair Foster (TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE, co-producer) and Geeta Gandbhir (BY THE PEOPLE: THE ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA, editor). With 81 films from 25 countries, the festival brought together artists, national policy and opinion leaders along with global representatives.

AFI DOCS attendees included America’s greatest documentary filmmakers, including Alex Gibney, Barbara Kopple, Stanley Nelson and Morgan Neville.

National leaders in attendance included White House Cabinet Secretary and Chair of MBK Task Force Broderick Johnson, U.S. Representative Steve Cohen, U.S. Representative Ted Lieu, civil rights leader Julian Bond, former U.S. Representative Mary Bono, Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and former Governor of West Virginia and President of the Alliance for Excellent Education Bob Wise.

Global leaders at AFI DOCS included the Ambassador of Kuwait H.E. Salem Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Ambassador of Jordan Dr. Alia Hatoug Bouran, Ambassador of Lebanon Antoine Chedid and Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Anne Patterson.

Joining the opinion leaders were distinguished journalists: Executive Producer of PBS’s FRONTLINE Raney Aronson-Rath, Margaret Brennan of CBS News, The Atlantic’s Steve Clemons and Ta-Nehisi Coates, former ABC News anchor Sam Donaldson, Bloomberg View’s Al Hunt and PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff.

MORE ABOUT THE WINNING FILMS:

WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE?
Nina Simone earned her moniker as the “High Priestess of Soul.” Trained as a classical pianist in North Carolina when racism was open and rampant, Simone drew upon her struggles as she became one of jazz music’s most beloved and complex figures. Director Liz Garbus offers access into Simone’s most intimate thoughts through her own words as the influential chanteuse became a leading voice for the civil rights movement of the late 1960s. Despite her enormous talent, however, Simone battled worsening demons that ultimately drove her into a life of seclusion in Liberia and France.

A CONVERSATION WITH MY BLACK SON
The short film features a group of racially diverse parents discussing the importance of having a conversation with their young black sons about racism and interacting with the police.

AT&T is the presenting sponsor of AFI DOCS 2015. AFI’s official airline, American Airlines, returned as an Official Sponsor of the festival. Official Sponsors include the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, VIZIO and NBCUniversal. The Washington Post is proud to be a major media sponsor and presenter of The Washington Post Film Strand. Additional Major Sponsors include Amtrak, the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands, CYM Media & Entertainment, The Fledgling Fund, Maryland Film Office, PBS, SonicPool and Sony.

About AT&T Inc.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) helps millions of people and businesses around the globe stay connected through leading wireless, high-speed Internet, voice and cloud-based services. We’re helping people mobilize their worlds with state-of-the-art communications, entertainment services and amazing innovations like connected cars and devices for homes, offices and points in between. Our U.S. wireless network offers customers the nation’s strongest LTE signal and the nation’s most reliable 4G LTE network. We offer the best global wireless coverage*. We’re improving how our customers stay entertained and informed with AT&T U-verse® TV and High Speed Internet services. And businesses worldwide are serving their customers better with AT&T’s mobility and highly secure cloud solutions.

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*Global coverage claim based on offering voice and LTE data roaming in more countries than any other U.S. based carrier, and offering the most wireless smartphones and tablets that work in the most countries.

About AFI DOCS
AFI DOCS is the American Film Institute’s annual documentary festival in the Washington, DC area. Presenting the year’s best documentaries, AFI DOCS is the only festival in the U.S. dedicated to screenings and events that connect audiences, filmmakers and policy leaders in the seat of our nation’s government. The AFI DOCS advisory board includes Ken Burns, Davis Guggenheim, Chris Hegedus, Werner Herzog, Barbara Kopple, Spike Lee, Errol Morris, D A Pennebaker and Frederick Wiseman. Now in its 13th year, the festival will be held June 17-21, 2015 in landmark Washington, DC venues and the historic AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, MD. Visit AFI.com/afidocsand connect ontwitter.com/afidocs, facebook.com/afidocs and youtube.com/AFI.

About the American Film Institute
AFI is America’s promise to preserve the heritage of the motion picture, to honor the artists and their work and to educate the next generation of storytellers. AFI programs include the AFI Catalog of Feature Films and the AFI Archive, which preserve film heritage for future generations; the AFI Life Achievement Award, the highest honor for a career in film; AFI AWARDS, honoring the most outstanding motion pictures and television programs of the year; AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies television events and movie reference lists, which have introduced and reintroduced classic American movies to millions of film lovers; year-round and special event exhibition through AFI FEST presented by Audi, AFI DOCS and the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center; and educating the next generation of storytellers at the world-renowned AFI Conservatory. For more information about AFI, visit AFI.comor connect with AFI at twitter.com/AmericanFilm, facebook.com/AmericanFilmInstitute and youtube.com/AFI.

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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