Cinema Eye Awards Recognize Skills in Documentary Filmmaking

With the creation of the Cinema Eye Awards, the documentary film community takes a large leap forward in gaining recognition for the craft involved in making non-fiction films.

The Oscars, Spirit Awards and other such presentations recognize outstanding achievement in direction, cinematography, art direction and all the other specific skills that go into making a narrative feature--but they present just one award in the non-fiction feature category--and, in some ceremonies, one for documentary short.

That's just plain unfair to documentary filmmakers whose skills are every bit as sharp as those of narrative filmmakers--and it's misleading for audiences who may not realize that making documentary films is as challenging as making narrative features, or more so.

In general, documentary filmmakers produce brilliantly under true hardship conditions. They manage with much less money--which most often comes from their own pockets or potentially fiscally-strangling loans. They have smaller crews, so each crew member must be adept at several moviemaking skills. And, they commit to stories without knowing their endings, so they must be more flexible and creatively inventive in their cinematic approach, strategic planning and shooting schedule. And, relying upon unpredictable elements, they must put together a convincing arguement, presented as a compelling narrative. Do the skills required to do all that demand special recognition? You bet they do!

The first-ever Cinema Eye Awards, held at NYC's IFC Center on March 18, presented nine awards in a well-attended ceremony that was entertaining, slick and quick, with clips of nominated documentaries, a lively directors' panel discussion featuring Alex Gibney, Esther Robinson, Jason Kohn and Pernille Rose Gronkjaer and moving memorial tributes for recently deceased filmmakers St. Clair Bourne and Tony Silver.

The Cinema Eye Awards were co-founded by documentary film programmer Thom Powers and filmmaker AJ Schnack, and sponsored by IndiePix, a company promoting new technologies for wider distrubution of documentary and independent narrative films. The nominations were made by a panel of festival programmers, and 140 industry insiders were invited to vote for the winners. Their big pick for the year was Jason Kohn's Manda Bala (Send A Bullet), which won Outstanding Achievement in Non-Fiction Filmmaking and Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography. The movie-going public was given the opportunity to vote for the Audience Choice Award, the winner of which was King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.

Some industry commentators have noted that the winning and nominated films are, as documentaries go, all fairly high profile and well-promoted works, and that many worthy smaller films are still being overlooked. I was personally disappointed to see that Tony Kaye's masterfully made and profoundly provocative Lake of Fire didn't win an award--although it was nominated for four.

The Cinema Eye Awards are slated to become an annual event. Pay attention to them--they're your key to what the documentary community thinks are its crowning achievements for the year. Read my full report.