Back in January, we wrote about director AJ Schnack's (Kurt Cobain: About a Son) efforts to create awards for non-fiction filmmaking that would be ... somewhat more relevant than the Academy Awards. Back when the Oscar shortlist for docs came out, Schnack wrote an angry diatribe about the process and the films selected (and, more importantly, those that were not selected) that echoed the sentiments of many of us who write about, or make, documentary films. Although I'm not at all displeased that Alex Gibney ultimately won the Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, and would have been equally happy if No End in Sight had won, there were some glaring omissions in the Oscar shortlist that were truly appalling, most notably In the Shadow of the Moon and King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.
To help fill the gap between the films that filmmakers and documentary fans think deserve notice and what the Oscars reward, we now have the Cinema Eye Awards, with jury awards for everything from Non-Fiction Filmmaking to Editing to Cinematography. Noms for the Non-Fiction Filmmaking award include Into Great Silence, Lake of Fire, Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), The Monastery: Mr. Vig & the Nun, and No End in Sight (sadly, King of Kong isn't on the final list for this award, either, but it's still a good list). You can see the nominees for all the jury awards over on the Cinema Eye website. But that's not all!
You, the audience members, get to vote on the Audience Award, and you only have until March 10 to get your votes in, so you'll want to do it now before you get sidetracked playing Halo 3 and forget. There are nine films to choose from for the Audience Award: Deep Water, In the Shadow of the Moon, Into Great Silence, Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), Manufactured Landscapes, No End in Sight, and Sicko. Head on over there and vote for your favorite, then come back here and sound off about which docs you really loved in 2007.
1. The King of Kong was one of the best films from last year, not just documentaries.
Posted at 1:55PM on Mar 3rd 2008 by izzy