A huge congratulations to everyone who won last night at the 2010 Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking but more importantly, congratulations to everyone who had a film nominated and to all those who have made and supported docs over the past year. The nominee line-up was pretty darn great and included films I have really loved: Loot, Episode 3 Enjoy Poverty, The Way We Get By and Mugabe and the White African for example. As co-chair AJ Schnack said, “There are no losers here.” But here’s the list of winners anyway (via indieWIRE):

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking:
“The Cove,” directed by Louie Psihoyos, produced by Paula DuPre Pesman and Fisher Stevens

Outstanding Achievement in a Debut Feature Film:
“October Country, directed by Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher

Outstanding Achievement in Direction:
Agnes Varda, “The Beaches of Agnes”

Outstanding Achievement in Production:
Paula DuPre Pressman and Fisher Stevens, “The Cove”

Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography:
Brook Aitken for “The Cove”

Outstanding Achievement in Editing:
Janus Billeskov-Jansen and Thomas Papapetros for “Burma VJ”

Outstanding Achievement in Grapic Design and Animation:
Tie: Big Star for “Food, Inc” and “RIP – Remix Manifesto”

Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Score:
“October Country”: Danny Grody, Donal Mosher, Michael Palmieri and Kenric Taylor

Outstanding Achievement in an International Feature:
“Burma VJ,” directed by Anders Ostergard, produced by Lise-Lense Moeller

Audience Choice Prize:
“The September Issue,” directed by RJ Cutler

Spotlight Award:
“Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo,” directed by Jessica Oreck

Cinema Eye Legacy Award:
“Sherman’s March, directed by Ross McElwee

Cinematographer Kirsten Johnson taught us an excellent trick for taking photos like a model – here she demonstrates it in action with Michael Palmieri (co-director of Debut Feature winner October Country)

The Way We Get By producer Gita Pullapilly with filmmaker Doug Block who presented an award

October Country also won for Original Music Score. Here’s some of the people who made that happen.

October Country directors Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri flank Loot director Darius Marder

Jean-Pierre Duret, director of Because We Were Born (nominated for a Spotlight Award)

Renzo Martens, director of Episode 3: Enjoy Poverty (nominated for a Spotlight Award) with co-chair Esther Robinson

DJ and hat-wearer extraordinaire: Ion

The Union Docs gang

David Nugent looking slightly less happy than Matt Dentler

A glowingly pregnant Raphaela Neihausen and a very dapper Hugo Perez

AJ Schnack and Magnolia’s Eamonn Bowles at the after-party

Festivals unite! David Nugent (Hamptons International Film Festival) and Ben Fowlie (Camden International Film Festival)

Angela Tucker and Trish Dalton

Me and Laure Parsons

Ion doing what he does best (play great music and wear great hats)

Danny Grody holding the spiky Cinema Eye award for Original Music Score (October Country)

One of the lessons of 2009 for me: the worse things get, the better people get, or rather the more I realize how important all the people I work with and play with are to me and to the life I want to live. The past few months have been a strange mixture of 3am panics about the state of the world and moments of sheer joy, and most of these moments of joy have been documentary-related (watching Obama’s inauguration in the Filmmakers Lodge at Sundance, parading through Columbia, Missouri at True/False, riding a Winnebago through the warm, wide Austin streets at SXSW after a memorable dinner at Polvos). And now I can add to this the wonderful sight of AJ Schnack and Yance Ford wearing “Order of Myths” gowns at the Cinema Eye Honors last night.

DA Pennebaker said the following as he and Chris Hegedus presented the Outstanding Achievement award to James Marsh for Man on Wire: “When I started making films, there was no equipment to even do it with…when I see this marvelous sea of filmmaking, in all kinds of ways, it makes me feel that it was all worthwhile.” Yes, I think it was.

I’m also very, very pleased that Waltz with Bashir picked up 4 gongs. It’s an extraordinary film and it deserves every single pointy, heavy one of them.

Photo by Simon Kilmurry

Here are all the award winners:

Outstanding Achievement in NonFiction Feature Filmmaking
“Man on Wire,” directed by James Marsh; produced by Simon Chinn

Outstanding Achievement in Direction
Ari Folman for “Waltz with Bashir”

Outstanding Achievement in Production
Simon Chinn for “Man on Wire”

Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography
Peter Zeitlinger for “Encounters at the End of the World”

Outstanding Achievement in Editing
Jinx Godfrey for “Man on Wire”

Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design and Animation
Yoni Goldman & David Polonsky for “Waltz with Bashir”

Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition
Max Richter for “Waltz with Bashir”

Outstanding Achievement in International Feature
“Waltz with Bashir,” directed by Ari Folman; produced by Ari Folman, Serge Lalou, Gerhard Meixner, Yael Nahlieli & Roman Paul

Outstanding Achievement in Debut Feature
“Up the Yangtze,” directed by Yung Chang

Audience Choice Award
“Up the Yangtze,” directed by Yung Chang

And here are some photos from the reception beforehand and the party afterwards (the faces get shinier and the photos get blurrier!)

Producer Sandra Whipham with Albert Maysles and Natalie Difford (Chicken & Egg Pictures)

Filmmaker Dmitry Rozin, Ion Furjanic (DJ extraordinaire) and Danielle DiGiacomo (from indiePix who sponsored the event)

Filmmaker Doug Block with Laure Parson (Zeitgeist Films) and Mila Aung-Thwin (Producer of Up the Yangtze, which won the audience award)

Filmmakers Robin Hessman and Margaret Brown

Natalie Difford with Phil Engelhorn and Reva Goldberg from Cinereach

Violet Gaynor, David Nugent (Hamptons International Film Festival), Matt Dentler (Cinetic) and David Wilson (True/False)

Sky Sitney (Silverdocs) and AJ Schnack, the man who drunkenly came up with the idea for Cinema Eye along with Thom Powers. See! When it looks like doc folk are just propping up the bar we’re really inventing the future!

Filmmakers Esther Robinson and Paul Devlin grin for the camera

Flying on One Engine Director Joshua Weinstein (my dancefloor compatriot) with Yoni Brook (Bronx Princess) and Jessica Wolfson

Karina Longworth (Spout), Producer Thoma Kikis, Sandra Whipham and me

Stephanie Skaff, fabulous tie wearer Mark Rosenberg (Rooftop Films) and Jeremiah Zagar (Director of one of my favorite docs of 2008: In a Dream)

Ryan Harrington (indiePix) with Stephanie Sharis (SnagFilms)

Awards are a bit like weddings. You sort of wish that everyone would just get together and throw a party and pay attention to each other just because it’s a nice thing to do but you really have to add a little something extra into the mix to get people to rent hotel rooms and buy toasters and china and, well, I guess my point is that sometimes, although the competition aspect of film award events doesn’t sit so well with me, it is a great way to draw attention to films and filmmakers. And the Cinema Eye Honors, celebrating their second year in 2009, are a breath of fresh air in the awards world, drawing attention to the full scope of documentary filmmaking practice and to all aspects of the craft.

Final nominations will be announced on January 19th in Park City during Sundance. The shortlist is as follows:

AMERICAN TEEN – Nanette Burstein, dir
THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON) – Ellen Kuras & Thavisouk Phrasavath, dir
ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD – Werner Herzog, dir
THE ENGLISH SURGEON – Geoffrey Smith, dir
FORBIDDEN LIES – Anna Broinowski, dir
IN A DREAM – Jeremiah Zagar, dir
MAN ON WIRE – James Marsh, dir
MY WINNIPEG – Guy Maddin, dir
THE ORDER OF MYTHS – Margaret Brown, dir
ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED – Marina Zenovich, dir
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE – Errol Morris, dir
STRANDED, I COME FROM A PLANE THAT CRASHED ON THE MOUNTAINS – Gonzalo Arijon, dir
TROUBLE THE WATER – Carl Deal & Tia Lessin, dir
UP THE YANGTZE – Yung Chang, dir
WALTZ WITH BASHIR – Ari Folman, dir

The Cinema Eye Nominations Committee was comprised of 15 of the top festival programmers of nonfiction films.  This year’s committee members are:

Meira Blaustein, Woodstock Film Festival
Phoebe Brush, Full Frame Film Festival
David Courier, Sundance Film Festival
Heather Croall, Sheffield Doc/Fest
Sean Farnel, Hot Docs
Tine Fischer, CPH:DOX (Copenhagen)
Tom Hall, Sarasota Film Festival
David Kwok, Tribeca Film Festival
David Nugent, Hamptons Film Festival
Janet Pierson, SXSW Film Festival
Thom Powers, Toronto International Film Festival
Rachel Rosen, LA Film Festival
Sky Sitney, AFI Silverdocs
David Wilson, True/False Film Festival
Brit Withey, Denver Film Festival

Congrats to all the shortlisted filmmakers and to AJ Schnack and Thom Powers and everyone else involved in Cinema Eye for doing such sterling work for documentaries. You are probably already familiar with Schack’s All These Wonderful Things blog but Powers has a great new-ish blog for Stranger Than Fiction so subscribe to it today! The Winter Season of STF runs from January 13th till March 1st at NYC’s IFC Center, and it kicks off on Tuesday with Ben Kempas’ Upstream Battle. See you there!

Jason Kohn gave a great speech when he won the Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Filmmaking at the Cinema Eye Honors last week. He spoke about making Manda Bala “out of anger” after watching Marshall Curry’s Streetfight play to an empty theater at a festival in Sao Paulo. “I was so god damn mad. . . because when these movies don’t get seen you feel like you’re fucking losing, you feel like somebody else is winning and that person is no good.”

Earlier in the evening Kohn had spoken about how he felt that Werner Herzog and Errol Morris had been making films in response to each other, in a kind of unintentional dialog. There’s an interesting conversation between Herzog and Morris in the latest copy of The Believer. They talk a little bit about Herzog’s ideas about “ecstatic truth,” a lot about serial killers, and Morris finishes with some great thoughts on the tension between planning and spontaneity in documentary:

I feel that element of spontaneity because so much of what I do is controlled. The element of spontaneity is not knowing what someone is going to say to me in front of the camera, having really no idea, of being surprised. I know that there’s this moment in all of the interviews I’ve loved where something happens. I had this three-minute rule that if you just shut up and let someone talk, within three minutes they will show you how crazy they really are. And it has happened time and time and time again.

If everything was planned, it would be dreadful. If everything was unplanned, it would be equally dreadful. Cinema exists because there are elements of both in everything. There are elements of both in documentary. There are elements of both in feature filmmaking. It’s what makes, I think, photography and filmmaking of interest. Despite all of our efforts to control something, the world is much, much more powerful than us, and more deranged even than us.

Jason Kohn accepting his award. Photo courtesy of IndiePix.