AJ Schnack, Thom Powers & Margaret Brown present Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking award nominees

Even thirty minutes before the press and industry screening of Nanette Burstein's American Teen, the smaller of the two Yarrow venues is already packed, and a long line of journalists and industry insiders grumble as they head out to other screenings, or as Independent Film Festival of Boston Program Director Adam Roffman and I do, head out to wander around Main Street.

A professional set dresser and decorator for studio films, Adam, as a child, went to a film a week, accompanying his father. Without question, it's what he always wanted to do, he tells me. By chance, from his many years of experience in film festival circles, he met with Jason Redmond who, trying to fill a niche in the community, was working on the set-up for IFF of Boston. Over detailed conversations about the circuit and the best way to produce a festival with longevity in mind, Adam fell into his job, which includes screening hundreds of features and shorts yearly as well as jumping around from festival to festival to seek out new material. All this piles on top of his studio workload.

"It's pretty, exciting, you know, that you get to do this. You get to play a part in promoting new filmmakers," I say. We're sitting down at this point, later in the day, eating dinner. Adam shrugs and smiles, goes back to eating his fried chicken.

A portrait of Adam: I tell him he's affable, which he is, and which he tells me he's told often enough. He's a networker whose agendas are trustworthy, a gentleman who it's really comfortable to be around and who truly seems to note everyone around him, so much in fact that as we walk up and down Main Street, he spots all the celebrities. Apparently, we've passed Isabella Rossellini, William Hurt and Dennis Quaid.

"I just have a good eye for that kind of thing, for their faces," he says.

"Apparently, I'm oblivious," I say.

"Have you met Joe Swanberg?"

"Um...well--" But, by this point Adam's already across the street, and I do little but follow like a duckling.

Joe's quite tall, and he leans down, shoulders boyishly curved in to greet Adam. At this particular moment, he's also quite quiet, nodding with a brief, warm and respectful smile. He's not at all, not in the least, not the slightest bit the Swanberg, he portrays on screen. There's not even an inkling of that cocky confidence, only this shy and intelligent whispered attentiveness that focuses as Adam talks about his festival experience so far. I think to ask him about how his wife Kris is doing, but then that easy conversation-in fades away from me. As I attend to what Adam says, I'm also aware that here, standing in front of me, is a filmmaker whose work has many times over shaken my consciousness, has made me more engaged in the world and has also made me more fearful of it. Here's a filmmaker whose artistic voice I can in no way conditionally trust but that I'm unconditionally mesmerized with. I'm not nervous. I'm only in an awe that subtly plays in my bewildered expression. Producer Mike Bowes, filmmaker Ronald Bronstein and actress Greta Gerwig walk up to our group one after the other minutes later, and between Mike's calm, Ronnie's exuberance and Greta's good-heartedness, I'm suddenly less aware that my thoughts have turned so inward. Particularly Ronnie and Greta, both with whom I've spoken previously, wear their big, easy-to-adore personalities in a way that grounds the people around them in the present. I separate from them a few minutes later, unsure which of them I'll see again but also glad to have shared that ultimately insignificant moment with all of them.

At the IndiePix's sponsored gathering hosted at The Wall Street Journal Cafe, I bump into a crew of familiar others--David Lowery, Michael Tully, Tom Hall and Matt Dentler among others. We're here to celebrate the announcement of the film nominees for the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking, which are, as introduced by IndiePix's Danielle DiGiacomo, filmmaker AJ Schnack (Gigantic (Tale of Two Johns), Kurt Cobain: About a Son), Thom Powers, chair of the nominating committee and documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival and filmmaker Margaret Brown (Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt, The Order of Myths), as follows:

Audience Choice: Deep Water, In the Shadow of the Moon, Into Great Silence, Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, Manufactured Landscapes, No End In Sight, Sicko.

Outstanding International Feature: Ghosts of Cité Soleil, Into Great Silence, Manufactured Landscapes, The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun, Please Vote For Me

Outstanding Debut Feature: Billy the Kid, director Jennifer Venditti; Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), director Jason Kohn; The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun, director Pernille Rose Gronkjaer; No End In Sight, director Charles Ferguson; A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams & the Warhol Factory, director Esther B. Robinson.

Outstanding Graphic Design & Animation: Chicago 10, Helvetica, The Prisoner, or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, Superamigos, The Unforeseen

Outstanding Achievement in Editing:Crazy Love, David Zieff; Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, Niels Pagh Andersen; Ghosts of Cité Soleil, Adam Nielsen; Lake of Fire, Peter Goddard; Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), Doug Abel, Jenny Golden & Andy Grieve; No End In Sight, Chad Beck & Cindy Lee.

Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography: Into Great Silence, Philip Groening; Lake of Fire, Tony Kaye; Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), Heloisa Passos; Manufactured Landscapes,Peter Mettler; Zoo, Sean Kirby.

Outstanding Achievement in Production:Blindsight, Sybil Robson Orr; Chicago 10, Brett Morgan & Graydon Carter; Ghosts of Cité Soleil, Seth Kanegis, Tomas Radoor & Mikael Rieks; Into Great Silence, Philip Groening, Elda Guidinetti, Andres Pfaffli & Michael Weber; Lake of Fire, Tony Kaye; Manda Bala (Send a Bullet); Joey Frank, Jared Goldman & Jason Kohn.

Outstanding Achievement in Direction: Into Great Silence, Philip Groening; Lake of Fire, Tony Kaye; Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), Jason Kohn; Taxi to the Dark Side, Alex Gibney; Zoo, Robinson Devor.

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking: Into Great Silence, dir. Philip Groening, prod. Philip Groening, Elda Guidinetti, Andres Pfaffli & Michael Weber; Lake of Fire, Tony Kaye; Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), dir. Jason Kohn, prod. Joey Frank, Jared Goldman & Jason Kohn; The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun, Pernille Rose Gronkjaer, prod. Sigrid Dyekjaer; No End in Sight, dir. Charles Ferguson, prod. Jennie Amias, Charles Ferguson & Jessie Vogelson.

Winners will be announced on March 18 at New York's IFC center.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form