5 Broken Cameras takes top prize at Cinema Eye awards

Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi’s 5 Broken Cameras, a personal portrait years of turmoil in a Palestinian village, won the Outstanding Feature prize at the sixth-annual Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking in New York on Wednesday night.

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Detropia won two awards: Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Original Score for Dial.81. 

“Tonight, we’re here to honor The War Room,” said Michael Moore upon presenting the film with the Legacy Award. “No Presidential candidate since, winner or loser, has allowed a documentary filmmaker inside. The War Room really stands as the seminal film and perhaps the last of its kind, reaching outside the documentary audience to new viewers.”

“When you have a film that’s honored like this after 20 years, it’s like a grandfather who’s suddenly sobered up and you can talk to him,” said D A Pennebaker of the 1983 film.  “You sort of forget when you were doing it, nobody wanted it. We were saved by people who just appeared as if by magic,” speaking of the film’s producers Wendy Ettinger and son Frazer Pennebaker, as well as the film’s distributor, the late Bingham Ray.

Lee Hirsch’s Bully received the Cinema Eye Audience Choice Prize after a frenzied final 48 hours of voting that saw more than 4,500 cast votes online and via twitter.  “This is a great honor for us. A few years ago, we were really struggling with our film, and we came here, and you gave us a lot of strength,” said Hirsch. “This film has had a really tremendous outreach campaign. The work done to get this film out there and bring it to audiences, that’s really everything. We’ve been able to bring the film to over 250,000 kids across America.”

The Cinema Eye Honor were founded in 2007 to recognize “excellence in artistry and craft in nonfiction filmmaking.” The event’s core team includes documentary experts Esther Robinson, AJ Schnack, Nathan Truesdell, Sean Farnel, Andrea Meditch and Laura Poitras.

The winners were:

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking
5 Broken Cameras
Directed by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi
Produced by Christine Camdessus, Serge Gordey, Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi


Outstanding Achievement in Direction
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Detropia

Audience Choice Prize
Bully
Directed by Lee Hirsch

Outstanding Achievement in Production
Dimitri Doganis
The Imposter

Outstanding Achievement in Editing
T. Woody Richman and Tyler H. Walk
How to Survive a Plague

Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography
Jeff Orlowski
Chasing Ice

Spotlight Award
Argentinian Lesson
Directed by Wojciech Staron

Heterodox Award
Museum Hours
Directed by Jem Cohen

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Short Filmmaking
Goodbye Mandima (Kwa Heri Mandima)
Directed by Robert-Jan Lacombe

Outstanding Achievement in an Original Music Score
Dial.81
Detropia

Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design and Animation
Oskar Gullstrand and Arvid Steen
Searching for Sugar Man

Outstanding Achievement in a Debut Feature Film
Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims
Only the Young

Legacy Award
The War Room
Directed by Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker
Produced by R.J. Cutler, Wendy Ettinger and Frazer Pennebaker