Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Spirit Awards, announced the jury and audience award winners for the 2012 Festival at yesterday’s Awards Brunch, hosted by CHAYA Downtown for the third year.
The two top juried awards of the Los Angeles Film Festival are the Narrative Award and Documentary Award, each carrying an unrestricted $15,000 cash prize, funded by Film Independent, for the winning film’s director. The awards were established by the Festival to encourage independent filmmakers to pursue their artistic ambitions.
Actors Jon Heder and Ari Graynor were on hand to present the awards. The LA Film Festival — presented by Film Independent, Host Venue Regal Cinemas L.A. LIVE Stadium 14 and presenting media sponsor Los Angeles Times — began Thursday, June 14, and ran through Sunday June 24 in downtown Los Angeles.
“Every single filmmaker in this year’s Festival deserves kudos for their artistry and compelling stories,” said Festival director Stephanie Allain. “Our juries had such gems to choose from in each competition and the winners truly represent what we hold dear — diversity and uniqueness of vision.”
The Narrative Award recognizes the finest narrative film in competition at the Festival and went to Pocas Pascoal for the North American Premiere of All is Well, with an Honorable Mention going to Dominga Sotomayor’s Thursday Till Sunday.
The Documentary Award recognizes the finest documentary film in competition at the Festival and went to Everardo González for the U.S. Premiere of Drought.
The award for Best Performance in the Narrative Competition went to Wendell Pierce, Emory Cohen, E.J. Bonilla and Aja Naomi King for their performances in the World Premiere of Joshua Sanchez’s Four. Given to an actor or actors from an official selection in the Narrative Competition, this award has been given at the Festival for the ninth year.
The LA Film Fest also awarded an unrestricted $5,000 cash prize to each short film category. The award for Best Narrative Short Film went to The Chair, directed by Grainger David. The award for Best Documentary Short Film went to Josh Gibson for Kudzu Vine. Joseph Pierce’s The Pub won for Best Animated or Experimental Short Film.
The Audience Award is given to the feature audiences liked most as voted by a tabulated rating system. The Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature went to Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by Benh Zeitlin, and the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature went to Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and The Farm Midwives, directed by Sara Lamm and Mary Wigmore. Searching for Sugar Man, directed by Malik Bendjelloul, won the Audience Award for Best International Feature.
The Audience Award for Best Short Film went to Asad, directed by Bryan Buckley of Hungry Man. Piranhas Club, directed by Lex Halaby won the Audience Award for Best Music Video.
The Narrative Feature Competition jury was comprised of actress Rachael Harris (Natural Selection, Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies), actor/writer/producer/director Robert Townsend (Hollywood Shuffle, The Five Heartbeats) and film critic Sheri Linden (LAFCA, The Hollywood Reporter, The Los Angeles Times). The Documentary Feature Competition jury was comprised of producer Heather Rae (Frozen River, The Dry Land), producer Karin Chien (Circumstance, The Exploding Girl) and director Mark Landsman (Thunder Soul). The Shorts Competition Jury was comprised of film critic and author Ernest Hardy (Blood Beats Vols. 1 and 2), cinematographer Nancy Schreiber (Your Friends and Neighbors, The Celluloid Closet) and writer/director/editor Javier Fuentes León (Contracorriente).
Now in its 18th year, the LA Film Festival is recognized as a world-class event, showcasing the best in new American and international cinema and providing the movie-loving public with access to critically acclaimed filmmakers, film industry professionals, and emerging talent from around the world. The 2012 Festival screened nearly 200 feature films, shorts and music videos, representing more than 30 countries.
The LA Film Festival kicked off on Thursday, June 14 with the North American Premiere of Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love, sponsored by Virgin America, and closed Sunday with the World Premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike, sponsored by Volkswagen of America.
Gala Screenings included the World Premieres of Alex Kurtzman’s People Like Us, Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, LA premieres of Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild and Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere.
The 2012 Guest Director was William Friedkin and Artists in Residence were composer Danny Elfman, sponsored by Regal Entertainment Group and IRIS from Cirque du Soleil®, musician Raphael Saadiq and chef Michael Voltaggio.
Awards were given out in the following categories:
Narrative Award (for Best Narrative Feature)
Winner: All is Well directed by Pocas Pascoal
Film Description: (Portugal) Strangers in a strange land, two beautiful Angolan sisters fleeing a civil war in their homeland struggle to survive in Lisbon. Pocas Pascoal’s deeply personal saga shows us the face of exile with quietly stunning power.
In bestowing Pocas Pascoal with the Narrative Award, the Jury stated:
“All is Well, a Lisbon-set exploration of the immigrant experience and, especially, of the bond between siblings, is a work of striking visual eloquence and emotional honesty. As sisters navigating a new country, together and separately, Cheila Lima and Ciomara Morais deliver performances of searing intimacy. Filmmaker Pocas Pascoal has transformed her personal story of exile from Angola into a deeply affecting drama, whose cinematic power if particularly impressive in the work of a first-time feature director.”
Honorable Mention (for Best Narrative Feature)
Film Title: Thursday till Sunday directed by Dominga Sotomayor
Documentary Award (for Best Documentary Feature)
Winner: Drought directed by Everardo González
Film Description: (Mexico) Contrasting the lives of a cattle-ranching community with the arid northeastern Mexican landscape that surrounds them, this cinéma vérité documentary paints a poetic portrait of a community on the verge of distinction.
In bestowing Everardo González with the Documentary Award, the Jury stated:
“The jury found Drought to be a film of extraordinary caliber–epic in scope, keen and intimate in its observational perspective, beautifully filmed and edited with a sparse and affecting soundscape. Through this powerful film, the story of a remote Mexican community grappling with a growing drought becomes a universal parable and an alarming harbinger.”
Best Performance in the Narrative Competition
Winner: Wendell Pierce, Emory Cohen, E.J. Bonilla and Aja Naomi King in Joshua Sanchez’s Four.
Film Description: Over the course of a steamy 4th of July night, a father and daughter, each trapped in loneliness, reach out for sexual connection — he with a self-hating teenage boy, she with a smooth-talking wannabe homeboy — in this psychologically complex, beautifully acted drama.
In bestowing the actors with the Best Performance, the Jury stated:
“Commanding and utterly unforced, the ensemble cast of Joshua Sanchez’s Four inhabit their characters with compelling specificity. At the same time, their pitch-perfect collaborative energy honors and deepens the tone of the material. As lonely individuals in various states of crisis, Wendell Pierce, Emory Cohen, E.J. Bonilla and Aja Naomi King are fearless in the vulnerability they bring to their roles.”
Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature
Winner: Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by Benh Zeitlin
Film Description: This stunningly imaginative, boldly original film follows six-year-old Hushpuppy as she fights to protect her father and their unique way of life in a remote, dreamlike area of the Delta threatened by apocalyptic floods.
Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature
Winner: Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and The Farm Midwives, directed by Sara Lamm and Mary Wigmore
Film Description: Ina May Gaskin and the courageous midwives of the Farm commune inspired the modern midwifery movement. This beguiling documentary tells their empowering story with depth, intelligence and wit.
Audience Award for Best International Feature
Winner: Searching for Sugar Man directed by Malik Bendjelloul
Film Description: Years after facing into obscurity at home, the music of ’70s U.S. singer/songwriter Rodriguez became an underground sensation in South Africa. Decades after his disappearance, two fans uncover the startling truth behind the legend.
Best Narrative Short Film
Winner: The Chair directed by Grainger David
Description: A young boy questions the origins of a mysterious mold outbreak that threatens to destroy his town.
In bestowing Grainger David with the Best Narrative Short Film Award, the Jury stated:
“Grainger David’s narrative short, The Chair, is a lyrical, gorgeous meditation on death, grief and resilience as filtered through a young boy’s fluid memory. Set in the humid American south, and filmed on landscapes that are familiar, on one hand, and rendered as poetic dreamscapes, on the other, the short film is ultimately a moving coming-of-age film in which a family tragedy nudges its young protagonist to muse on matters that have concerned great minds throughout the ages — religion, family, morality, and the ways in which we are all connected.”
Best Documentary Short Film
Winner: Kudzu Vine directed & produced by Josh Gibson
Description: This ode to the kudzu vine poetically highlights its ties to the history and the people of the South.
In bestowing Josh Gibson with the Best Documentary Short Film Award, the Jury stated:
“Quite often, documentary filmmakers take a literal, visually straightforward approach to their subject matter, sidestepping experimentation with the language of cinema. Director Josh Gibson’s Kudzu Vine was not only filled with information on the sturdy kudzu vine –it’s history; the many and unexpected uses for it — but employed a visual style perched somewhere between gothic and otherworldly. Hugely educational and wonderfully stylistic, Kudzu Vine is this year’s winner for Best Documentary Short.”
Best Animated/Experimental Short Film
Winner: The Pub directed by Joseph Pierce
Description: (England) Life isn’t easy behind the counter of a North London pub.
In bestowing Mark Grimmer with the Best Animated or Experimental Short Film Award, the Jury stated:
“The jury prize for best animated/experimental short goes to Joseph Pierce’s The Pub, a haunting portrayal of everyday life in a bar in North London, seen through the eyes of a lonely bartender. At times, striking beautiful and at times, terrifyingly grotesque, the imaginative and exquisite use of animation gives the film its depth and opens up a door into the humanity of the regular characters of this joint — loners, drunks, old-timers — letting us peak for an instant into their souls and the demons that hover around them.
Audience Award for Best Short Film
Winner: Asad directed by Bryan Buckley
Description: A young boy in a war-torn Somalian village faces a moral dilemma.
Audience Award for Best Music Video
Winner: Piranhas Club directed by Lex Halaby
Music: Man Man
