"Blackfeet Boxing: Not Invisible" takes Audience Award for Best Short; Grand Jury Prize for Short Films goes to "Abortion Helpline, This Is Lisa"
The American Film Institute (AFI) has announced the AFI DOCS 2020 Award Winners, concluding the five-day online festival. The festival’s Audience Award for Best Feature went to Transhood, directed by Sharon Liese. The Audience Award for Best Short went to Blackfeet Boxing: Not Invisible, directed by Kristen Lappas and Tom Rinaldi.
Meanwhile the Grand Jury Prize for Short Films went to Abortion Helpline, This Is Lisa directed by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater and Mike Attie. The AFI DOCS shorts jury said of Abortion Helpine, This is Lisa, “For its simple yet profound approach to a polarizing issue, we have selected a film which puts humanity ahead of an agenda.” This year the AFI DOCS Shorts Grand Jury Prize is a qualifying award for Academy Award® eligibility.
The jury also awarded the Special Jury Prize to Do Not Split, directed by Anders Hammer.
With 58 films from 11 countries, the 18th edition of AFI DOCS presented stories that delved into of-the-moment issues including policing, immigration and gun violence; honored luminaries of the past; and looked to the new guard of rising activists and politicians.
Among the participants were filmmakers and notables including President Jimmy Carter, Academy Award®-winning actor and filmmaker Lee Grant; Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Ron Howard; Academy Award®-winning filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar; Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Steve James; actor and filmmaker Bryce Dallas Howard; Stockton, Calif. Mayor Michael Tubbs; Boston 9to5 co-founder Karen Nussbaum; musician Big Freedia; and journalist Maria Ressa.
Awards rundown
Here are more details regarding this year’s AFI DOCS award winners:
AUDIENCE AWARD: FEATURE
TRANSHOOD
DIR: Sharon Liese. We all remember the trials and tribulations of being a kid: fitting in at school, getting along with siblings, finishing homework. These alone are enough to handle. Now, add in discovering who you are and growing up as a trans youth in Kansas City. TRANSHOOD is director Sharon Liese’s in-depth five-year journey following the lives of four kids (ages beginning at 4, 9, 12, and 15) discovering their specific trans experiences alongside their families. Each of the kids and their parents navigate the day-to-day challenges of their home lives and their lives out in the world. Finding normalcy isn’t easy while tackling issues of body dysphoria, transphobia and bullying, and many other big topics that their cis-gender classmates can’t understand. What truly ties these stories together is the unbelievable empathy and humanity exemplified by each family, not just with the heavy moments, but often also during those typical of any childhood.
AUDIENCE AWARD: SHORT
BLACKFEET BOXING: NOT INVISIBLE
DIRS: Kristen Lappas and Tom Rinaldi. As the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women epidemic affects tribal communities, a group of Blackfeet women tackle the threat head-on by practicing and training in self-defense.
SHORT FILM GRAND JURY PRIZE
ABORTION HELPLINE, THIS IS LISA
DIRS: Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater and Mike Attie. At an abortion fund in Philadelphia, counselors arrive each morning to the nonstop ring of calls from women and teens who seek to end a pregnancy but can’t afford to.
SHORT FILM SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
DO NOT SPLIT
DIR: Anders Hammer. During the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, a series of evening demonstrations escalate into conflict when heavily armed police appear on the scene.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More