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Saturday, February 26, 2005
SPIRITS GO SIDEWAYS 

The 2005 Independent Spirit Awards were announced this afternoon at the IFP Los Angeles's annual ceremony on the beach in Santa Monica. For the major awards, it was a virtual sweep by Sideways -- Alexander Payne's smart comedy won six prizes. Other winners, listed below, include Garden State, The Motorcycle Diaries, Mean Creek, the filmmaker Jem Cohen, the producer Gina Kwon, and doc filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman.

Here are the winners:

Best Picture
Sideways (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Producer: Michael London

Best Director
Alexander Payne
Sideways (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Best Screenplay
Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor
Sideways (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Best First Feature
Garden State (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Director: Zach Braff
Producers: Pamela Abdy, Gary Gilbert, Dan Halsted, Richard Klubeck

Best First Screenplay
Joshua Marston
Maria Full of Grace (HBO Films/Fine Line Features)

John Cassavetes Award
(For the Best Feature made for under $500,000)
Mean Creek (Paramount Classics)
Writer/Director: Jacob Aaron Estes
Producers: Susan Johnson, Rick Rosenthal, Hagai Shaham

Best Debut Performance*
Rodrigo de la Serna
The Motorcycle Diaries (Focus Features)
*Actors making their first appearance in a feature film

Best Supporting Female
Virginia Madsen
Sideways (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Best Supporting Male
Thomas Haden Church
Sideways (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Best Female Lead
Catalina Sandino Moreno
Maria Full of Grace (HBO Films/Fine Line Features)

Best Male Lead
Paul Giamatti
Sideways (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Best Cinematography
Eric Gautier
The Motorcycle Diaries (Focus Features)

Best Foreign Film
The Sea Inside (Fine Line Features)
Director: Alejandro Amenabar

Best Documentary
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (IFC Films)
Directors: Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky

Gina Kwon, producer of Me and You and Everyone We Know and The Motel, received the eighth annual Bravo/American Express Producers Award, which honors producers who, despite highly limited resources, demonstrate the creativity, tenacity, and vision required to produce quality independent films. The winner of the Producers Award received an unrestricted grant of $20,000 funded by Bravo and American Express.

Jem Cohen, director of Chain, won the eleventh annual Turning Leaf Someone To Watch Award, a $20,000 grant created to honor a director of singular vision who has not yet received appropriate recognition. The award is funded by Turning Leaf Vineyards.

Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, directors of Born Into Brothels, won the eighth annual DIRECTV/IFC Truer Than Fiction Award, presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features. The award is accompanied by a $20,000 unrestricted grant funded by DIRECTV and IFC.

A Special Distinction Award was given to the ensemble cast of Mean Creek: Rory Culkin, Ryan Kelley, Scott Mechlowicz, Trevor Morgan, Josh Peck, and Carly Schroeder. The nominating committee was struck by these young actors who turned in performances so uniformly unselfish and so intricately in tune with each other that it became impossible to single any one of them out from their extraordinary achievement together.
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 2/26/2005 07:44:00 PM
Comments (1)

 
scott

BUT

do you know these people? i am watching the awards on TV
i have one question. i feel Zana was scandallous in that she appeared
at the awards ceremony looking like a hooker herselF! and the movie is
supposred to tell people the sadness and dangers of prostitiution via
the kids, and yet she appears with her own breatsts hanging out of her
dress like a hooker. it ruined the award for me. i feel she should
have dressed more conservatrively. you don't win friends that way.
what do you think?>


jeez, she could have dressed with a better PR message. as it looks
now, she is just a gold digger slut. that kind of outfit was
denigrating to the people she documented. what on earth was going on
in her head.

i want to email her and tell her face to face. do u know her email address?

dont get me wrong. i love what she and ross accomplished. i salute
the, and i know they are good people. but i am a PR nut from way back
and i feel she blew her chance for understand. how could she be so
DUMB? or insensitive.? there is a world beyond hollywood, watching.

sigh.

and this:

from an Indian national:

> First of all I have not seen this film BROITHELK KIDS so I would not comment about
> the film-making/art aspect of it.
>
> However, I read about the film and honestly find it pretty pathetic.
>
> Looks like the film-makers are trying to follow the well established
> path: Pick up one wretched corner of the developing world, picture the
> misery of the people and use them for personal gains and throw in
> couple of western (white) characters and show them as saviors of the
> poor 'third-world' souls.
>
> Its true that some Westerners actually do things to help these people
> but vast majority just love to talk about these issues in parties
> particularly the guilt-ridden, patronizing liberal ones. The
> film-makers goes at length to show the bureaucracy in Kolkata schools
> but don't bother to even mention literally hundreds of Indian social
> organizations that play important role in protecting the existing
> prostitutes and rehabilitating others. Kolkata in particular is very
> active in terms of welfare of prostitutes. Prostitutes in Kolkata are
> organized in union and they enjoy legal protection and the spread of
> AIDS is minimal due to active health-care programs. Of course, the
> film-makers won't show it because the people doing real work are not
> westerners, they are Indians. If someone is making a documentary film
> it should be factual not a fairy tale story of white angels saving
> poor and dark people.
>
> This is exactly the same reason Hotel Rwanda won't get the Oscar
> because the heroes of the film are black Africans not westerners.
>
> In any case, the film-makers have a right to make any film they want.
> As long as they don't exploit poor children of the 'third-world' for
> making money its okay. Local media in Kolkata says that the
> film-makers raised false hope among the children and they are worse
> off after taking part in the film. If the film-makers are so desperate
> to picture misery maybe they should take their camera to the
> inner-city slums of New York and picture the troubled and often
> criminalized kids of those neighborhoods. Lets see how much people
> enjoy that! If you really want to watch a good film about poor kids
> living in many slums in urban India, watch "Salaam Bombay" by Mira
> Nair. Its an excellent film but unlike this one does not portray slum
> kids as weak, poor and dependent on western generosity. It depicts the
> reality about how actually the slum kids fight for their survival and
> fight against incredible odds.
# posted by dan @ 3/01/2005 9:28 AM  


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