In Shocker, ’32 Sounds’ Takes Top Documentary Award At Cinema Eye Honors, Plus Two Other Awards (Full List)
32 Sounds, the innovative documentary that explores the power of sonic experience, pulled off a shocker at the Cinema Eye Honors Friday night, winning Outstanding Nonfiction Feature over Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie and other prominent nominees.
The film directed by Sam Green won two other awards: Outstanding Sound Design, recognizing the work of Mark Mangini, and Outstanding Original Score, which went to composer J.D. Samson.
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32 Sounds is one of 15 documentaries shortlisted for the Academy Awards, along with Still, Four Daughters, The Eternal Memory, and 20 Days in Mariupol, all of which took home prizes at the Cinema Eye Honors.
Outstanding Direction resulted in a tie between two filmmakers, Kaouther Ben Hania of Four Daughters, and Maite Alberdi, director of The Eternal Memory. Alberdi’s film explores the love story of two of Chile’s most prominent figures in the arts and media, Paulina Urrutia and Augusto Góngora, a bond that continued after Augusto was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
“The Eternal Memory was important for me as a director because I learned that the memory, it’s not information,” Alberdi explained as she accepted the Cinema Eye Honor. “The eternal memory are our emotions. And as directors, we have to narrate emotions.”
Ben Hania is familiar with sharing prizes, having done so at the Cannes Film Festival last May, where Four Daughters and Asmae El Moudir’s documentary The Mother of All Lies were jointly awarded the L’Oeil d’or (Golden Eye award), as the festival’s best nonfiction films.
“We won the Golden Eye and now I have another eye,” Ben Hania said as she accepted the trophy, an ocular-shaped statuette with pronged lashes. She joked, “I was in Palm Springs, attacked by a bee, so I have a problem with my eyes. I’ll borrow this until my eye heals.”
The Cinema Eye Honors Awards, now in their 17th year, recognize achievement in many disciplines within documentary including production, sound, editing, cinematography, visual design, and score.
Outstanding Production, an award that goes to producers, was earned by 20 Days in Mariupol, the documentary directed by Mstyslav Chernov that shows Russia’s devastating attack on civilians in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in the early days of Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Chernov, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Ukraine war, was en route to New York for the Cinema Eye Honors but wasn’t able to make it in time for the ceremony. A colleague read an acceptance speech in which he wrote, “We live in a world full of tragedies. It can be easy to lose track of them. It is easy to forget them. My hope is that documentary films, if not change the world for the better, at least preserve the stories and honor the memories of those we have lost, so that perhaps future generations will not let these terrible things happen again.”
Still, the film about Michael J. Fox’s career and his battle with Parkinson’s disease, didn’t leave empty-handed. Michael Harte repeated his Outstanding Editor win at the Emmys last Sunday by earning that award from the Cinema Eye.
“It’s hard to talk about Michael [J. Fox] because he would hate it if I stood up here and told you all how much of a hero he is,” Harte said in his acceptance remarks. “He doesn’t want that, but I’m going to do it anyway because he deserves it. In a world where gratitude and optimism is hard to find, I watch Michael and the way he has navigated his life and the way he navigates it today is sort of f*****g mind blowing. He really, truly is a hero, and I’m very grateful for being part of his storytelling process.”
Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, who are Oscar-shortlisted for both their feature documentary Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project and their short documentary Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games, won the Cinema Eye for the latter film, in the Outstanding Nonfiction Short category. Going to Mars was honored for Outstanding Visual Design, recognizing the contributions of Thomas Curtis and Sean Pierce.
The Audience Choice Prize went to National Geographic’s Bobi Wine: The People’s President, directed by Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp. Their film documents the titular Ugandan pop star, who became a popular politician in his country, and then risked his life to oppose Uganda’s dictator in the election for president.
Wine and his wife Barbie Kyagulanyi were on hand at the Cinema Eye Honors ceremony.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my wife and I are not the real heroes in this film,” Wine said. “No, the true heroes are the hundreds of men, women, and children that have paid the ultimate price in our struggle for freedom in Uganda. Those that are lying in unmarked graves, scattered all over the country, the political prisoners and those that are missing — those are the true heroes. We salute them.”
The 1619 Project followed up its Emmy win last weekend with the Cinema Eye prize for Anthology Series, honoring a team that includes Nikole Hannah-Jones, Roger Ross Williams, Oprah Winfrey, Shoshana Guy, and the New York Times’ Kathleen Lingo. The six-part Hulu series, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series created by Hannah-Jones, explores the origins of racist ideology in America, from the arrival of the first African captives on the shores of America in 1619 through to today.
The 1619 Project has been hailed for reframing our common understanding of American history, and the vital role African Americans have played in the culture and to preserve democracy. Many conservatives, however, have attacked its message; in 2020, then-President Trump went out of his way to declare the print iteration of The 1619 Project “toxic propaganda.” Accepting the Cinema Eye trophy, Hannah-Jones alluded to the backlash against the series, which prompted some Southern states to sanitize the way slavery is taught in schools.
“We know how important it is to tell the truth right now in the country, and this has been the most attacked work I’ve ever done,” she said. “We hope that what we’ll do is just continue to show the importance of telling stories and fighting back and not allowing powerful people to suppress our story.”
This is the full list of winners for the 2024 Cinema Eye Honors Awards, held at the New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem:
—Outstanding Nonfiction Feature
32 Sounds
Directed by Sam Green
Produced by Josh Penn and Thomas O. Kriegsmann
—Outstanding Direction
Maite Alberdi
The Eternal Memory
Kaouther Ben Hania
Four Daughters
—Outstanding Editing
Michael Harte
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
—Outstanding Production
Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, Raney Aronson Rath, Derl McCrudden and Vasilisa Stepanenko
20 Days in Mariupol
—Outstanding Cinematography
Ants Tammik
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
—Outstanding Original Score
JD Samson
32 Sounds
—Outstanding Sound Design
Mark Mangini
32 Sounds
—Outstanding Visual Design
Thomas Curtis and Sean Pierce
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
—Outstanding Debut
Kokomo City
Directed by D. Smith
—Outstanding Nonfiction Short
Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games
Directed by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson
—Outstanding Nonfiction Film for Broadcast
The Stroll
Directed by Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker
—Outstanding Nonfiction Series
Paul T. Goldman
Directed by Jason Woliner
—Outstanding Anthology Series
The 1619 Project
Executive Producers: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Roger Ross Williams, Shoshana Guy, Caitlin Roper, Kathleen Lingo, Helen Verno and Oprah Winfrey
—Outstanding Broadcast Editing
Sara Newens, Anne Yao and David Teague
Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields
—Outstanding Broadcast Cinematography
Heloisa Passos
Nothing Lasts Forever
—Audience Choice Prize
Bobi Wine: The People’s President
Directed by Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp
—Spotlight Award
Q
Directed by Jude Chehab
—Heterodox Award
The Buriti Flower
Directed by Jo?o Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora
—The Unforgettables (Non-Competitive Honor)
Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad
American Symphony
Apolonia Sokol
Apolonia, Apolonia
Bobi Wine
Bobi Wine: The People’s President
Penny Lane
Confessions of a Good Samaritan
Shere Hite
The Disappearance of Shere Hite
Augusto Góngora & Paulina Urrutia
The Eternal Memory
Nikki Giovanni
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
Bethann Hardison
Invisible Beauty
Joan Baez
Joan Baez I Am a Noise
Daniella Carter, Koko Da Doll, Liyah Mitchell and Dominique Silver
Kokomo City
David Cornwell aka John le Carré
The Pigeon Tunnel
Michael J. Fox
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
Margaret “Mati” Engel
A Still Small Voice
Aaju Peter
Twice Colonized
Ravish Kumar
While We Watched
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