'Hal,' 'Into the Okavango,' 'The Dawn Wall' surprise as Producers Guild Awards nominations announced11/21/2018 They join expected nominees including Free Solo and Won't You Be My Neighbor? The Producers Guild of America has produced some surprises with its nominees for Outstanding Documentary Motion Pictures. Seven films were recognized by the PGA, including Won't You Be My Neighbor?, Morgan Neville's film about children's television icon Fred Rogers. No surprise there, as Neighbor has been nominated for every major award announced so far this year. Neither was it surprising to see Free Solo, RBG and Three Identical Strangers collect nominations -- all films that have established themselves as critical and commercial hits. But the other three nominated films -- Hal, Into the Okavango and The Dawn Wall -- raised eyebrows because they have not factored as prominently in awards season as their fellow PGA Awards contenders. Remarkably, two of the nominated documentaries tell the story of audacious attempts to scale the sheer granite face of Yosemite's El Capitan. The Dawn Wall focuses on climbers Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson, who ascended El Capitan's forbidding Dawn Wall over a grueling 19-day period. They used ropes, but only to secure them if they fell, not to actually lift them up the rock face. Free Solo centers on climber Alex Honnold, who made it his goal to climb El Capitan without any ropes at all. The documentary by E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin has made close to $9 million at the domestic box office so far. Caldwell actually appears in Free Solo, in addition to being the main character in The Dawn Wall. Hal, directed by Amy Scott, recounts the brilliant career of filmmaker Hal Ashby, who made some of the most important films of the 1970s including Shampoo and Harold and Maude. His clashes with studio executives were legendary, as was the generosity of his heart. Into the Okavango explores the Okavango Delta in Southern Africa, home to an extraordinary array of wildlife. The film highlights the efforts of Dr. Steve Boyes and a team of scientists to uncover the cause of threats to the body of water that sustains human and animal life. RBG, the hit documentary by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, has further cemented the "rock star" status of its subject, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And Three Identical Strangers, directed by Tim Wardle, tells the extraordinary story of identical triplets who were separated as infants and only reunited by pure chance as young adults.
Final producer credits for each of the nominated films are still being reviewed by the PGA, according to a press release from the guild. Nominations for Theatrical Motion Pictures, Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures, Television Series/Specials, Limited Series Television, Streamed/Televised Movies, and Sports, Children’s and Short Form Programs will be announced January 4, according to the PGA. The Producers Guild Awards ceremony will be held on January 19 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. No. 7: 'When the Nobel Prize was announced, I said that this is the comma in my life, not the full stop' It would be hard to find a more inspiring person than Kailash Satyarthi. For four decades the activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 (an award shared with Malala Yousafzai) has led the effort to end child slavery and exploitation in the world. And he says he will not rest until every child is "free, safe and educated." His work is the focus of the new documentary The Price of Free (formerly titled Kailash), which won the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival last January. The film shows dramatic rescues of children trafficked into slavery in New Delhi, India, and how the love and care of the Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation works to revive their broken spirits It is now playing at the Laemmle NoHo Theaters in the Los Angeles area and will debut on YouTube's Soul Pancake channel on November 27, to coincide with #GivingTuesday. On Friday night. director Derek Doneen, producer Davis Guggenheim and Kailash himself appeared at SoHo House in West Hollywood for a discussion following a screening of the documentary. These are the top seven quotes from their conversation. No. 1: There's something about Kailaish that has this wonderful glow about [him], that makes you want to stop and be present and open your heart. Kailash's foundation has rescued more than 85,000 children in India and elsewhere subjected to slavery and exploitation, many of whom had been forced to work 18 hour days fashioning baubles and toys for sale in the West. He and his wife have set up ashrams where the liberated children are provided with medical care, emotional support and education free of cost. His efforts have helped to reduce the number of child laborers around the world from an estimated 260 million to 150 million. No. 2: I kept really digging for this darker side to him. Doneen said he found it remarkable that Kailash retains "his optimism and the love and light that he exudes day to day, in the face of seeing some really unspeakable things." He added, "I thought that there must be days that he feels hopeless because I did... This [problem of child slavery] feels at times intractable to me. But he doesn't have that attitude. He feels from the bottom of his heart that he can end this in his lifetime." No. 3: There is a reason to celebrate. So how could you find some pessimism in me? "I learned to celebrate every small success," Kailash told the audience at SoHo House. "I never lived with [pessimism] because I always felt that there is a solution of every problem in the problem itself." To illustrate how problems contains their own solutions, Satyarthi spoke of an experience from his childhood. As a boy he said he was deeply upset to learn that his best friend could no longer afford to attend school, partly because of the cost of books. Kailash started a drive to collect textbooks at the end of the year that students would otherwise have discarded and give them to the incoming class of students. "The book was the problem and the book was the solution," he noted. "So why can't we find a solution to every problem?" No. 4: I always think that truth will prevail. Justice will prevail. Hope will prevail. So why should we be deterred with the obstacles that are coming in the way to truth? in his effort to eradicate child slavery and child labor, success builds upon success, Kalaish explained. "The victims of slavery have proven that they have all the qualities to become the leaders and liberators," he observed. "Thousands of those children who were freed with our humble efforts, they became activists, they became liberators, they became messengers, they have stopped trafficking of children and child labor in their neighborhood and their villages." No. 5: I myself wanted to become a monk. Kailash contemplated taking a different path before he was called to activism. "I wanted to do some spiritual work and so on," he revealed, "not typical religious work, but I wanted to go deeper into the sense of all religions and that is compassion, that is love, that is sisterhood." No. 6: Young people have so many qualities. Purity of heart. They are not yet polluted as we grownups are. "They are very simple, clear, transparent," Kailash said of children. "They are curious to learn things. They are curious to know. So they have the courage to question. Sometimes they can question openly but, inside, the question is always there. And we so-called 'learned' people, educated people, rich people, wise people, we start with answers. So that is the difference." He added, "Those who can [ask] questions and have courage to bring it to the people, bring it to the society, they change the world." Satyarthi continued, "I maintain that they should lead the world because if children and young people lead the world... if their voices are heard then I tell you that there will not be any war, there would not be any wall, there would not be any boundary. No child has ever created borders in the world. No child has put the line on the earth as we do. No child has invented the idea of passport and visa. No child has been responsible for any kind of poverty and injustice. Nothing." No. 7: When the Nobel Prize was announced, I said that this is the comma in my life, not the full stop. Kailash, 64, expressed optimism that the new documentary will advance the cause of protecting children and eliminating child slavery and servitude. "I call upon all of you and urge you that you don't just look this film as a film but as a spark, as a matchstick which can light millions and hundreds of millions of candles in the world to wipe out this scourge," he told the audience. He has launched a "100 million for 100 million" campaign to harness the activism and energy of youth to liberate 100 million children still without freedom. Details can be found at 100million.org. The title of the film refers to a major dimension of the problem of child servitude -- that consumers around the world buy cheap goods without stopping to consider whether child labor was used to make the items. The Price of Free website recommends these steps everyone can take: Be a conscious consumer
His coming-of-age story will compete with Three Identical Strangers, Won't You Be My Neighbor? and more Bing Liu's documentary Minding the Gap gained awards season momentum with the announcement of the nominations for the Cinema Eye Honors. It was recognized in seven categories, including Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking and Outstanding Achievement in Direction. Liu's film explores the abusive childhoods he and two friends experienced growing up in Rockford, Illinois, and how skateboarding became a crucial escape for them. Minding the Gap also claimed nominations for editing, cinematography, original score and Outstanding Achievement in a Debut Feature Film. The total of seven nods "ties a record for the most nominations in Cinema Eye history, matching Louie Psihoyos’ The Cove, Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home and Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir," Cinema Eye noted in a press release. In the best doc category, Minding the Gap will go up against Bisbee '17, directed by Robert Greene; Hale County This Morning, This Evening by director RaMell Ross; Of Fathers and Sons by Talal Derki; Tim Wardle's Three Identical Strangers, and Morgan Neville's Won't You Be My Neighbor? The Cinema Eye Honors will be presented Thursday, January 10, 2019 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. For the fourth year in a row filmmaker Steve James will host the ceremony. He is also nominated in the Outstanding Nonfiction Series category for his Showtime show America to Me. Related: |
AuthorMatthew Carey is a documentary filmmaker and journalist. His work has appeared on Deadline.com, CNN, CNN.com, TheWrap.com, NBCNews.com and in Documentary magazine. |