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From the "Biz" Archives: "In America," "American Splendor," and "Raising Victor Vargas" Top Nominees for 2004 IFP Independent Spirit Awards by Brian Brooks
Jim Sheridan's "In America," Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's "American Splendor," and Peter Sollet's "Raising Victor Vargas" topped the list of nominees for the 2004 IFP Independent Spirit Awards, which were announced this morning in Los Angeles. Also in the running for honors is Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation," which received four nominations including best picture and best director as well as Billy Ray's "Shattered Glass," also named in four categories including best picture and best screenplay (Billy Ray). Nominations were announced for best feature, best first feature, best first screenplay, best director, best screenplay, the John Cassavetes award (given to the best feature made for a budget under $500,000), best male lead, best female lead, best supporting male, best supporting female, best debut performance, best cinematography, best foreign film, and best documentary. "In America" led the pack six nominations including best feature and best director, while "American Splendor," winner of the Sundance 2003 Grand Jury prize, has five nominations, also including best feature and best director. Also vying for the best feature and best director prizes is "Raising Victor Vargas" which received a total of five nominations. Gus Van Sant's Cannes 2003 Palme d'Or winner "Elephant" received two nominations including best director (Van Sant also received the best director prize this year in Cannes) as well as for best cinematography (Harris Savides). Three directors were named to compete for this year's Turning Leaf Someone to Watch award, which includes a $20,000 unrestricted grant. Nominees in the category are Andrew Bujalski for "Funny Ha Ha," Ben Coccio for "Zero Day," and Ryan Eslinger for "Madness and Genius." Additionally, the 2004 Spirit Awards nominations committee will honor Alejandro González Iñárritu's "21 Grams" with a special distinction award "for uniqueness of vision, bold conception and direction." Because of Spirit Awards guidelines, the film was not eligible for nominations in individual categories because the film's budget exceeded the committee's interpretation of the IFP's criteria of "economy of means." [Iñárritu previously told indieWIRE the film's budget was around $20 million.] "There's a wide spectrum of filmmaking [with] voices that are personal and original," commented Dawn Hudson, executive director of IFP/Los Angeles in a conversation with indieWIRE. "The spectrum of filmmaking is wider than in past years [which] shows that independent filmmakers have the confidence to take on [unique] genres." Producer Jeff Kleeman chaired this year's 11-member nominations committee. In order to be considered, submitted films must have screened at a commercial theater during the 2003 calendar year, or have played at one of the following seven festivals: IFP Los Angeles Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, New York, Seattle, Sundance, Telluride, or Toronto. Winners for the IFP Independent Spirit Awards are voted on by the IFP's 9,000 national members. The awards will take place in Santa Monica on Saturday, February 28, 2004, one day prior to the 2004 Academy Awards. 2004 IFP INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARD NOMINATIONS - BY CATEGORY BEST FEATURE (Award given to the Producer) * Executive Producers are not listed. American Splendor In America Lost in Translation Raising Victor Vargas Shattered Glass BEST DIRECTOR American Splendor Lost in Translation In America Raising Victor Vargas Elephant BEST SCREENPLAY American Splendor Lost in Translation A Mighty Wind Pieces of April Shattered Glass BEST FIRST FEATURE (Award given to the Director and Producer) Bomb the System House of Sand and Fog Monster Quattro Noza Thirteen JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD (Given to the best feature made for under $500,000. Award given to the Writer, Director, and Producer) * Executive Producers are not listed. Anne B. Real Better Luck Tomorrow Pieces of April The Station Agent Virgin BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY Blue Car Monster Raising Victor Vargas The Station Agent Thirteen BEST FEMALE LEAD Agnes Bruckner Zooey Deschanel Samantha Morton Elisabeth Moss Charlize Theron BEST MALE LEAD Peter Dinklage Paul Giamatti Sir Ben Kingsley Bill Murray Lee Pace BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE Shohreh Aghdashloo Sarah Bolger Patricia Clarkson Hope Davis Frances McDormand BEST SUPPORTING MALE Judah Friedlander Troy Garity Djimon Hounsou Alessandro Nivola Peter Sarsgaard BEST DEBUT PERFORMANCE (Actors in their first significant role in a feature film) Anna Kendrick Judy Marte Victor Rasuk Nikki Reed Janice Richardson BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Elephant In America Northfork Quattro Noza Shattered Glass BEST FOREIGN FILM (Award given to the Director) City of God - (Brazil) Lilya 4-Ever - (Denmark) The Magdalene Sisters - (England/Ireland) The Triplets of Belleville - (France) Whale Rider (New Zealand) BEST DOCUMENTARY (Award given to the Director) The Fog of War Mayor of the Sunset Strip My Architect OT: our town Power Trip FILMMAKER GRANT NOMINEES Turning Leaf Someone To Watch Award Andrew Bujalski, director of Funny Ha Ha DIRECTV / IFC Truer Than Fiction Award Linda Goode Bryant, director of Flag Wars Linda Goode Bryant is an award-winning producer, writer, and director of documentaries and experimental shorts and installations. Ms. Bryant co-produced, directed, and edited Flag Wars (2003), a cinema verite documentary that launched the 2003 POV season on PBS. Ms. Bryant is currently in development on The Vote, a cinema verite look at America's 2004 presidential primaries and election from two distinct perspectives - from the point of view of voters and from the point of view of those working inside the process - to observe the effect campaigning, organizing, demonstrations, and media have on voters and, non-voters, come Election Day. Ms. Bryant's other work includes Hurricane Teens, a segment on Split Screen, a weekly cable television show aired on BRAVO/The Independent Film Channel; My Am, an experimental narrative, and The Business of Being an Artist, a documentary on the impact the art market has on artists and their creativity. Laura Poitras, director of Flag Wars Laura Poitras is a New York-based documentary filmmaker. In addition to Flag Wars , she also just completed Oh say can you see. Since 1996 she has worked as a freelance editor for HBO, IFC, and BRAVO. She was also the Associate Producer for Free Tibet a music documentary. Nathaniel Kahn (Director/Producer) Nathaniel Kahn grew up in Philadelphia and attended Yale University on a scholarship, where he was awarded the Gordon Prize for his work as a theater director. In 1989, Mr. Kahn wrote and directed a play, "Owl's Breath," which was presented off-Broadway. In 1992, he co-wrote The Room, a short dramatic film about a boy whose room falls out of a building. The Room screened at the Sundance Film Festival and won an award at the Cannes Film Festival. An active environmentalist, Mr. Kahn also spent several years collaborating with Miranda Productions on a number of environmentally themed documentaries including, My Father's Garden, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast by the Sundance Channel, and Wilderness: The Last Stand, which was broadcast by PBS. After several years of fund-raising, he was able to embark on the making of My Architect, his first feature-length film. Robb Moss, director of The Same River Twice Robb Moss is an independent, non-fiction filmmaker whose work has shown at the Telluride Film Festival, the Cinéma du Réel in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has shot films in Ethiopia, Liberia, Greece, Mexico, Hungary, Japan, Turkey, Nicaragua and the Gambia. Many of these films on such subjects as famine, genocide and the large-scale structure of the universe have been broadcast nationally. He is the past board chair and president of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF) and has taught filmmaking at Harvard University for the past 15 years. Megan Mylan, director of Lost Boys of Sudan Megan Mylan is a San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker. Her film Batidania on Brazilian resistance music, won Best Documentary at the Marin Latino Film Festival. Mylan has collaborated on documentaries for PBS, HBO, Showtime and the BBC including Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffmann's Long Night's Journey Into Day, 2000 Academy Award¨ nominee and winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Jon Else's Open Outcry and Sing Faster; and Yesterday's Tomorrows directed by Barry Levinson for Showtime. She has a background in international development and Masters degrees in Journalism and Latin American Studies from UC Berkeley. Jon Shenk, director of Lost Boys of Sudan Jon Shenk is a documentary filmmaker and founder of Actual Films in San Francisco. He directed and photographed The Beginning about the making of Star Wars: Episode I. He is currently co-directing the PBS film, Inside The Tent, about the post-war constitutional process in Afghanistan. Shenk has produced and photographed several documentaries for MTV and the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Shenk has photographed many documentaries for PBS, A&E, Bravo, CBS, NBC, the BBC, and recently, The Skin We're In, an Emmy-nominating National Geographic special. He earned his Masters in Documentary Filmmaking from Stanford University in 1995. Producers Award Mary Jane Skalski, producer of The Station Agent and The Jimmy Show The Station Agent was released by Miramax Films in the fall of 2003. Written and directed by Tom McCarthy, the film stars Patricia Clarkson, Peter Dinklage and Bobby Cannavale. The film premiered in the Dramatic Competition at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and received the Audience Award, the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, and a special acting award for Ms. Clarkson. Some of her other producing credits include Frank Whaley's The Jimmy Show which screened at the Toronto and Sundance Film Festivals, Paul Harrill's Gina An Actress Age 29, which was awarded the Grand Jury Prize in Short Film at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Ms. Skalski is partnered with producer Jeffrey Levy-Hinte at Antidote Films. She is also the US scout for Fortissimo Film Sales and an assistant adjunct faculty member in Columbia University's Graduate Film Department. Callum Greene After spending five years as a producer and stage manger of theatre in Europe, Callum Greene moved to New York in 1995 to concentrate on film production. In 1996, he was awarded the Arthur Krim Fellowship for Producers by James Schamus. His various credits include The Sticky Fingers of Time and Love God as assistant director; Long Time Since, The Farmhouse, and In The Weeds as co-producer; and Hamlet, Paid In Full, and most recently Lost In Translation as line producer. His production company, Keep Your Head Productions, has produced numerous music videos and commercials for Sony Music, Toyota, Peugeot, Pepsi, and Playtex. Currently scheduled for release in April 2004 are both Michael Almereyda's new film Happy Here And Now, and a documentary for Sam Shepard based on his latest play, The Late Henry Moss. Anthony Katagas In 1999, Anthony Katagas joined partner Callum Greene to form Keep Your Head Productions, a company committed to the development, financing and production of independent films in New York City. Teaming with director Michael Almereyda, they produced Happy Here and Now that screened at the Toronto and Rotterdam Film Festivals and earned a Special Jury Prize at SXSW. Mr. Katagas and Mr. Greene produced This So-Called Disaster, a documentary featuring Sam Shepard, Sean Penn, and Nick Nolte, which screened at the Tribeca, Rotterdam and Turin Film Festivals. Keep Your Head will produce Ethan Hawke's The Hottest State in early 2004. Mr. Katagas also worked as Production Supervisor for Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation and recently co-produced both Crystal (Billy Bob Thornton), debuting at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, and Winters Passing with Ed Harris, Will Farrell, and Zooey Deschanel. Lauren Moews Is an independent film producer and production attorney who has been working in the entertainment industry for the past seven years. Lauren founded Beverly Hills-based Tonic Films in 1999 and at the company's helm has produced six award-winning feature films in the past three years. Lauren's most recent achievement is the acclaimed indie horror film Cabin Fever that was theatrically released in the U.S. by Lions Gate in September 2003. Tonic Films is developing a sequel to Cabin Fever with writer/director Eli Roth and Lions Gate. Lauren's other recent films include: Amy's Orgasm a.k.a. Amy's O, a romantic comedy theatrically released in August 2002 by the Independent Film Channel. Amy's O won the Audience Choice Award at both the Santa Barbara Film Festival and the Long Beach Film Festival in 2001. | |
