Matthew Heineman’s Syrian documentary “City of Ghosts” and Yance Ford’s investigation of her brother’s murder, “Strong Island,” were among the movies singled out as the best nonfiction films of 2018 by the Cinema Eye Honors, which announced nominations on Friday in San Francisco.
Those two films and Viktor Jakovleski’s “Brimstone & Glory” led the field with four nominations each.
In the top category, Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking, “City of Ghosts” and “Strong Island” were nominated along with Frederick Wiseman’s “Ex Libris: The New York Public Library,” Agnes Varda and JR’s “Faces Places,” Feras Fayyad’s “Last Men in Aleppo” and Jonathan Olshefski’s “Quest.”
“Quest” was one of five films to receive three nominations,along with “The Challenge,” “Chasing Coral,” “Faces Places” and “Jane.”
The nominations were announced in San Francisco at a reception for SFFILM’s Doc Stories showcase.
Of the six films nominated for best nonfiction feature, three – “City of Ghosts,” “Faces Places” and “Strong Island” – were also nominated by the International Documentary Association’s IDA Awards, which announced its nominees on Wednesday.
The Cinema Eye Honors feature-film nominations are voted on by committees made up largely of documentary programmers from film festivals around the world. Television nominations were made after a first round of voting by festival programmers, and a second round by film critics and writers.
Winners will be announced at the Cinema Eye Honors ceremony on January 11, 2018 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. Director Steve James will host.
The Cinema Eye Honors nominations:
Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking “City of Ghosts”
“Ex Libris: The New York Public Library”
“Faces Places”
“Last Men in Aleppo”
“Quest”
“Strong Island”
Outstanding Achievement in Direction Kitty Green, “Casting JonBenet”
Matthew Heineman, “City of Ghosts”
Yuri Ancarani, “The Challenge”
Frederick Wiseman, “Ex Libris: The New York Public Library”
Agnès Varda and JR, “Faces Places”
Yance Ford, “Strong Island”
Outstanding Achievement in Editing
“Dawson City: Frozen Time”
“Jane”
“LA92”
“Long Strange Trip”
“Quest”
“The Reagan Show”
Outstanding Achievement in Production
“Brimstone and Glory”
“City of Ghosts”
“Human Flow”
“Last Men in Aleppo”
“Risk”
Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography
“Brimstone and Glory”
“The Challenge”
“Chasing Coral”
“Human Flow”
“Machines”
Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Score “Brimstone and Glory”
“The Challenge”
“Dawson City: Frozen Time”
“Jane”
“Rat Film”
“Strong Island”
Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design or Animation “78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene”
“Chasing Coral”
“Citizen Jane: Battle for the City”
“Let There Be Light”
“Long Strange Trip”
Audience Choice Prize
“Abacus: Small Enough to Jail”
“City of Ghosts”
“Chasing Coral”
“Faces Places”
“Jane”
“Kedi”
“Quest”
“Step”
“Whose Streets?”
“The Work”
Outstanding Achievement in a Debut Feature Film
“Brimstone and Glory”
“Communion”
“Machines”
“Rat Film”
“Strong Island”
Outstanding Achievement in Broadcast Nonfiction Filmmaking “13th”
“Abortion: Stories Women Tell”
“Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds”
“Five Came Back”
“The Keepers”
“Solitary: Inside Red Onion State Prison”
Spotlight Award
“Donkeyote”
“An Insignificant Man”
“Lots of Kids, a Monkey and a Castle”
“Plastic China”
“Stranger in Paradise”
“Taste of Cement”
Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Short Filmmaking
“Edith+Eddie”
“Heroin(e)”
“Little Potato”
“Polonaise”
“The Rabbit Hunt”
“Ten Meter Tower”
The Unforgettables | Non-competitive Honor The year’s most notable and significant nonfiction film subjects
Chanterelle Sung, Hwei Lin Sung, Jill Sung, Thomas Sung & Vera Sung, “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail”
Bobbi Jene Smith, “Bobbi Jene”
Abdalaziz Alhamza, Hamoud Almousa and Mohamad Almusari, “City of Ghosts”
Ola Kaczanowska, “Communion”
Dolores Huerta, “Dolores”
Dina Buno and Scott Levin, “Dina”
Agnès Varda, “Faces Places”
Daje Shelton, “For Ahkeem”
Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, “Icarus”
Dr. Jane Goodall, “Jane”
Jim Carrey, “Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond”
Christine’a Rainey, Christopher “Quest” Rainey, PJ Rainey and William Withers, “Quest”
Yance Ford, “Strong Island”
Jennifer Brea, “Unrest”
Brian, Charles, Chris, Dark Cloud, Kiki and Vegas, “The Work”
Every Errol Morris Documentary Ranked, From 'Gates of Heaven' to 'My Psychedelic Love Story' (Photos)
The master of absurd and idiosyncratic documentaries, Errol Morris said of his first film that, “to love the absurdity of people is not to ridicule them but to embrace on some level how desperate life is for each and every one of us.” All 13 of his feature documentaries ranked here, including his latest "My Psychedelic Love Story" that premiered at AFI Fest and is on Showtime on November 29, are challenging and hilarious films that have shaped fiction and non-fiction movies alike.
Getty Images
13. “The Unknown Known” (2013)
With “The Unknown Known,” Morris goes down the same rabbit hole as in “The Fog of War,” but he has to contend with Donald Rumsfeld’s elliptical, oxymoronic reasoning as he tries to justify going into Afghanistan to hunt for WMDs that were never there.
RADiUS-TWC
12. “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control” (1997)
What do a lion tamer, a hedge trimmer, a robotics engineer and a mole rat researcher have in common? Good question. “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control” is Morris’s strangest mishmash of a surreal, visual essay. Yet he finds a way to make it coherent and profound.
Sony Pictures Classics
11. “The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman Portrait Photography” (2017)
Morris’s latest film is a pleasant portrait of a photographer known for taking giant, life size Polaroids. It contains heavy themes around mortality and impermanence. As a personal friend, Morris doesn’t shoot this film with his signature “Interrotron” technique. He finds he can relate to Elsa Dorfman’s philosophies on truth in art.
Neon
10. “Vernon, Florida” (1981)
Similar in vein to “Gates of Heaven” but less bizarre, Morris sets up shop in a rural town in the South and finds the most peculiar local color. Whether it’s turkey hunters or a man who raises wild livestock, you have to wonder if Morris is asking sincere questions or just gawking.
New Yorker Films
9. “My Psychedelic Love Story” (2020)
Morris’ one-on-one with Joanna Harcourt-Smith, the muse of “high priest of LSD” Timothy Leary, is as trippy, colorful and erratic as any film Morris has made. “My Psychedelic Love Story” feels most closely like “Tabloid” and is just as lurid, outrageous and with just as unreliable a narrator, though it arguably doesn’t have that film’s humor and is more impenetrable for audiences not already immersed with the characters of the ’70s counter culture. But Harcourt-Smith’s story is no doubt engrossing, and Morris is as seduced by her as Leary was.
Showtime Documentary Films
8. “American Dharma” (2018)
Maybe you’re thinking why anyone would want to watch a movie about Steve Bannon right now. But someday when we’re not so exhausted thinking about the 2016 election, we’ll look back at “American Dharma” as easily the most compelling, thought provoking and imposingly photographed time capsule of the Trump presidency. Morris’ interview with Bannon is more a conversation, and what sets it apart from “The Fog of War” is Morris’ open contempt and fear for Bannon’s influence and legacy, even as they spar on Bannon’s peculiar interpretations of classic films like “Twelve O’Clock High” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”
Utopia
7. “A Brief History of Time”(1991)
Only Errol Morris would illustrate the complexity of Stephen Hawking’s theories on the universe by showing a chicken materializing in space. But Morris doesn’t dumb down Hawking’s math and science. Rather, he expresses astonishment, using the opportunity to dive into Hawking’s unique personal history.
Triton Pictures
6. “Standard Operating Procedure” (2008)
Morris exposes the horrors of abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib. He’s fascinated by the surreal psychology of the prison guards and soldiers who caused everyone to keep their mouths shut for so long.
Sony Pictures Classics
5. “Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.” (1999)
Before Steve Bannon, Fred Leuchter had to be Morris’s most controversial interview subject. He became notorious as an expert on perfecting execution machines. But just as we start to admire and respect the guy's principles and attention to detail, he’s called in to testify on behalf of a Holocaust denier, casting everything about his expertise into doubt.
Lions Gate Films
4. “Tabloid” (2010)
Possibly Morris’s most sensationalized film and easily his most fun, “Tabloid” tells the story of the bubbly Joyce McKinney and the “Manacled Mormon” who in the 1970s became the stuff of gossip rag lore. Differing accounts don’t even begin to add up, but listening to them is sheer joy.
Sundance Selects
3. “Gates of Heaven” (1978)
Is Errol Morris making fun of these people who run two Northern California pet cemeteries? Almost certainly. How could you not laugh at the hilariously morbid anecdote of a cat caught in the dryer or the old woman with silver hair cackling at her little dog? “Gates of Heaven” took “cinéma vérité” norms and chucked them out the window, finding absurd reality in the oddest of places.
New Yorker Films
2. “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara” (2003)
Morris won his Oscar for “The Fog of War,” which probed the policy choices and picked the brain of the Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara during the Vietnam War. What makes it unique is it takes great pains to see the world through McNamara's eyes, even reflecting on a fascinating analogy about how a carton of eggs led to the proliferation of seat belts.
Sony Pictures Classics
1. “The Thin Blue Line”(1988)
“The Thin Blue Line” is the magnum opus of all true crime films and stories, be it “Making a Murderer” or “Serial.” Morris set the table for the genre and redefined how we approach truth in storytelling, challenging an unwritten rule about filming re-imagined scenes in a documentary. It’s not just a captivating portrait of the justice system, but it also helped exonerate an innocent man.
Oscar winner’s newest film debuted at AFI Fest and will drop on Showtime in November
The master of absurd and idiosyncratic documentaries, Errol Morris said of his first film that, “to love the absurdity of people is not to ridicule them but to embrace on some level how desperate life is for each and every one of us.” All 13 of his feature documentaries ranked here, including his latest "My Psychedelic Love Story" that premiered at AFI Fest and is on Showtime on November 29, are challenging and hilarious films that have shaped fiction and non-fiction movies alike.