Brett Morgen’s Jane Goodall documentary “Jane” was named the best nonfiction film of 2017 at the second annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, which were held on Thursday evening at BRIC in Brooklyn, New York.
Ten different films were given awards by the Broadcast Film Critics Association and Broadcast Television Journalists Association, with no film receiving more than one honor.
The Best Director category was a tie between Evgeny Afineevsky for “Cries From Syria” and Frederick Wiseman for “Ex Libris: The New York Public Library.”
Ceyda Torun’s film about cats in Istanbul, “Kedi,” was named Best First Documentary, while the Most Innovative Documentary category resulted in another tie, this one between “Dawson City: Frozen in Time” and “Last Men in Aleppo.”
The awards for the best political, sports and music documentaries went to “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,” “Icarus” and “Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives,” respectively.
The song “Jump” from the documentary “Step” won the award for the best song from a nonfiction film.
Because of the blurred lines between film and television documentaries, Critics’ Choice organizers made a last-minute decision to combine the nominees from both media in most categories. Two categories for television series remained, with Ken Burns’ “The Vietnam War” winning for Best Documentary Series and the long-running “American Masters” winning for Best Ongoing Documentary Series.
Penn Gillette hosted the ceremony, which also presented honorary awards to Joe Berlinger and Errol Morris.
The Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards winners:
Best Documentary: “Jane” Best Director (TIE): Evgeny Afineevsky, “Cries from Syria” and Frederick Wiseman,
“Ex Libris: The New York Public Library” Best First Documentary: “Kedi” Best Political Documentary: “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail” Best Sports Documentary: “Icarus” Best Music Documentary: “Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives” Best Song in a Documentary:”Jump” from “Step,” written by Raphael Saadiq, Taura Stinson and Laura Karpman, performed by Cynthia Erivo Best Documentary Series: “The Vietnam War” Best Ongoing Documentary Series: “American Masters” Most Innovative Documentary (TIE): “Dawson City: Frozen Time” and “Last Men in Aleppo” Critics’ Choice Lifetime Achievement Award: Errol Morris Critics’ Choice Impact Award: Joe Berlinger
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.
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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.
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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.
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