The Producers Guild of America (PGA) announced the Documentary Motion Picture nominees for the 25th Annual Producers Guild Awards. The nominated films, are: A PLACE AT THE TABLE, FAR OUT ISN’T FAR ENOUGH: THE TOMI UNGERER STORY, LIFE ACCORDING TO SAM, WE STEAL SECRETS: THE STORY OF WIKILEAKS, and WHICH WAY IS THE FRONT LINE FROM HERE? THE LIFE AND TIME OF TIM HETHERINGTON. The 2014 Producers Guild Award winners will be announced on January 19, 2014 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. 

A PLACE AT THE TABLE
Director: Kristi Jacobson, Lori Silverbush

Around 49 million Americans struggle with the problem of not knowing where their next meal is going to come from. The stories of three people from Colorado, Pennsylvania and Mississippi shed light on the underlying causes of this huge problem. Rosie is so hungry that she can’t concentrate on schoolwork. Young Tremonica is severely overweight and suffering from asthma because of the cheap high-calorie food she gets at home – but it’s the only food her mother can afford. And Barbie, a single mother of two, struggles to get nourishing food for her young ones. Fresh products are very expensive – especially if you’re trying to survive on minimum wage or food stamps – but in some areas of the United States, they’re not even available if you have the money to pay for them. Take Barbie, for example: she has to travel a full hour to buy fruits and vegetables. Politicians have been condemning hunger since the 1970s, but the figures have kept rising all the while. As we watch the detrimental impact of malnutrition on the physical and mental development of Rosie, Tremonica and Barbie’s children, the film highlights various social, economic and cultural causes. They range from the subsidy system for food production (84 percent goes to soya beans, corn, cotton, cereals and rice, while only one percent goes to fruits and vegetables) to the emphasis on individual responsibility and private assistance.  [via IDFA]

FAR OUT ISN’T FAR ENOUGH: THE TOMI UNGERER STORY
Director/producer/writer: Brad Bernstein 

Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story depicts one man’s wild, lifelong adventure of testing societal boundaries through his use of subversive art. This 98-minute film combines traditional documentary storytelling with original animation from over 70 years worth of art from the renegade children’s book author and illustrator. Using a historical palette of 20th century events to paint an artist’s epic yet controversial life story, this HD documentary film offers a feature-length retrospective of Ungerer’s life and art, pondering the complexities and contradictions of a man who, armed with an acerbic wit, an accusing finger and a razor sharp pencil, gave visual representation to the revolutionary voices during one of the most tantalizing and dramatic periods in American history. [via Official Film Site]

LIFE ACCORDING TO SAM
Directors: Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine

What is aging in Sam Berns, is aging in all of us. But in Sam’s body, the process is rapidly accelerated. When Sam was diagnosed with progeria at age two, his parents, Dr. Leslie Gordon and Dr. Scott Berns refused to accept that they would lose their son by age 13, the average age of death of a child with this disease. Eleven years later, Sam is 13 and his parents’ incredible race to save their son, has led to testing the first experimental drug that might prolong the lives of Sam and 28 other children from around the world that share this disease. Their discoveries may one day shed light on unlocking the aging process in us all. Life According to Sam is an inspiring film about the power of family and how we make the most of our lives in the time we are given. [via Official Film Site]

WE STEAL SECRETS: THE STORY OF WIKILEAKS
Director: Alex Gibney

Julian Assange. Bradley Manning. Collateral murder. Cablegate. WikiLeaks. These people and terms have exploded into public consciousness by fundamentally changing the way democratic societies deal with privacy, secrecy, and the right to information, perhaps for generations to come. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is an extensive examination of all things related to WikiLeaks and the larger global debate over access to information.

Having exposed institutions like Enron, the U.S. Army, and Congress, Academy Award winner Alex Gibney now tells the gripping story of what happens when an incredibly small group of people decide to break open the intelligence vaults of the most powerful nation on the planet. Eschewing the simplicity of heroes and villains, Gibney unearths a tangled web of incredible bravery, high ideals, questionable ethics, and stunning hypocrisy. Through it all, We Steal Secrets proves the power of individuals to shape our world. [ via S.S./Sundance Film Festival]

WHICH WAY IS THE FRONT LINE FROM HERE? THE LIFE AND TIME OF TIM HETHERINGTON 
Director: Sebastian Junger 

Photojournalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington was always searching for the humanity within wartime conflict, as evidenced in his award-winning body of work. When he and Sebastian Junger spent a year filming a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in their Academy Award–nominated and Sundance Grand Jury Prizewinning film Restrepo, they weren’t simply looking for action; instead, they chose to focus on the many small moments that make war real. Hetherington’s footage of time he spent with the rebel army during Liberia’s civil war and in Libya prior to his untimely death from a mortar blast in 2011 conveys a rare sense of intimacy in sharp contrast to the violence surrounding him. Although he spent most of his time traveling to the epicenter of war zones, he was seeking the truth, rather than adventure. That is Hetherington’s enduring gift.

Director Sebastian Junger gracefully weaves together footage of Hetherington at work and moving interviews with his family, friends, and colleagues to capture his compatriot and friend’s unique perspective, compassion, and intense curiosity about the human spirit. [ via L.V./Sundance Film Festival]

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 12 YEARS A SLAVE

12 YEARS A SLAVE lead the nominations for the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Awards with 7 nods including Best Feature; other nominees for Best Feature include ALL IS LOST, FRANCES HA, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS and NEBRASKA.  MUD was selected to receive the annual Robert Altman Award, which is bestowed upon one film’s director, casting director and ensemble cast.  Winners will be announced at the Spirit Awards on Saturday, March 1, 2014.

2014 FILM INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARD NOMINATIONS

Best Feature
12 Years a Slave, All Is Lost, Frances Ha, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska

Best Director
Shane Carruth, Upstream Color; J.C. Chandor; All Is Lost; Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave; Jeff Nichols, Mud; Alexander Payne, Nebraska

Best Screenplay
Woody Allen, Blue Jasmine; Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke & Richard Linklater Before Midnight;Nicole Holofcener Enough Said; Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, The Spectacular Now;John Ridley, 12 Years a Slave

Best First Feature
Blue Caprice, Director/Producer: Alexandre Moors; Producers: Kim Jackson, Brian O’Carroll, Isen Robbins, Will Rowbotham, Ron Simons, Aimee Schoof, Stephen Tedeschi; Concussion,Director: Stacie Passon, Producer: Rose Troche; Fruitvale Station, Director: Ryan Coogler; Producers: Nina Yang Bongiovi, Forest Whitaker; Una Noche, Director/Producer: Lucy Mulloy, Producers: Sandy Pérez Aguila, Maite Artieda, Daniel Mulloy, Yunior Santiago; Wadjda,Director: Haifaa Al Mansour, Producers: Gerhard Meixner, Roman Paul

Best First Screenplay
Lake Bell, In A World; Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Don Jon; Bob Nelson, Nebraska; Jill Soloway,Afternoon Delight; Michael Starrbury, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete

John Cassavetes Award (best feature made for under $500,000)
Computer Chess, Writer/Director: Andrew Bujalski, Producers: Houston King & Alex Lipschultz;Crystal Fairy, Writer/Director: Sebastiàn Silva, Producers: Juan de Dios Larraín & Pablo Larraín; Museum Hours, Writer/Director: Jem Cohen, Producers: Paolo Calamita & Gabriele Kranzelbinder; Pit Stop, Writer/Director: Yen Tan, Writer: David Lowery, Producers: Jonathan Duffy, James M. Johnston, Eric Steele, Kelly Williams; This is Martin Bonner, Writer/Director: Chad Hartigan, Producer: Cherie Saulter

Best Female Lead
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine; Julie Delpy, Before Midnight; Gaby Hoffmann, Crystal Fairy;Brie Larson, Short Term 12; Shailene Woodley, The Spectacular Now

Best Male Lead
Bruce Dern, Nebraska; Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave; Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis;Michael B. Jordan, Fruitvale Station; Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club; Robert Redford, All Is Lost

Best Supporting Female
Melonie Diaz, Fruitvale Station; Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine; Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave; Yolonda Ross, Go For Sisters; June Squibb, Nebraska 

Best Supporting Male
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave; Will Forte, Nebraska; James Gandolfini, Enough Said;Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club; Keith Stanfield, Short Term 12

Best Cinematography
Sean Bobbitt, 12 Years a Slave; Benoit Debie, Spring Breakers; Bruno Delbonnel, Inside Llewyn Davis; Frank G. DeMarco, All Is Lost; Matthias Grunsky, Computer Chess

Best Editing
Shane Carruth & David Lowery, Upstream Color; Jem Cohen & Marc Vives, Museum Hours;Jennifer Lame, Frances Ha; Cindy Lee, Una Noche; Nat Sanders, Short Term 12

Best Documentary
20 Feet From Stardom, Director/Producer: Morgan Neville, Producers: Gil Friesen & Caitrin Rogers; After Tiller, Directors/Producers: Martha Shane & Lana Wilson; Gideon’s Army,Director/Producer: Dawn Porter, Producer: Julie Goldman; The Act of Killing,Director/Producer: Joshua Oppenheimer, Producers: Joram Ten Brink, Christine Cynn, Anne Köhncke, Signe Byrge Sørensen, Michael Uwemedimo, The Square, Director: Jehane Noujaim, Producer: Karim Amer

Best International Film
A Touch of Sin, (China), Director: Jia Zhang-Ke; Blue is the Warmest Color, (France), Director: Abdellatif Kechiche; Gloria, (Chile), Director: Sebastián Lelio; The Great Beauty,(Italy), Director: Paolo Sorrentino; The Hunt, (Denmark), Director: Thomas Vinterberg

17th Annual Piaget Producers Award 
Toby Halbrooks & James M. Johnston, Jacob Jaffke, Andrea Roa, Frederick Thornton

20th Annual Someone To Watch Award 
My Sister’s Quinceañera, Director: Aaron Douglas Johnston; Newlyweeds, Director: Shaka King; The Foxy Merkins, Director: Madeline Olnek

19th Annual Stella Artois Truer Than Fiction Award 
Kalyanee Mam, A River Changes Course; Jason Osder, Let the Fire Burn; Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez, Manakamana

Robert Altman Award 
Mud, Director: Jeff Nichols, Casting Director: Francine Maisler, Ensemble Cast:  Joe Don Baker, Jacob Lofland, Matthew McConaughey, Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson, Michael Shannon, Sam Shepard, Tye Sheridan, Paul Sparks, Bonnie Sturdivant, Reese Witherspoon

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Five films – Andrew Bujalski’s COMPUTER CHESS, Randy Moore’s ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW, James Franco and Travis Matthews’ INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR., Kleber Mendonça Filho’s NEIGHBORING SOUNDS and Carlos Reygadas’ POST TENEBRAS LUX – have been nominated for the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking 2014 Heterodox Award. The Cinema Eye Heterodox Award honors a narrative film that imaginatively incorporates nonfiction strategies, content and/or modes of production. The 2014 Heterodox Award will be presented at the 7th Annual Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking on January 8, 2014,  at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York.

The Five Nominees for the 2013 Cinema Eye Heterodox Award:

COMPUTER CHESS
Directed by Andrew Bujalski

Masterfully evoking the nerdy world of artificial intelligence engineers at a weekend computer chess convention, Andrew Bujalski’s 1980-set feature feels like a low-fi emissary from a pre-networked age. Shot in black-and-white on vintage video cameras, Computer Chess’s near-anthropological recreation is enormously witty — a loopy commentary on social ritual mediated by technology.

ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW
Directed by Randy Moore

The copyrighted images of the Walt Disney Corporation are deliciously appropriated by Randy Moore for his comic fantasia, Escape from Tomorrow. Shot secretly using consumer DSLRs and a stealth crew at real Disney theme parks, the film is both a hilarious psychosexual comedy and, with its legal provocation, a demonstration of how our childhood memories are the stuff of intellectual property disputes.

INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR.
Directed by James Franco and Travis Matthews

Some 40 minutes of gay S&M footage was purportedly deleted from William Friedkin’s 1980 feature Cruising, and it is this lost material that inspires Travis Matthews and James Franco’s Interior. Leather Bar. What initially feels like a behind-the-scenes documentary about the recreation of these scenes turns into something very different as the film plumbs issues of sexual anxiety, the cinematic history of gay representation and the power of celebrity.

NEIGHBORING SOUNDS
Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho

The social strata of a Brazilian seaside high-rise are depicted with a hallucinatory tension in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds. When a wealthy apartment complex — the director’s own — is hit by a series of crimes, a private security firm creates its own unease in a film that cooly captures a society amidst economic and cultural transformation.

POST TENEBRAS LUX
Directed by Carlos Reygadas

Boundaries between documentary and fiction, myth and autobiography are elided in Post Tenebras Lux, a seductively mysterious feature from Carlos Reygadas. A rich family moving to a mountainside home in a poor Mexican village face a series of psychic disruptions in this visually ravishing, deeply experimental work.

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