Waltz With Bashir Dances Away With Four Cinema Eye Honors

The 2nd annual Cinema Eye Honors were held in New York on March 29th. Through sponsorship with IndiePix, Cinema Eye Honors exists as the industry’s only awards ceremony for nonfiction films, recognizing the crafts of cinematography, editing, producing and directing.

This year’s big winner was Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir, an animated documentary depicting the horrors of the 1982 Lebanon War, that won four out of the 10 awards given out, including Outstanding Direction. The Outstanding Achievement in Non-Fiction Filmaking was given to Man on Wire, which received a total of three honors for its depiction of Philippe Petit, who in 1974 danced on a wire suspended 1,350 feet above ground between the Twin Towers.

Of the 110 eligible films released in 2008, 26 were nominated for the awards by a panel of documentary programmers from 15 different film festivals in North America and across Europe. More than 200 documentary professionals, including moviemakers, distributors and journalists, were invited to cast their votes on the final winners.

The only award chosen by the film-going public, the Audience Choice Award, was given to Yung Chang’s Up the Yangtze, a look at contemporary China.

Bob Alexander, president of IndiePix and founding sponsor of the Cinema Eye Honors says, “The exposure that independent productions are now receiving has really cemented their success and the extraordinary support that filmmakers are offered from the film-watching public has made it a very strong industry.”

For more information, visit http://www.cinemaeyehonors.com.