16th Annual Cinema Eye Honors nominations
Thursday, November 10, 2022 at 5:18PM
NATHANIEL R in A House Made of Splinters, A Night of Knowing Nothing, Best Documentary Feature, Cinema Eye, Fire of Love, The Territory, documentaries

by Nathaniel R

"The Territory" led the Cinema Eye Honors nominations

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article now contains ★ to represent the winners, announced on January 12th. The rest of the text is from the original article.

The Oscar race for Best Documentary Feature didn't use to have so many 'precursors' to consider but interest in and awards for documentaries have grown considerably in the 21st century. The Cinema Eye Honors, which began in 2007, were the first awards organization to recognize documentaries above and beyond "Best Documentary" by honoring them for several craft achievements too in multiple categories. They've just announced their nominees for their 16th annual NonFiction Film Awards. The nomination leaders are the box office hit Fire of Love and critical darling The Territory...

Unfortunately, as with the abundant prizes for narrative features the ever-expanding amount of awards bodies for documentaries have not expanded opinions about "best". As with narrative awards, we see mostly the same movies recognized across every organization. The six nominees for Cinema Eye Honors top category include five films that also snagged honors with Critics Choice Association, IDA Finalist list and the DOC NYC Shortlist. Their only deviation is a top nomination for the  documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing  which is an experimental Indian doc about a university student's love letters to her boyfriend. It premiered at Cannes in 2021 and won the L'Œil d'or prize. Interestingly in the top category, it's up against All That Breathes which won that same exact prize at Cannes this past summer. 

So the interest is mostly in seeing which patterns emerge from organization to organization. And/or what's missing. For example Cinema Eye ignored Goodnight Oppy, The Janes, Aftershock which all scored with CCA. Full list of nominees and and a few more comments below.

Outstanding Nonfiction Feature

"A Night of Knowing Nothing"

 

All of these are already on our top ten of what's in the mix for Oscar's nominations... with the exception of A Night of Knowing Nothing since we're not sure yet on eligibility. 

 

Outstanding Direction

 

Majority female lineup in Best Director. (Documentaries have long been a more welcoming avenue for female directors.) Interestingly both here and at the Critics Choice Nominations, Descendant did not make the feature list but did make the directing list. 

 

 

 

Outstanding Editing

 

Point of interest: Riotsville USA and Three Minutes only scored editing nominations with this organization. This is also the only category where we've reviewed every single nominee at The Film Experience. 

 

 

 

 

Outstanding Production
This vaguely titled award is for achievement of the producers themselves. 

"A House Made of Splinters"

 

Point of Interest: A House Made of Splinters, about a home for kids awaiting custody decisions in Ukraine, is also up for the European Film Awards but it's otherwise been absent in recent awards announcements. That said it did start it's awards journey in a big way with a Directing win for World Cinema Documentary at Sundance in January. 

 

 

 

Outstanding Cinematography

 

 

 

 

Outstanding Original Score

 

Point of interest: Here's a big difference of opinion. This category shares only one nominee (Fire of Love) with the parallel category at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards even though all of these films (save Users) were also popular with that group. 

 

 

 

Outstanding Sound Design

 

 

 

 

Outstanding Visual Design
This involves things like animation, motion graphics, title design and more...

 

 

 

 

Outstanding Debut

 

 

 

 

Outstanding Nonfiction Short

 

 

 

 

Audience Choice Prize

 

 

 

 

Spotlight
This prize is kind of their "watch out for" notes of (mostly) upcoming titles they like. In other words they haven't been widely seen/discussed yet in most cases. 

 

 

 

Heterodox
This category is for films that show the porous boundaries between documentary filmmaking and narrative storytellers

 

 

 

 

Have any of you seen The Rehearsal on HBOMax. It's such a mindf*** 

The Unforgettables (Non-Competitive Honor)
This category honors the relationship between subjects of documentaries and the doc itself... which seems redundant but your mileage may vary.

 

 

 

PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED NOMINEES

 

Broadcast Film Nominees

 

 

 

 

Nonfiction Series Nominees

 

 

 

 

Anthology Series Nominees

 

 

 

 

Broadcast Editing Nominees

 

 

 

 

Broadcast Cinematography Nominees

 

 

 

 

Legacy Award


 

 

 

 

Shorts List Films

 

 

 

 

Audience Choice Long List Films

 

 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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