DOC NYC, New York’s first all-documentary festival whose inaugural edition ran from November 3 to 9, announced its award winners on Sunday evening, November 7th, following the Festival's gala screening of TABLOID, the newest film by Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Prizes were awarded by juries in both the “Viewfinders” and “Metropolis” sections, with festival audiences also selecting an official DOC NYC Audience Award.  

The Grand Jury Prize in the Viewfinders section was won by WINDFALL directed by Laura Israel. The film explores the darker side of “green” energy through the tale of one upstate New York town. In giving the award, the jury cited the film’s “superior use of storytelling, cinematography, sound and music towards illuminating critical environmental issues, small-town drama and the lesson that it’s not going to be so easy being green.” WINDFALL had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The jury for the Viewfinders competition was comprised of John Anderson (film critic for Variety, the Washington Post, and Newsday), Christopher Campbell (head writer for indieWIRE’s Spout blog and longtime contributor to Cinematical), and Adella Aladjevardi (Grants Manager at NY-based nonprofit film production company Cinereach).

In the “Metropolis” section, focusing on films that told New York stories, the winner of the Grand Jury Prize was TO BE HEARD by directors Roland Legiardi-Laura, Edwin Martinez, Deborah Shaffer and Amy Sultan. The film follows the lives of three Bronx teenagers whose involvement with a radical poetry workshop transforms their lives. The film also won the DOC NYC Audience Award. In a statement from the jury they expressed that the film "stood out for both its dramatic scope and its intimacy in showing us the transformative power of art to reshape lives.”

Additionally, the jury awarded a Special Jury Prize to Josef “Birdman” Astor’s LOST BOHEMIA, the story of the last days of the artists’ residential studios above Carnegie Hall and the unique characters who made their homes there. The Metropolis jury was comprised of Nelson George (author of City Kid, producer of Good Hair, and director of A Walk Through Fort Greene), Tom Hall (Artistic Director of the Sarasota Film Festival, Programming Director at newportFILM and writer for the blog The Back Row Manifesto), and Mary Kaye Schilling (culture editor for New York Magazine).

DOC NYC was conceived by and was hosted by the IFC Center, itself one of the country's most important presenters of documentaries, both for theatrical premieres and through the weekly "Stranger Than Fiction" series. To review the highlights of the Festival, a welcome addition to the New York film calendar, visit: www.docnyc.net

Sandy Mandelberger, Film New York Editor