“This will give me trouble in the airport later,” Waltz With Bashir animator David Polonsky said while he accepted the film’s second award at the Cinema Eye Honors on Sunday night. Little did he know, soon the
illustrator would be given two additional awards on behalf of the film,
and modestly stating, “I just did the drawings,” as he accepted the
award for the film’s director, Ari Folman. Normally, transporting a bag filled with
awards wouldn’t really be an issue, but in the case of IndiePix’s documentary award
show, airport security could undoubtedly see the “cinema eyes” as pain-inflicting
weapons—they're large metal eyes with spiky lashes jutting atop.
Otherwise, awards were given to debut feature Up The Yangtze, Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World and the Oscar-winning doc Man on Wire. When Philippe Petit walked onstage as director James Marsh accepted the award for Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking (the equivalent of Best Pic at the Oscars), the fearless tightrope walker tripped as he approached the podium. Apparently, his balancing skills have abandoned him since the 70s, when he successfully traversed the Twin Towers.
Also in attendance were Super Size Me’s Morgan Spurlock (who, by the way, apparently hasn’t touched McDonald’s since his binge experiment), and documentary legends D.A. Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back) and Albert Maysles (Gimme Shelter). Quoting Hitchcock, Maysels proclaimed to a room of the brightest documentarians, “in feature films, the director is God; in documentary films, God is the director.” An hour later at the after party, the 82 year-old doc master (with drink in hand) shouted out above the speakers blasting Madonna and Radiohead remixes, “We need a sound guy!”
Clearly, in Maysles world, reality and filmmaking are more closely intertwined than everyone else may believe. But maybe that's why he's considered a legend: he directs the work of God.
