“Man on Wire” and “Waltz With Bashir” Tie for Top IDA Documentary Award
Posted by editor@vimooz.com on December 8, 2008 under Awards, Documentary, Uncategorized | 
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“Man on Wire” and “Waltz With Bashir” (pictured) tied for the top Distinguished Feature award at the International Documentary Association Documentary Awards.
The complete 2008 winners list include:
Feature Documentary
Man on Wire – WINNER (tie)
Director: James Marsh
On August 7, 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center, then the world’s tallest buildings. After nearly an hour dancing on the wire, he was arrested, taken in for psychological evaluation, and brought to jail before he was finally released. Man on Wire brings Petit’s extraordinary adventure to life through the testimony of Philippe himself, and some of the co-conspirators who helped him create the unique and magnificent spectacle that became known as “the artistic crime of the century.”
Waltz with Bashir – WINNER (tie)
Director/Producer: Ari Folman
One night in a bar, an old friend tells director Ari Folman about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs. The two men conclude that there’s a connection to their Israeli Army mission in the first Lebanon War of the early 1980s. Ari is surprised that he can’t remember a thing anymore about that period of his life. Intrigued by this riddle, he decides to meet and interview old friends and comrades around the world. He needs to discover the truth about that time and about himself. As he delves deeper and deeper into the mystery, his memory begins to creep up in surreal images.
Short Documentary
La Corona – WINNER
Directors/Producers: Amanda Micheli, Isabel Vega
The contestants are murderers, guerillas and thieves. The runner-up will cry when she doesn’t get the tiara, wiping her tears with a tattooed hand. The winner will be crowned Queen, but she won’t be invited on a press tour as a role model for young girls. Instead, she will be escorted back to her cell. This is a beauty pageant like no other, and it happens every year in the Women’s Penitentiary in Bogotá, Colombia. La Corona is a character-driven documentary that follows four inmates competing for the crown in the annual beauty pageant of the Bogotá women’s prison.
Continuing Series Award
This American Life – Winner
Created By Ira Glass/Chicago Public Radio
Limited Series Award
Sin City Law – WINNER
Denis Poncet, Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, Remy Burkel
Sin City Law is an original eight-part documentary series that goes inside four recent criminal trials in Las Vegas, Nevada. The series opens a window onto a world that is only steps away from the famous strip, but rarely glimpsed from inside the casinos and mega-hotels populated by tourists: a world of drugs, gangs, depleted gamblers and wayward club owners, where what happens in Vegas stays deep inside the criminal justice system. The series travels with the public defenders’ and district attorney’s offices to track four separate criminal cases, each of which is covered in two one-hour episodes.
ABCNews VideoSource Award
War Child – WINNER
C. Karim Chrobog, Afshin Molava
War Child chronicles the tragic but ultimately hopeful life of Emmanuel Jal, a former child soldier of Sudan’s brutal civil war and emerging international rap star with a message of peace for his country. His story mirrors his homeland: tragedy and terror mingling with hope and restoration. Orphaned, firing a gun that he at age seven could barely hold aloft, trekking through deserts in search of shelter, Jal was adopted by an aid worker. His rise from orphan to soldier to refugee to rap star represents one of the 21st century’s most inspiring and hopeful journeys.
IDA/Alan Ett Music Documentary Award
Young @ Heart – WINNER
Stephen Walker, Sally George
In Northampton, Massachusetts, the Young @ Heart Chorus has six weeks of rehearsal before the opening of their new show, Alive and Well. They have a few numbers to learn, including Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia.” Also, the average age of the singers is 80. British filmmaker Stephen Walker catches up with these unique senior citizens, whose chorus has been defying expectations with its unforgettable rock song covers since 1982. Members literally live for the group, stimulated by the challenges of learning unfamiliar songs and fortified by camaraderie through sickness and health.
Pare Lorentz Award
Burning The Future: Coal In America – WINNER
David Novack, Alexis Zoullas
Filmmaker David Novack examines the explosive forces that have set in motion a groundswell of conflict between the coal industry and residents of West Virginia. Confronted by an emerging coal-based US energy policy, local activists watch the nation praise coal without regard to the devastation caused by its extraction. Faced with toxic ground water, the obliteration of 1.4 million acres of mountains, and a government that appeases the industry, our heroes demonstrate a strength of purpose and character in their improbable fight to arouse the nation’s help in protecting their mountains, saving their families and preserving their way of life.
Garbage Warrior – HONORABLE MENTION
Oliver Hodge, Rachel Wexler, Patrick Wilson
What do beer cans, car tires and water bottles have in common? Not much, unless you’re New Mexico-based renegade architect Michael Reynolds, in which case they are tools of choice for producing thermal mass and energy-independent housing. For 30 years, Reynolds and his green disciples have devoted their time to advancing the art of “Earthship Biotecture” by building self-sufficient, off-the-grid communities where design and function converge in eco-harmony. Shot over three years and in four countries, Garbage Warrior is a timely portrait of a determined visionary, a hero of the 21st century.
IDA/David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award
As We Forgive – WINNER
Laura Waters Hinson
American University
Could you forgive a person who murdered your family? This is the question faced by the subjects of As We Forgive, a documentary about two Rwandan women coming face-to-face with the men who slaughtered their families during the 1994 genocide. The subjects of As We Forgive speak for a nation still wracked by the grief of a genocide that killed one in eight Rwandans in 1994. Overwhelmed by an enormous backlog of court cases, the government has returned over 50,000 genocide perpetrators back to the very communities they helped to destroy. Without the hope of full justice, Rwanda has turned to a new solution: Reconciliation.
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