Five films are nominated for the 2013 Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking Heterodox Award.  The Cinema Eye Heterodox Award honors a narrative film that imaginatively incorporates nonfiction strategies, content and/or modes of production.  The nominees are: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s Ceasar Must Die (Cesare deve morire), Craig Zobel’s Compliance, Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours, Pablo Larraín’s No, and Terence Nance’s An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. Previous winners of the award were Matt Porterfield’s Putty Hill (2011) and Mike Mills’ Beginners(2012).

The 2013 Heterodox Award will be presented at the 6th Annual Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking on January 9 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York.

The Five Nominees for the 2013 Cinema Eye Heterodox Award:

Ceasar Must Die (Cesare deve morire)
Directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

In Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s bracing and politically astute blend of documentary and fiction, real-life Italian inmates of a high-security prison audition for, rehearse and stage a version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Through its fascinating recontextualization of Shakespeare’s classic, Caesar Must Die explores criminal identity while reflecting the larger tensions of Italian society itself.

Compliance
Directed by Craig Zobel

Drawing its dialogue from phone records and real-life court transcripts, writer/director Craig Zobel’s Compliance turns the true story of a prank phone caller and sexual predator into a disturbing meditation on the politics of authority.

Museum Hours
Directed by Jem Cohen

In Jem Cohen’s lovely meditation on culture, friendship, and the dialogue carried across centuries through art, a lonely woman and quiet museum guard strike a quiet bond while while surveying the paintings of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. Cohen’s camera captures the subtlety of their interaction while also evoking the majesty of this museum and its collection.

No
Directed by Pablo Larrain

Detailing the 1988 ouster of Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte via constitutional referendum, Pablo Larrain’s No uses footage from the referendum’s actual advertising campaign along with an artfully lo-fi U-matic camera aesthetic to recall the politics as well as the media of its era.

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
Directed by Terence Nance

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty engagingly obsesses over the filmmaker’s “friend-zone’d” relationship with a charismatic young woman, played in the film by the real-life object of his affection. “One-sided non-fiction” is how Nance describes his picture, which mixes multiple formats as well as animation to present an exhilarating portrait of love, longing and artmaking in the digital age.

In addition, this year’s nominees for the 2013 Cinema Eye Audience Choice Prize are: 5 Broken Cameras(Directed by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi), Beauty is Embarrassing(Directed by Neil Berkeley), Bully(Directed by Lee Hirsch), How to Survive a Plague(Directed by David France), The Imposter(Directed by Bart Layton), Jiro Dreams of Sushi(Directed by David Gelb), Kumaré(Directed by Vikram Gandhi), Marina Abramović The Artist is Present(Directed by Matthew Akers), Searching for Sugar Man(Directed by Malik Bendjelloul) and Trash Dance(Directed by Andrew Garrison). Last year, more than 10,000 people voted for the award, which went to Cindy Meehl’s Buck.