SPIRIT AWARDS VERSUS THE OSCARS

" The Oscar.

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First published Feb 26, 2005

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The 77th Annual Academy awards will take place Sunday February 27th at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. Sometimes called the "yin" to the Oscars "yang", the 20th Annual Independent Spirit Awards will take place in a tent in Santa Monica this Saturday February 26th.

Apart from the fact that the two award ceremonies happen on the same weekend, on the surface they would appear to have little in common. But actually there are certain strong similarities as well as certain surprising differences that make it worthwhile to take a closer look, to see if, as it appears on the surface, we have a case of David versus Goliath, or are we really talking about apples and oranges?

When comparing the nominees for both award ceremonies the first thing that jumps out is that at least one film has nominations on both sides. Last year it was Monster, with multiple nominations (and wins) in both competitions, and this year it is Sideways, nominated for Best Feature, Best Director, Best Screenplay and various acting awards with potential to win on both Saturday and Sunday.

This detail leads one to the realization that the award categories in each competition are not tremendously different. The Independent Feature Awards does not have a category for visual effects, animation, costume or art design – which is somewhat understandable, as these are all aspects of filmmaking which are rather heavily dependent on funds to make a good showing. More surprising is the lack of recognition for editors, who do so much with so little on many independent films. Nor do they recognize achievement in any of the sound categories, such as sound editing or mixing. It seems that real creativity in sound design, and the composers who do such excellent work on so many independent films, should be noticed. For example, Jem Cohen, who is one of the nominees for this year´s Turning Leaf Someone to Watch Awards (which singles out up and coming directors) could have just as easily been nominated for the creative soundscapes in almost every one of his films of the last decade – I am thinking particularly of Lost Book Found (1996) and Blood Orange Sky (1999).

Several categories the Spirit Awards do have that the Oscars do not are: the John Cassavetes Award (awarded to the Best Feature under $500,000), Best First Feature, and Best Debut Performance Award, for actors in their first significant role in a feature film.

The under $500,000 is perhaps the single most interesting category, as it holds out the promise that a truly creative vision can really make itself felt in spite of the handicaps of a low budget and often numerous other obstacles. The nominees this year include Down to the Bone, Mean Creek (which also got a Special Distinction Awards for the ensemble cast), On the Outs, Robbing Peter, and Unknown Soldier.

Best First Feature nominees include Brother to Brother, Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite, Saints and Soldiers and The Woodsman. Saints and Soldiers, a film without distribution, which is also nominated for a Best cinematography award, is of special interest because it is a period film set in Belgium during WWII. The director and cinematographer, Ryan Little, a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints (the film is about the role of faith in the lives of various soldiers´, most of whom come from different religious backgrounds), raised his film´s production value by inviting WWII re-enactors to perform as extras in the film.

Saints and Soldiers is one of the more unique films nominated for the Independent Spirit Awards. Baadasssss!, the celebration of Melvin Van Peebles accomplishment in making Sweet Sweetback´s Badasssss Song, and Brother to Brother, about the gay scene in New York´s Harlem Renaissance also stand out.

Filmmakers of color are better represented in the Independent Spirit Awards than they are at the Oscars (in addition to the three films just mentioned there is Redemption starring Jaime Foxx, Robbing Peter, and On the Outs as well as Woman Thou Art Loosed), but women filmmakers are as ill-represented here as they are in the Oscars. No women are nominated in the Best Director Category, and Best Screenplay only has Julie Delpy sharing a credit with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke for Before Sunset. There is one woman cinematographer (Maryse Alberti for We Don´t Live Here Anymore) and one female documentary filmmaker (Shola Lynch for Chisholm ´72 – Unbought and Unbossed). The special awards have more women nominees than the regular categories, including Jennifer Reeves, director of The Time We Killed is nominated for a Turning Leaf Award, almost all the documentary filmmakers nominated for the Direct TV/IFC Truer Than Fiction Awards are women (the films nominated are Born Into Brothers, Chisholm, Control Room, and Farmingville), and the Bravo/American Express Producers award, which includes nominees Gina Kwon (The Good Girl) and Danielle Renfrew (November).

These special awards are nice because the winners get $20,000 in cash in addition to their trophies, but I would feel better if more women were in the regular categories – the percentages of women in the nominations has not changed much since 1984, a characteristic the Independent Spirit Awards share with the Oscars. Their absence is more glaring in the Spirit Awards because of the tight bonds between independent filmmaking and television production, recognized here by the fact that the cash awards, as well as the coverage of the awards ceremony itself, comes from cable channels, and television is where most independent filmmakers of all stripes, but especially women, will find work today.

The Independent Spirit Awards, originally called "FINDIES" for "Friends of Independents", are now broadcast to audiences in over 70 million homes via Bravo Cable Network and 33 million homes via the Independent Film Channel (compare that to a billion viewers for the Oscars). The IFC heavily promotes the awards in the weeks leading up to it, and this year, in addition to a program of screenings in New York and Los Angeles, in a novel arrangement Netflix has mailed out nominated films on DVD to IFP members to facilitate voting. This last effort was really helpful as twelve of the films nominated have yet to land a distributor. (In order to qualify for the Spirit Awards, independent films must have shown in at least one commercial theatre or have been officially selected for one of seven film festivals, including the Los Angeles Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, The New York Film Festival, Seattle, Sundance, Telluride or Toronto).

The twenty year old Spirit Awards are always handed out the day before the 77 year old Academy Awards, and the two ceremonies take place just a few miles apart. These juxtapositions are meant to underline the difference between the independent vision and the Hollywood Studio vision. But with the Academy´s recent emphasis on smaller, dramatic films, such as Finding Neverland, Vera Drake and Closer, it is harder and harder to see where the difference in vision lies – except that the Academy Awards are still very white, and still very male, and the money for the Spirit Awards, as well as most of the films themselves, comes from television and cable.

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