COASTAL CRITICS SWOON OVER ‘FIRST COW’, ‘NOMADLAND’, ‘SMALL AXE’

The Oscar race came into sharper focus over the last 48 hours with key critics groups on both U.S. coasts handing out their 2020 gongs.

Critics on the Eastern seaboard named Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow their Best Film at the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) Awards. Already a Jury Prize winner at Deauville and in the mix with Berlin, Boston and Ghent award bodies, the understated period drama has been a festival darling since it debuted at Telluride in 2019. 

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) instead favoured Steve McQueen’s Small Axe (pictured, right) for their best pic honour, while also awarding the director a runner-up Best Director notice. The Amazon Original production earned the Best Cinematography trophy for Shabier Kirchner, who also took home the NYFCC award in this category. An anthology work tracking the lives of young black men in the U.K. over three decades, producers have not made the film eligible for Oscar contention, instead favouring an Emmy ballot slot in 2021. 

Critics on both coasts shared a lot of love for Searchlight Pictures’, Nomadland. Director Chloé Zhao earned the Best Director nod from both organisations, to add to her wins to date from the Boston Critics, Indiewire Critics, TIFF and San Francisco Film Festival. The film also earned runner-up ribbons from LAFCA for Best Film and Best Cinematography.

There is a very real chance that this year’s Best Director Oscar race will be rich with women directors. In addition to Zhao and Reichardt, actress/filmmaker Regina King is heavily favoured to earn a nod for One Night in Miami while writer/director Emerald Fennell is likely to factor in AMPAS member’s thinking with Promising Young Woman (a NYFCC favourite; see below).  

Other bi-coastal honorees included Best Animated Film winner Wolfwalkers (pictured, right), a Euro co-productionfrom directors Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart that looks set to topple the one-two 2020 Pixar punch of Onwards and Soul; Best Documentary pic Time, Garrett Bradley’s account of one woman’s fight for the release of her husband from prison; and, Radha Blanks’ debut The Forty-Year-Old Version, which earned Best First Film in New York and the New Generation award in Los Angeles.

However, the great divide between the critics became apparent in their awards for Best Supporting Actress (Youn Yuh-jung for Minari in LA; Maria Bakalova for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm in NYC) and Best Foreign Film (Kantemir Balagov’s Russian drama in LA; Brazilian thriller Bacurau, directed by Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho, in NYC).

Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always played better in the East, where it won Best Screenplay for Hittman and Best Actress for Sidney Flannigan. Cali-crix instead favoured the incendiary drama Promising Young Woman, awarding Fennell and Carey Mulligan in those slots respectively. Similar circumstances prevailed in the male acting categories, with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom scoring Actor (the late Chadwick Boseman) and Supporting Actor (Glynn Turman) from LA voters, while NYFCC decision-makers gave Actor to Delroy Lindo and Supporting Actor to Boseman for director Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods.

The full list of winners are:        

LOS ANGELES FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION (LAFC)
BEST PICTURE: Small Axe (Runner-Up: Nomadland)
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:: Beanpole (Runner up: Martin Eden)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Shabier Kirchner, Small Axe (Runner-Up: Joshua James Richards, Nomadland)
BEST SCORE/MUSIC: “Soul,” Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Runner-Up: “Lovers Rock,” Mica Levi)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Glynn Turman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Runner-Up: Paul Raci, Sound of Metal)
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Donald Graham Burt, Mank (Runner-Up: Sergey Ivanov, Beanpole)
BEST EDITING: Yorgos Lamprinos, The Father (Runner-Up: Gabriel Rhodes, Time)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Youn Yuh-jung, Minari (Runner-Up: Amanda Seyfried, Mank)
BEST ANIMATION: Wolfwalkers (Runner-Up: Soul)
DOUGLAS EDWARDS EXPERIMENTAL FILM PRIZE: Her Socialist Smile (Dir: John Gianvito)
BEST SCREENPLAY: Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman (Runner-Up: Eliza Hittman, Never Rarely Sometimes Always)
BEST DOCUMENTARY: Time (Runner-Up: Collective)
BEST ACTOR: Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Runner-Up: Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal)
BEST ACTRESS: Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman (Runner-Up: Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom)
BEST DIRECTOR: Chloé Zhao, Nomadland (Runner-Up: Steve McQueen, Small Axe)
NEW GENERATION: Radha Blank, The 40-Year-Old Version
DOUGLAS EDWARDS EXPERIMENTAL FILM AWARD: John Gianvito’s Her Socialist Smile
CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Harry Belafonte
LEGACY AWARD: Norman Lloyd

NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE (NYFCC)
BEST FILM: First Cow
BEST DIRECTOR: Chloé Zhao, Nomadland
BEST SCREENPLAY: Eliza Hittman, Never Rarely Sometimes Always
BEST ACTRESS: Sidney Flanigan, Never Rarely Sometimes Always
BEST ACTOR: Delroy Lindo, Da 5 Bloods
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Chadwick Boseman, Da 5 Bloods
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Small Axe
BEST NON-FICTION FILM: Time
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: Bacurau
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Wolfwalkers
BEST FIRST FILM: The 40-Year-Old Version
SPECIAL AWARD: Kino Lorber, “for their creation of Kino Marquee, a virtual cinema distribution service that was designed to help support movie theaters, not destroy them.”
SPECIAL AWARD: Spike Lee, “for inspiring the New York community with his short film ‘New York New York’ and for advocating for a better society through cinema.”

THE BEAUTIFUL EYE OF ALLEN DAVIAU, R.I.P.

Cinematographer Allen Daviau, the five-time Oscar nominee whose collaborations with such directors as Steven Spielberg, Albert Brooks, Peter Weir and Barry Levinson would earn him the American Society of Cinematographers’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007, passed away in Hollywood on Wednesday, aged 77.

His final hours were spent at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, his home for the last eight years. It is understood his death is Coronavirus related, making him the fourth resident of the facility to succumb to the virus.

Born John Allen Daviau on June 14 1942, the Louisiana native became enamoured with the moving image in the early days of colour television. In a 2004 interview with Moviehole, Daviau said, “I was 12 years old. I said, ‘I have to find out how that works’. The more I learned about photography, the more fascinated I was with the cinematographer, the director of photography and what that job was.”

Daviau was mentored by fellow Loyola High School graduate and University of Southern California Cinema Department student Bob Epstein. “Epstein introduced me to filmmakers like De Sica, Fellini, Bergman, Bresson, Ozu, and Kurosawa,” Daviau recounted in an interview with MovieMaker magazine. At the age of 16, Daviau gained access to the set of One-Eyed Jacks, the directorial debut of Marlon Brando, and watched as cinematographer Charles Lang lit an enormous sound stage. “I thought to myself that this man has the very best job in the history of the world,” said Daviau. 

By the mid 1960s, with a 16mm Beaulieu camera by his side, Daviau became a sought-after cameraman in the music industry (he shot concert footage of The Animals and Jimi Hendrix) and the advertising sector. In 1968, the 25 year-old Daviau teamed with a young director named Steven Spielberg to shoot the now iconic short film, Amblin’. When Spielberg (pictured, above; with Daviau, right) was first contracted to Universal, he tried to bring his friend on board, and the studio sought to sign Daviau. 

But the deal was struck down by the International Photographers’ Guild, the hardline cinematographers’ union that oversaw the sector at the time. Daviau recalled, “Back then the union was nepotistic and, if you didn't have a close personal contact, you just did not get in. It literally took me, and a handful of other now-prominent DP's - Caleb Deschanel, Tak Fujimoto, Andy Davis and others - a decade to gain entrance into the International Photographer's Guild. And, we finally had to file suit to get in.”

While Spielberg conquered the world, Allen Daviau spent the best part of the next decade shooting documentaries (including the Oscar-nominated Say Goodbye, in 1971) and made-for-television movies. He lensed three features - Richard Erdman’s western comedy The Brothers O’Toole (1973), Bob Hammer’s martial arts documentary New Gladiators (1973) and the Bruce Dern western, Harry Tracy, Desperado (1981) for William A. Graham - but honed his art and craft on short form work, including commercials and music videos.

He reunited with his friend Steven Spielberg briefly mid-decade, when he shot the ‘Gobi Desert’ sequence of Close Encounters of The Third Kind for one of his idols, the film’s cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. But it would be 1981 when Spielberg and Daviau’s first feature film collaboration came together. Working from Melissa Mathison’s script, then titled ‘E.T. and Me’, Spielberg convinced a sceptical Universal he could make the film for US$10million. Recalls Daviau, in an interview for Henderson’s Film Industries, “I was lucky that it was such a low budget, because he was looking for someone who was fast and inexpensive, and there I was.” (Pictured, above; Daviau, with Spielberg, shooting E.T.)

E.T. The Extra-terrestrial (1982) became the most successful film of all time and Daviau, with his first Oscar nomination under his belt, gained entry into the top-tier of Hollywood cinematographers. Of Daviau’s contribution to the alien’s lifelike appearance, Spielberg told American Cinematographer magazine in January 1983, “It took a lot more time to light E.T. than to light any of the human beings, and I think Allen spent his best days and his most talented hours in giving E.T. more expressions than perhaps (inventor) Carlo Rambaldi and I had envisioned. He found by moving a light, by moving the source of the key from half-light to top-light, E.T.’s 40 expressions were suddenly 80.”

His working relationship with his lifetime friend continued for another 15 years, with Daviau shooting the Spielberg-directed works ‘Kick the Can’ for Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983; he also shot Dr George Miller’s segment, ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’); the Amazing Stories episode, ‘Ghost Train’; The Color Purple (1985), for which he earned his second Oscar nomination; and, Empire of the Sun (1987; pictured, below, with actor Christian Bale), again deemed Academy Award standard and for which he won the BAFTA Best Cinematography prize. 

He also shot the Spielberg-produced adventures Harry and The Hendersons (1987) for director William Dear, and Congo (1995) for longtime Spielberg producer Alan Marshall. In 1985, he teamed with veteran director John Schlesinger for the politically-charged true story, The Falcon and The Snowman.

Allen Daviau’s mastery of source light and ethereal imagery came to the fore in three of the most beautifully shot films of the 1990s. He would earn his fourth Oscar nomination for his first collaboration with director Barry Levinson, on the director’s autobiographical drama Avalon (1990), and his fifth for Levinson’s gangster drama, Bugsy (1991), with Warren Beatty. In 1993, Australian director Peter Weir perfectly utilised Daviau’s visionary eye on what many consider his finest work, the PTSD drama Fearless, with Jeff Bridges. “We agreed that image clarity was the critical issue,” Daviau told the Cinephilia Beyond website. “I like images that are open and that speak very clearly photographically. This film is often a study of faces and eyes. Peter is very respectful of the power of close-ups. He speaks about that topic very eloquently, stating that even painters can’t equal the power of the motion picture close-up. We often came in a lot tighter than you normally see on close-ups, often using Jeff’s eyes to pull the audience into scenes.”

His diverse talent was utilised by writer/director Albert Brooks for the afterlife comedy Defending Your Life (1991) and by filmmaker Rand Ravich for the thriller The Astronaut’s Wife (1999), starring Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron. His final feature would be Stephen Sommer’s horror/adventure Van Helsing (2004), with Hugh Jackman. 

In the wake of Daviau’s passing, Steven Spielberg released a short statement via his production company Amblin. “In 1968, Allen and I started our careers side by side. Allen was a wonderful artist but his warmth and humanity were as powerful as his lens. He was a singular talent and a beautiful human being.”

THE PUBLIC LIFE OF EMILIO ESTEVEZ

Emilio Estevez remains one of the biggest movie stars of his generation, adored by Gen-Xers for The Outsiders, Repo Man, The Breakfast Club, Stakeout, St Elmo’s Fire and Young Guns and by their kids for the Mighty Ducks franchise. Twenty years ago, he cashed in his stardom to forge a career making a rare kind of modern film – the heartfelt, humanistic drama, once common amongst Hollywood’s output but now too indie-minded for corporate L.A. Bobby (2006), The Way (2010) and his latest, a crowd-pleasing study in civil disobedience called The Public, are the works of…well, an outsider. He has never been to Australia, much to his regret (“Every time I get invited, it's work-related and they want to get you in and out quickly”) but he was happy to phone in to talk at length with SCREEN-SPACE about his latest film, it’s depiction of America’s homeless population and the changing role that public librarians play in maintaining his homeland’s fragile democracy…

SCREEN-SPACE: You excel at directing the socially conscious film, like Bobby, The Way and now The Public. Cinema is still a very important forum, an important art form, for you, isn’t it?

ESTEVEZ: It is. It has the ability to change minds and hearts and educate, as well as entertain. What other venue can you sit in the dark for two hours and ask to have your attention be held? Great leaders and speakers can barely do that. I think that film is an art form that is under siege right now, especially independent film. It's trying to find its way again, and I believe it will. I just think that there's so many different delivery systems now that filmmakers are having to adapt to and [they] may not like how they're having to adapt to it. We all come from a generation where seeing your movie on the big screen was the ultimate prize for a filmmaker and that may not be the case anymore, right? I'm not big on sitting in front of a small screen and watching much these days. I love the theatre experience. I love going to the movies and sitting in the dark with a bunch of strangers. There's nothing like it.

SCREEN-SPACE: You grew up alongside artists and storytellers and activists that the rest of us look to; your father, of course, and the likes of Mr. Coppola and Mr. Hughes. Who have been the storytellers that inspire you today?

ESTEVEZ: I love the films of Paul Thomas Anderson. I think he's a terrific storyteller. He always puts characters and people first, and the bulk of my work in the last 20 years has been all about that. Character-driven, actor-driven. I respond to filmmakers who haven't lost that sense of humanity, haven't lost their sense of storytelling. So I'm drawn to actors' directors. Scorsese is still somebody who I think makes extraordinary films and movies that I want to see. (Pictured above; Estevez as librarian Stuart Goodson in The Public)

SCREEN-SPACE: The Way came out at the height of an America that was full of Obama-inspired hope and optimism. In 2019, things such as understanding and empathy aren't…on-trend, let's say, under the current administration. Has selling a film like The Public been tougher this time around?

ESTEVEZ: Yeah. It's a film that's decidedly uncynical, that speaks to a gentler pace, to compassion. And it has come out in a very noisy world, a confusing time, [that] we've not seen in this country in over 150 years. So to make a movie that is about hope and compassion was, yeah, I think it's a tough sell. Unfortunately. Sadly.

SCREEN-SPACE: What did you have to get right about your depiction of civil disobedience?

ESTEVEZ: I grew up under a roof with somebody who is very, very active. My father's been arrested 68 times. And all for acts of civil disobedience - anti-nuclear rallies, immigration rallies, issues regarding homelessness and the environment. While I was exposed to it, I didn't fully understand what he was doing, spiritually, until I started working on The Public. And then it all started to make sense to me as to why he was doing what he was doing and why he couldn't say no. Why he couldn't be complicit in the policies that were cruel. I understood it on a much deeper, more spiritual level after getting involved in the film. Which is why that act of civil disobedience at the end of the film, is such an unexpected moment. And as we've screened the film here in the States so many times ... I went on a 35-city tour of the film. The audience never sees the end coming. Ever. They anticipate that it's going to end up in a bloodbath, but, in fact, it ends with an act of love. (Pictured, above; Alec Baldwin as Det Ramstead in The Public)

SCREEN-SPACE: And what needed to be most honest about the way homeless life was portrayed?

ESTEVEZ: It was important not to stereotype them, to give them a depth and a character and make sure that they were humanized. In my research, there was a self-effacing nature to many of the homeless that I talked to, who said, "This is where I am in my life, and I have hope that it will turn around, and here's how I arrived here, and I'm not proud of it." They were very honest and truthful in sharing their personal stories.

SCREEN-SPACE: You draw extraordinary performances from Michael K. Williams (pictured, above; with Estevez), Alec Baldwin and my favourite actress, Jena Malone. Your entire ensemble is remarkably natural…

ESTEVEZ: Thank you. What's interesting is a lot of these actors were not friends of mine before starting the film, so they weren't in my Rolodex. And often times, we would meet on the day, on the set. And that's very ... it's a little unsettling. You're hoping that your conversations on the phone have landed, that you see eye-to-eye on the character, and you're not going to be spending a whole lot of time rewriting the scenes on the day, because that eats up your time. So for us, we were very fortunate that all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together beautifully, because we shot the film in 22 days.

SCREEN-SPACE: How do the added duties of the indie filmmaker sit with you - finding financing, traveling with the film, having to talk to people like me in Sydney?

ESTEVEZ: I think that these days, there is so much noise and so much competition for people's attention. And with a film that didn't have a hundred-million-dollar budget or a big studio behind it needed as much advocacy as possible. And by going out and screening the film, not only to librarians but to homeless advocacy groups, at film festivals, and stopping in those regions, as we travelled around and across the country, where people from Hollywood don't normally stop, and bringing the movie to the people. And that was in the spirit of the film, but also necessary. (Pictured, above; Jena Malone as Myra in The Public)

THE PUBLIC premieres on DVD/Blu-ray and digital platforms in Australia this week via Rialto Distribution; check local schedules for release details in other territories.

BORN IN THE U.S.A.:THE RICHARD SOWADA INTERVIEW

Independent: (adj) free from outside control; not subject to another's authority.

Australian filmgoers seeking to be challenged and energized will welcome a new cinema event called Essential Independents: American Cinema, Now. Featuring 32 films (including 11 Australian premieres), the 16-day program aims to contextualize the creative paths forged by American independent filmmakers, the current state of the sector and visions that suggest a vibrant future lies ahead. The rich schedule – presented under the strands Fiction, Intrigue, Experiments, Originals and New York - is the cumulative work of artistic director Richard Sowada, one of Australia’s leading film academics and event curators. His credits include the founding in 1997 of Perth’s iconic counter-culture film event, Revelation, and a nine-year posting as Head of Film Programs at the Australian Centre for The Moving Image. He spoke with SCREEN-SPACE ahead of the launch of the Sydney season on May 17 (other states to follow)…

SCREEN-SPACE: What is the current state of American independent cinema and how does your inaugural line-up capture that? 

SOWADA: It’s always been in a healthy state across experimental, documentary and feature film elements. I’m not sure why; it’s almost like that because the US walks such a precarious, perilous socio-political line with so many social and cultural divisions within itself, it engenders a kind of urgency amongst the creative community, like their world is about to implode and they have to act fast. Also, the sheer volume of work created forces the filmmakers to approach things in ambitious, inventive ways. The ambition isn’t always directed at scale of course, but perhaps something as small and simple as “I can do this”. The new works in the program grab hold of that actively. We throw weight behind quite experimental films, to high-quality political and socially oriented documentaries. The features also explore style, form, performance and technique. There are genuinely fresh ideas and exciting approaches, even in feature debuts.

SCREEN-SPACE: Given the dire 'superhero blockbuster' studio mentality, and funding/distribution struggle for truly indie cinema, might your byline 'American Cinema, Now' be courting disfavour?

SOWADA: What you’re talking about here are two different industries. One is based on selling popcorn, the other on working with ideas. The entire emphasis and tradition is different. Independent approaches always had to struggle against the massive amount of mediocre content; in publishing, art, fashion, music, business, everywhere, all the time. The whole independent approach is about finding a different way and they continue to do just that. This program is just one example. To see these films on commercial independent screens around Australia is a small miracle in itself. It’s opportunities like this that start to shift the funding and distribution possibilities for these kinds of films. If you can demonstrate an audience, you’re well on the way to breaking through and changing the status quo.

SCREEN-SPACE: Can we ever hope to regain the fever pitch state of indie film production that erupted in the wake of Pulp Fiction in the mid-90s?

SOWADA: The whole industry is a creative continuum. Pulp Fiction is used as a marker for the orgasmic explosion of independent cinema into (the) mainstream, but this revolution was going on before Pulp Fiction (and) has continued unabated since. Just because we don’t see a lot of it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Stranger Than Paradise and Blood Simple were on our screens 10 years earlier. Locally, Once Were Warriors came out in the same year as Pulp Fiction and changed the independent distribution and exhibition landscape in Australia. The brashness of something like Pulp Fiction didn’t create more independent works, it just bought audiences into the environment that was already there. The films also slowly morphed into a different kind of independent cinema which often has something softer, like what the the austere approach of the Dogme movement did for Danish cinema. Boyhood is a great and quite revolutionary example of that.

Above: Oren Moverman's Time Out of Mind, Opening Night film at Essential Independents

SCREEN-SPACE: 'Essential Intrigue’ profiles true cage-rattlers, like Robert Mapplethorpe (pictured, below; with singer Patti Smith) and Johnny Cash, as well as anti-establishment accounts of sectors like tech security and hip hop culture. Is independent cinema at its best when challenging the accepted norm?

SOWADA: I think that’s an accidental thing in many ways. Often these stories are personal and hidden. They’re buried deep in subculture(s) or forgotten corners of history. Those corners are hard to see by producers, funders, broadcasters and distributors who often feel they’re too ‘niche’ to explore. This word ‘niche’ is used by sectors of the industry to describe something they don’t understand. Therefore the misunderstood, specific or marginalised are deemed without audience. The independent sector, on the other hand, has a very different perspective; from lower down, they can get access into these corners and their inhabitants. I’m not sure if these filmmakers deliberately go out to challenge accepted norms but because they understand and respect their subjects and audiences so well, the works reflect their protagonists differently. The films are what they’re about, not simply a reflection of it. There’s a different, much more personal feel and approach where the magic overlay of style and content is very strong and individual.

SCREEN-SPACE: Does a correlation exist between the debut works featured in Essential Originals?

SOWADA: There’s a couple that play to genres like Near Dark and Blood Simple but I think the real binding element – and this cuts across all the titles throughout the program – is the respect they have for what’s gone before, just like Tarantino’s work. You can see Two Lane Blacktop in Kelly Riechardt’s River of Grass. You can see Cassavetes’ work in Stranger Than Paradise and Slacker. You can see Double Indemnity in Blood Simple. You can see Alien in Near Dark. What they do is take these inspirations, traditions, the special connections they have both with audiences and the sheer logistics of making a low-budget film and integrate them into their own signature. You can literally see the filmmakers taking the great moments and dissecting them to see how those moving parts work. It’s quite scientific study, experimentation and appreciation.

Above: Trailer for William Friedkin's Cruising, screening as part of Essential New York strand.

SCREEN-SPACE: One of the great coups of the festival will be a rare screening of William Friedkin's Cruising. How do you expect the millenial audience to react to such a confronting, non-PC work?

SOWADA: You simply couldn’t make a film like that for commercial release any more. It’s hardcore, with little left to the imagination. Not having been part of the NYC S&M club scene in the 70s, the depictions seem very authentic, which is fascinating and vibrant to watch. You don’t question the realism and there’s so much detail. It must have been a difficult film to make and Pacino does a great job. New audiences are going to lap it up, so to speak. It’s so surprising. It’s high quality in every way - widescreen, great sound, excellent soundtrack, brilliant costuming, a tense story and completely underground, subculture setting. I think new audiences will walk away asking what happened to these high risk/high reward films? Matching it up with Franco’s performance experiment Interior. Leather Bar is going to tip the whole experience over the edge. Now that’s what I call a double feature!

Essential Independents: American Cinema, Now screens at Palace Cinemas from May 17 in Sydney, May 18 in Melbourne, May 19 in Brisbane and Canberra and May 26 in Adelaide. Ticket and venue information via the event's official website.