Gotham Awards Chase Indie Spirit
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Before the National Board of Review (December 5) and the New York Film Critics (December 10) kick the 2007 movie awards season into a frenzy, the independent film world will take center stage at Tuesday night’s annual Gotham Awards ceremony at Steiner Studios in Brooklyn — the first prominent indicator of what art-house titles could make the leap to serious award contenders.
Leading the bill this year are five nominees pulled from every niche of the independent film world and united in the “Best Feature” category. On one end of the spectrum are such works as Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild” and Mira Nair’s “The Namesake” — films that have received relatively wide releases and been backed by aggressive studio marketing campaigns. On the other end are such nominees as Craig Zobel’s “Great World of Sound,” which, despite giddy praise from critics, has failed to reach an audience (taking in less than $25,000 during its four-theater theatrical run), Todd Haynes’s limited-release festival darling “I’m Not There,” and Noah Baumbach’s polarizing “Margot at the Wedding.”
Unlike last year, when several commentators derided the Gothams and its organizing body, New York’s Independent Feature Project, for abandoning independent cinema in favor of celebrating such mainstream works as “The Departed” and “Marie Antoinette,” this year’s slate of nominees, according to IFP executive director Michelle Byrd, is the result of a lively debate within IFP regarding the definition and direction of “independent” cinema.
“The space in which people are making independent movies is really expansive, and it’s difficult to come to some sort of agreement about what constitutes the independent film world right now,” Ms. Byrd said. “One of our internal concerns was to be a bit more specific this year. You can have independent films that were still made with a budget of $25 million, and so it’s difficult to set the bar, particularly when we’re an organization that works with people at much, much, much smaller budgets than that.”
Any consternation has been shared by quite a few filmmakers — not just by IFP members fighting to make their first feature, but by established filmmakers who have witnessed the heightened competition at festivals such as Sundance, which are increasingly becoming overloaded with mid-budget films submitted not by independent filmmakers but by the “indie” divisions of the major movie studios.
“There’s no question that there are two indie worlds right now,” Ms. Byrd said. “That’s why we were kind of reluctant in the first years of the Awards to even use the word ‘independent,’ because ‘Sideways’ won best feature our first year, and yeah, it’s an independent film, but it’s got quite the hefty budget behind it.”
The semantic debate and the credibility of the Gothams as an accurate snapshot of the current state of independent cinema has led IFP to more strictly define this year’s competition. Ms. Byrd said that out of the various criteria that could be used to distinguish independent titles, IFP chose to focus chiefly on distribution.
“We decided that this year, it would involve looking at the reality of the film’s release,” she said. “Some of these films are being released by specialty divisions within studios, and yes, they may certainly have more in terms of marketing dollars. But they’re still going into the same cinemas that Craig Zobel’s film is going into. Our criteria ultimately revolved around: ‘Where would the movie most likely play?'”
When the Gotham nominees were announced in late October, it was immediately clear that the new guidelines had a profound effect. None of the filmmakers vying for “Breakthrough Director” (Lee Isaac Chung, for “Munyurangabo”; Stephane Gauger, for “Owl and the Sparrow”; Julia Loktev, for “Day Night Day Night”; David Von Ancken, for “Seraphim Falls,” and Mr. Zobel, for “Great World of Sound”) have been able to secure wide releases for their films. And, aside from Emile Hirsch, whose face has popped up in prominent ads for “Into the Wild,” none of the nominees for “Breakthrough Actor” (Kene Holliday for “Great World of Sound”; Ellen Page for “Juno”; Jess Weixler for “Teeth,” and Luisa Williams for “Day Night Day Night”) have been backed by a studio-driven “for your consideration” campaign.
Instead, the battle between the mainstream and the fringe might be most evident in the Gothams’s other two major categories: Best Documentary and Best Ensemble Cast. While such prominent docs as Michael Moore’s “Sicko” and Jonathan Demme’s “Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains” received nominations, they will compete against the limited-release Sudan documentary “The Devil Came on Horseback” and the yet-to-be-released hit from this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Alex Gibney’s “Taxi to the Dark Side.”
Similarly, a great divide separates four of this year’s five Best Ensemble Cast nominees. In one corner is the indie horror film “The Last Winter,” a story about a group of oilmen marooned near the North Pole that was helmed by New Yorker Larry Fessenden, and attracted downtown audiences primarily through word of mouth. In the other corner are the A-list casts to be found in “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” “Margot at the Wedding,” “The Savages,” and “Talk to Me.”
Naturally, as the awards season gets rolling, many are wondering whether this year’s Gothams will exert more influence on the Oscar race, which is already well under way. Though the chances of such minor gems as “Great World of Sound” at this year’s Academy Awards still seem (sadly) slim, the outcome at the Gothams could indeed make a mark for mid-range films like “Margot at the Wedding,” “Into the Wild,” “Juno,” and “I’m Not There.”
ssnyder@nysun.com