Film Faculty and Alumni Earn Sundance Awards and Oscar Nominations
Feb. 2, 2010
This year’s Oscar nominations were announced just as the annual Sundance Film Festival wrapped up its award presentations—with Columbia alumni and faculty members among the top honorees.
School of the Arts graduate Kathryn Bigelow (SOA’81) was nominated for an Academy Award as best director for The Hurt Locker, which was also nominated for best picture, and faculty member Geoffrey Fletcher received an adapted screenplay nomination for Precious, which was also nominated for best picture. A Serious Man, another best picture nominee, was produced by Focus Features, which is led by School of the Arts professor James Schamus. Maggie Gyllenhal (CC’99) also received a supporting actress nomination for her work in Crazy Heart.
This past weekend in Park City, Utah, School of the Arts professor Eric Mendelsohn’s film, 3 Backyards, won in the Sundance “U.S. Directing Award: Dramatic” category, and adjunct faculty member Brad Barnes’ Homewrecker, co-directed with Barnes’ brother Todd, won the new “Best of NEXT” category.
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| Left: Kathryn Bigelow on the set of The Hurt Locker. Right: Eric Mendelsohn directs the film 3 Backyards.
Image credits: Kathryn Bigelow and 42West (1), Caruso Mendelsohn Productions ©2010 (2)
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The Oscar nods continue the winning streak for Bigelow, who on Jan. 24 received the Darryl F. Zanuck award for best feature for The Hurt Locker from the Producer’s Guild of America. Less than a week later, the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) awarded Bigelow its top prize, for “Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film.”
Bigelow is the first female director to win the DGA award, which many film critics cite as a strong indicator for her chances to nab the best director Oscar. Only six out of 62 times, since the DGA awards began in 1948, has the film that won the top award from the Director’s Guild not been awarded best director at the Oscars.
At the Sundance festival, Mendelsohn and Barnes were among a talented group of Columbia faculty and alumni whose work screened in several categories. In his acceptance speech, Mendelsohn drew special attention to his students. “I am so intensely proud to be here with so many of my students from Columbia University film division, and colleagues, the best film program anywhere. I am so excited to teach there,” he said. More than 30 Columbia students and alumni worked on Mendelsohn’s film, 3 Backyards, a suburban drama starring Edie Falco, which beat out 15 films in the dramatic directing category.
The Kids Are All Right, directed and co-written by film alumna Lisa Cholodenko (SOA’97), was mentioned as a highlight of the festival in The New York Times’ Sundance wrap-up. During the festival her film was acquired by Focus Features. (James Schamus, the head of Focus Features, was Cholodenko’s teacher while she studied at Columbia.)
Smash His Camera, produced by adjunct professor Linda Saffire, won in the “U.S. Directing Award: Documentary” category.
The short film New Media, written and directed by film alumnus J.J. Adler (SOA’09), also made a strong showing, winning three $5,000 grants at the Women in Film luncheon held during the festival on Jan. 15. New Media was the winner of the audience choice award at last year’s Columbia School of the Arts Film Festival.
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Multimedia
| Artworks by contemporary Cambodian artists, including survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide, are on display at Columbia’s Maison Française and Italian Academy. |
Milestones
Four Columbia faculty were awarded Sloan Research Fellowships by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. They are Mark Churchland, assistant professor of neuroscience; Wei Min, assistant professor of chemistry; Simha Sethumadhavan, associate professor of computer science; and Wei Zhang, assistant professor of mathematics.
Alondra Nelson, associate professor of sociology, won the 2012 book award from the Association for Humanist Sociology for Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination.
