Film Independent Spirit Award Noms Announced

November 27, 2007 4:16 PM, by Theresa Riley

The nominations for the 2008 Film Independent Spirit Awards were announced on Monday morning by ceremony hosts Zach Braff and Lisa Kudrow in Los Angeles. The Spirit Awards celebrate independent (and low budget) filmmaking. Eligible films must be at least 70 minutes long, and the cost of the completed film, including post-production, must be under $20 million to qualify for consideration.

2008 Best Documentary Nominations
(Award given to the director)

Crazy Love
Director: Dan Klores

Lake of Fire
Director: Tony Kaye

Manufactured Landscapes
Director: Jennifer Baichwal

The Monastery
Director: Pernille Rose Grønkjær

The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair
Directors: Petra Epperlein & Michael Tucker

Only one of the nominated films, Tony Kaye's Lake of Fire, was also included on the Academy Award Best Documentary short list, which was announced earlier this month. Danish documentary The Monastery, was ineligible for Oscar consideration because it appeared on European TV earlier this year. The Monastery has already won the award for best documentary in the Joris Ivens Competition at last year's International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and took both the Grand Jury Prize and the Charles Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award at the 2007 Full Frame Film Festival.

The Spirit Award winners will be announced on February 23, 2008 at the group's annual awards luncheon, which takes place in a tent on the beach in Santa Monica the day before the Academy Awards. The ceremony will be broadcast uncut on IFC (Independent Film Channel) with an edited re-broadcast airing later that evening on AMC.

Here's a quick list of interviews with and articles by the nominated directors available online.

Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes)
IndieWire: Park City Interview (January 18, 2007)
YouTube: Flasher Video Interview (January 22, 2007)

Petra Epperlein & Michael Tucker
(The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair)
GreenCine - Michael Tucker: "There has to be a reckoning" (Sept. 19, 2006)
Vanity Fair: My Prisoner, My Brother by Michael Tucker (February 20, 2007)

Pernille Rose Grønkjær (The Monastery)
IndieWire: Park City Interview (January 20, 2007)

Tony Kaye (Lake of Fire)
The Onion A.V. Club: Interview (October 4, 2007)

Dan Klores (Crazy Love)
Reel.com: Dan Klores Talks Crazy (2007)

Tags: Documentary News, Europe, Independent Spirit Awards, Iraq War, environment, film festivals