Winners of the Maverick Award for Best Narrative Feature, director Paul Starkman and actor Amstar for their film Wheels.
A house packed with filmmakers, film industry participants, community leaders, and audience members witnessed Tony, Emmy and Grammy-winning, and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Julie Taymor receiving the Honorary Maverick Award at the Festival’s Maverick Awards Ceremony October 13 at Backstage Studio Productions in Kingston.
Awards were presented to exceptional films and honorees in numerous categories, with Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman received the Filmmaker Award of Distinction, for his debut feature narrative, A Private War. The award for the Best Narrative Feature, as well as the Audience Award for the same category was given to Wheels, directed by Paul Starkman and Best Documentary Feature was awarded to The Feeling of Being Watched, directed by Assia Boundaoui.
Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman received the Filmmaker Award of Distinction, for his debut feature narrative, A Private War.
The evening opened with the first African American director to win an Academy Award, Roger Ross Williams, who gave welcome remarks and introduced festival Co-Founder and Executive Director Meira Blaustein.
On Sunday afternoon there was a special tribute screening of Taymor’s Across The Universe at the Woodstock Playhouse.
Other included: Best Narrative Short was awarded to Beast, directed by Leonora Lonsdale; Best Student Short was awarded to A Year, directed by Jisun Jamie Kim
Best Animated Short was awarded to Two Balloons, directed by Mark C. Smith;
Best Short Documentary was awarded to Lifeboat, directed by Skye Fitzgerald; The Ultra Indie Award was presented to Socrates, directed by Alex Moratto; The Haskell Wexler Award for Best Cinematography was presented to Eric Bader for Spell; The Carpe Diem Andretta Award was presented to William Fichtner for Cold Brook; The James Lyons Editing Award For Narrative Feature was presented to Kristina Davies for Unlovable;
The World Cinema Award was presented to Laurie Colbert and Dominique Cardona for Keely & Du; The James Lyons Editing Award For Documentary Feature was presented to Rabab Haj Yahya for The Feeling of Being Watched, with Special Mention to Pablo Proenza for Wrestle.