This week we had our NYFCC Awards Dinner in New York. You never know who’s going to show up as a presenter. David Byrne was there! Mary Harron! “Marty” on the video monitor talking about the aspect ratio of Tar. Seth Meyers! Jordan Peele! And then of course our winners: Todd Field, Keke Palmer (her speech! her passion for the craft of acting was just so inspiring). Cate Blanchett – she’s hilarious. S.S. Rajamouli. I was almost in tears. His speech was beautiful. Jerzy Skolimowski came complete with Godard anecdote that brought the house down. Ke Huy Quan! Nan freakin’ Goldin was there. Laura Poitras. Charlotte Wells. Todd Solondz. I took Cashel and Ian and Spencer, which has become a fun tradition now. Great hanging out with Keith and Dan, good food. It’s an awards show unlike others: there are no nominees. People come in it having already won. There’s no cameras. It’s a small-ish event, and not open to the public. The people there are the studios, the critics and their guests. So it’s energy is looser than other awards events. There’s no time limits on speeches. People talk for as long as they want to, and they’re always amazing speeches. It’s been two years since we’ve had a full event, due to the pandemic, so there was a relief in all being together, in getting to do this celebratory thing again.
I wrote the essay for our program on Jafar Panahi, one of our special awards. I’ll post the text in a separate post. Ramin Bahrani, whom I met at Ebertfest years ago, gave the speech on his behalf and it was incredible. Solemn days. Amazingly, Taraneh Alidoosti was released from prison the same day as the awards – which Bahrani mentioned. There was such a solemn feeling in that large room. Jafar Panahi should have been there to accept.
