HBO’s ‘Four Hours at the Capitol’ leads Cinema Eye Honors Broadcast nominations, Terry Zwigoff (‘Crumb’) to receive Legacy Award

Cinema Eye Honors, the organization that recognizes outstanding artistic achievement in nonfiction and documentary films & series, kicked off its 16th season today with its first awards announcements for 2023.

Among the announcements were the nominees in five Broadcast categories, the annual Shorts List – spotlighting 10 of the year’s top documentary short films – and this year’s Legacy Award recipient.

HBO’s Four Hours at the Capitol, an inside look at the January 6th riot, led today’s Broadcast Film and Series announcements with three nominations. The Jamie Roberts-directed film scored nods in Broadcast Film, Broadcast Editing and Broadcast Cinematography.

HBO led all networks and streamers with eleven nominations in all, including two for the sophomore season of How To with John Wilson. Other films/series receiving two nominations include Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back (Disney+), Sally Aitken’s Playing With Sharks (Disney+), the CNN anthology series Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy and W. Kamau Bell’s We Need to Talk About Cosby (Showtime). Disney+ received five nominations, while Netflix had three.

In addition to its Broadcast nominations, Cinema Eye announced the ten films on this year’s Shorts List, the organization’s annual list of semi-finalists for its Nonfiction Short Film Honor. Of those ten films, five or six will be announced as the nominees in the Short Film category next month.

Finally, marking the 10-year anniversary of Cinema Eye’s annual list of The Unforgettables – the year’s notable documentary subjects – as well as the centennial of Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, the organization announced a year-long celebration of documentary film subjects and the role they play in the construction of nonfiction films. One highlight of this celebration was announced today as the 2023 Legacy Award will be presented to Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb, the filmmaker’s acclaimed 1995 portrait of underground cartoonist R. Crumb.

The award will be presented to director Terry Zwigoff as part of a special Legacy Award screening of Crumb next year at the newly restored Eagle Theatre in Northeast Los Angeles. The theater will serve as the home of landmark LA video store and film organization Vidiots Foundation, a partner of Cinema Eye.

“I’m glad to find out you don’t have to be dead to receive this award,” Crumb director Terry Zwigoff said in a written statement. “I guess they figured I’m finally close enough. I’m so old my film career started decades before this Cinema Eye Award existed, so now they have to give me the Honorary version, the ‘Legacy Award.’ This is sort of like the Lifetime Achievement Award or the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award they hand out each year at the Oscars, except I haven’t achieved much in my lifetime, and I generally prefer the company of animals to humans. In any case, it’s a nice honor and I’m in great company judging from the list of prior recipients.”

Key Dates for the 2023 Cinema Eye Honors

Announcement of The Unforgettables and Audience Choice Prize Long List – Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Full Nominations Announced – Thursday, November 10, 2022

16th Annual Cinema Eye Honors Awards Ceremony – Thursday, January 12, 2023

Today’s announcements were made at the annual Cinema Eye Fall Lunch, held in Downtown Los Angeles. The Lead Host for the Fall Lunch was National Geographic Documentary Films. Co-Hosts included Amazon Studios, HBO Max, Hulu and Netflix.

A full list of this year’s announcements and nominees:

Legacy Award

Crumb

• Directed by Terry Zwigoff
• Produced by Lynn O’Donnell and Terry Zwigoff
• Edited by Victor Livingston
• Cinematography by Maryse Alberti
• Music by David Beddinghaus
• Sound by Scott Breindell

Broadcast Film Nominees

• Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes (Directed by James Jones | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max)
• Downfall: The Case Against Boeing (Directed by Rory Kennedy | Netflix)
• Four Hours at the Capitol (Directed by Jamie Roberts | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max)
• George Carlin’s American Dream (Directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max)
• Playing With Sharks (Directed by Sally Aitken | Disney+)

Nonfiction Series Nominees

• The Beatles: Get Back (Directed by Peter Jackson | Disney+)
• Black and Missing (Directed by Geeta Gandbhir and Samantha Knowles | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max)
• Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey (Directed by Rachel Dretzin | Netflix)
• LuLaRich (Directed by Julia Willoughby Nason and Jenner Furst | Amazon Studios)
• Mind Over Murder (Directed by Nanfu Wang | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max)
• We Need to Talk About Cosby (Directed by W. Kamau Bell | Showtime)

Anthology Series Nominees

How To with John Wilson (Nathan Fielder, Michael Koman, Clark Reinking and John Wilson, Executive Producers | HBO)

• Origins of Hip Hop (Peter Bittenbender, Mark Grande, Slane Hatch; Supervising Producers: Amira Lewally and Phoenix Skye Maulella, Executive Producers | A&E)
• Prehistoric Planet (Jon Favreau and Michael Gunton, Executive Producers; Tim Walker, Series Producer | Apple TV+)
• Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy (Tom Barry, Adam Hawkins, Eve Kay and Stanley Tucci, Executive Producers; Robin O’Sullivan, Series Producer | CNN)
• Women Who Rock (Jessica Hopper, Rachel Brill, John Varvatos, Derik Murray and Jesse James Miller, Executive Producers | EPIX)
• The World According to Jeff Goldblum (Jeff Goldblum, Jane Root, Sara Brailsford, Keith Addis and Arif Nurmohamed, Executive Producers, Ben Jessop, Series Producer | Disney+)

Broadcast Editing Nominees

• 37 Words (Jessica Congdon and Dave Marcus | ESPN)
• The Beatles: Get Back (Jabeez Olssen | Disney+)
• Four Hours at the Capitol (Will Grayburn | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max)
• How to Survive a Pandemic (Adam Evans and Tyler H. Walk | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max)
• How To with John Wilson (Adam Locke-Norton | HBO)
• We Need to Talk About Cosby (Meg Ramsay | Showtime)

Broadcast Cinematography Nominees

• Four Hours at the Capitol (Jamie Roberts | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max)
• jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy (Coodie Simmons and Danny “DNA” Sorge | Netflix)
• Playing With Sharks (Michael Taylor, Judd Overton, Nathan Barlow and Toby Ralph | Disney+)
• Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy (Andrew Muggleton | CNN)
• Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Come Off (Sam Jones and Jesse Green | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max)

Shorts List

(Cinema Eye’s Annual List of the Year’s Top Short Documentaries)

• Anastasia (Directed by Sarah McCarthy)                             
• The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone (Directed by Maya Newell)
• In Flow of Words (Directed by Eliane Esther Bots)
• The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo (Directed by Ilinca Călugăreanu)
• Keys to the City (Directed by Ian Moubayed)
• Last Days of August (Directed by Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck)
• Long Line of Ladies (Directed by Rayka Zehtabchi and Shaandiin Tome)
• The Martha Mitchell Effect (Directed by Anne Alvergue and Debra McClutchy)
• Nuisance Bear (Directed by Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden)
• Shut Up and Paint (Directed by Alex Mallis and Titus Kaphar)