Congrats are in order for “Belle” and “Beyond The Lights” Star Gugu Mbatha-Raw, “Dear White People” writer/director Justin Simien and the film’s star Tessa Thompson.
These emerging talents have all been nominated for Gotham Independent Film Awards presented by IFP. The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) is the nation’s premier member organization of independent storytellers. The awards ceremony will be held on Monday, December 1 at Cipriani Wall Street. Days before the nominations were annnouced, we spoke with Tessa exclusively about “Dear White People,” which took in over $1.2 Million this past weekend. Read what she had to say below:
Part of Sam White’s story reminded me of a younger part of myself in high school when I was trying to sort of figure out who I was, and I felt kind of a pressure to be certain things depending on what group of people I was in front of. I think that’s something the movie really explored more than just talking about race in America. The film is about identity and who you know yourself to be, and trying to reconcile that with what people expect of you, or what people assume about you. Sometimes that can be made, you know, more difficult and murky with the introduction of race. So I guess I just felt like it was a love letter to a previous part of myself. I also think that Sam White is the resident firecracker, fire starter on campus, and I think people that are really necessary. People who want to shake up their surroundings. Whether or not she’s always right is another story, but while I was playing her I really got to see the joy in somebody who is daring enough to speak up.
Over at the Urban Word Film Festival last month we caught up with Gugu Mbatha-Raw who spoke about her preparation for her role in “Beyond The Lights.”
I think when I first read the script, I thought Gina had done such a phenomenal job in showing the underbelly of the music industry in terms of, yes we have all the gloss of that sort manufactured pop star image that we’re so familiar with, but it also shows the sort of psychological effects of fame and for me the idea of mental health and how if you don’t have a sense of self-worth, it really doesn’t matter if people are lauding you with all of these accolades. So for me, I thought that was really a worthwhile story and I felt like it was really up lifting. I felt like the love story was beautiful and fun, and that there was an intimacy and realness to it that I thought was really refreshing.
In terms of preparation, I think I first read a draft of “Blackbird” in about 2011 and I auditioned for the role a couple of times and then Gina was just kind of prolific in supplying me with reference materials, in terms of not just watching music videos of contemporary artists, but also directing to stars of yesteryear, like Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland and reading their biographies and seeing this potentially toxic mother-daughter dynamic and these young girls being groomed into an over-sexualized identity in the industry has been going on for quite a long time. So there was that and we spent a lot of time together, and we went to a lot of concerts, we went to the Grammys, we saw Rihanna and Beyonce. I also had to watch all these films like with Bette Midler in “The Rose” and “Lady Sings the Blues” and “Purple Rain”. I mean we really saturated ourselves in movies from “Purple Rain” to “Walk the Line”. Things that weren’t necessarily correlating with this genre.
And also then there was the dancing and singing training, I worked quite rigorously with an amazing choreographer called Laurieann Gibson, she really put me through my paces, hours of sweating in the dance studio. And I’ve worked with an amazing vocal coach called Debra Byrd and I had my first music experience working with The-Dream and his amazing team. So it was kind of a whole mixture of stuff, and then working with Nate. Gina brought Nate in quite early in the rehearsal process and we had the opportunity to do some improvisation.
When we interviewed Justin Simien about the film at the ND/NF Festival he shared the inspiration for “Dear White People.” He said, “It started with my own college experiences in Chapman University, which is a predominantly white college. As I went through school and as I entered the workforce I just realized that this has always been my black experience and it always will be. I know so many other people of color who have had the same experience, so I thought, Why isn’t there a movie that is talking about it?”
The FULL 2014 Gotham Independent Film Award nominations are:
Best Feature
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, director; Alejandro G. Iñárritu, John Lesher, Arnon Milchan, James W. Skotchdopole, producers (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Boyhood
Richard Linklater, director; Richard Linklater, Cathleen Sutherland, Jonathan Sehring, John Sloss, producers (IFC Films)
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Wes Anderson, director; Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Steven Rales, Jeremy Dawson, producers (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Love Is Strange
Ira Sachs, director; Lucas Joaquin, Jay Van Hoy, Lars Knudsen, Ira Sachs, Jayne Baron Sherman, producers (Sony Pictures Classics)
Under the Skin
Jonathan Glazer, director; Nick Wechsler, James Wilson, producers (A24)
Best Documentary
Actress
Robert Greene, director; Douglas Tirola, Susan Bedusa, Robert Greene, producers (The Cinema Guild)
CITIZENFOUR
Laura Poitras, director; Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy, Dirk Wilutzky, producers (RADiUS, Participant Media, and HBO Documentary Films)
Life Itself
Steve James, director; Zak Piper, Steve James, Garrett Basch, producers (Magnolia Pictures and CNN Films)
Manakamana
Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez, directors; Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel, producers (The Cinema Guild)
Point and Shoot
Marshall Curry, director; Marshall Curry, Elizabeth Martin, Matthew Van Dyke, producers (The Orchard and American Documentary / POV)
Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award
Ana Lily Amirpour for A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Kino Lorber)
James Ward Byrkit for Coherence (Oscilloscope Laboratories)
Dan Gilroy for Nightcrawler (Open Road Films)
Eliza Hittman for It Felt Like Love (Variance Films)
Justin Simien for Dear White People (Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate)
Best Actor*
Bill Hader in The Skeleton Twins (Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate)
Ethan Hawke in Boyhood (IFC Films)
Oscar Isaac in A Most Violent Year (A24)
Michael Keaton in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)(Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Miles Teller in Whiplash (Sony Pictures Classics)
* The 2014 Best Actor nominating panel also voted to award a special Gotham Jury Award jointly to Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo, and Channing Tatum for their ensemble performance in Foxcatcher(Sony Pictures Classics).
Best Actress
Patricia Arquette in Boyhood (IFC Films)
Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Beyond the Lights (Relativity Media)
Julianne Moore in Still Alice (Sony Pictures Classics)
Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin (A24)
Mia Wasikowska in Tracks (The Weinstein Company)
Breakthrough Actor
Riz Ahmed in Nightcrawler (Open Road Films)
Macon Blair in Blue Ruin (RADiUS)
Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood (IFC Films)
Joey King in Wish I Was Here (Focus Features)
Jenny Slate in Obvious Child (A24)
Tessa Thompson in Dear White People (Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate)
Twenty writers, critics and programmers participated in the nomination process, considering 199 eligible submissions. The Nominating Committees for the 2014 Gotham Independent Film Awards were:
Nominating Committee for Best Feature and Breakthrough Director:
Justin Chang, Chief Film Critic, Variety
Eric Kohn, Lead Film Critic, Indiewire
Christy Lemire, Film Critic, ChristyLemire.com and co-host, What the Flick?!
Andrew O’Hehir, Film Critic, Salon.com
Joshua Rothkopf, Film Editor, Time Out New York
Nominating Committee for Best Documentary:
Charlotte Cook, Director of Programming, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
Bilge Ebiri, Film Critic, New York Magazine and Vulture
Cynthia Fuchs, Film-TV Editor, PopMatters
Tom Hall, Executive Director, Montclair Film Festival
Sky Sitney, Visiting Artist, Georgetown University Film and Media Studies Department
Nominating Committee for Best Actor and Best Actress:
Mark Harris, Editor-at-Large, Entertainment Weekly and columnist,Grantland
Ann Hornaday, Film Critic, The Washington Post
Glenn Kenny, Critic, RogerEbert.com; author, Anatomy of an Actor: Robert De Niro
David Rooney, Film & Theater Critic, The Hollywood Reporter
Elizabeth Weitzman, Film Critic, New York Daily News
Nominating Committee for Breakthrough Actor:
Sam Adams, Editor of Criticwire, Indiewire
A.A. Dowd, Film Editor, The A. V. Club
Sheila O’Malley, Film Critic, RogerEbert.com
Ronnie Scheib, Film Critic, Variety
Stephen Whitty, Film Critic, Newark Star-Ledger
Spotlight on Women Filmmakers ‘Live the Dream’ Grant
For the fourth consecutive year, IFP is proud present the euphoria Calvin Klein Spotlight on Women Filmmakers ‘Live the Dream’ grant, a $25,000 cash award for an alumna of IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Labs. This grant aims to further the careers of emerging women directors by supporting the completion, distribution and audience engagement strategies of their first feature film.
The nominees are:
Garrett Bradley, director, Below Dreams
Claire Carré, director, Embers
Chloé Zhao, director, Songs My Brothers Taught Me
Gotham Independent Film Audience Award
New this year, IFP members will have a voice in determining the 5th Annual Gotham Independent Film Audience Awardwith nominees comprised of the 15 nominated films in the Best Feature, Best Documentary, and Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award categories. All IFP current, active members at the Individual Level and above will be eligible to vote. Voting will take place online from November 19th at 12:01 AM EST and conclude on November 26th at 5:00 PM EST. In addition, IFP will be scheduling screenings of many of the nominated films for IFP members in the theater at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP in Brooklyn. These screenings will take place from November 5-12. The winner of the Audience Award will be announced at the Gotham Awards Ceremony on December 1, 2014.
The Premier Sponsor of the 24th annual Gotham Independent Film Awards is The New York Times and the Platinum Sponsor is euphoria Calvin Klein. Additionally, the awards will be promoted nationally in an eight-page special advertising section in The New York Times in November 2014.
