Photo by Wyatt Kostygan. Barbara Kopple at the World of Beer Filmmakers' Lounge.

When the Sarasota Film Festival announced the filmmakers that would win major awards this year, officials were effusive about creating a new honor, the Pennebaker-Hegedus Award. At an event this weekend, namesakes D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, following an In Conversation event chronicling each director’s decades-long career, were given the inaugural award by fellow documentarian Barbara Kopple.

It was a far cry from decades ago when studios barred these directors from even submitting their critically acclaimed films to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Oscar consideration. With this year’s festival line-up dominated by strong nonfiction work, it may seem hard to believe, but not so long ago the work by these filmmakers wasn’t treated with much respect at all. “We weren’t taken seriously because these were considered home movies,” Pennebaker recalls. “This was not a way to entertain huge numbers of people and make a lot of money.”

Pennebaker and Hegedus come to Sarasota this year with Unlocking The Cage, a movie shot over four years following lawyer Steven Wise on his quest to have highly intelligent animals like chimpanzees be granted human rights. Kopple comes to Sarasota with Miss Sharon Jones!, which follows the soul singer as she battles pancreatic cancer. The filmmakers today get celebrity red carpet treatment from the Sarasota Film Festival.

Hegedus thought it poignant that Kopple would be the one to give the Pennebaker-Hegedus award to the filmmaking team. “I began filmmaking at a time when there were very few women in the field,” Hegedus said. “Barbara is a contemporary of mine. We started together as we jumped into the man’s world of filmmaking.” 

Kopple, who won an Oscar in 1976 for Harlan County, USA after submitting against the orders of her studio and had to get to the Academy Awards in "someone's Volkswagen," says now is the greatest of times to be a documentarian. “Documentary has never been in a better place,” she says. “People today want a sense of truthfulness. They want to know what’s happening. At film festivals, documentaries are usually the first films sold out.”

The last scheduled showing of Unlocking The Cage will be Sunday at 10am at the Regal Hollywood 20. Miss Sharon Jones! screens Wednesday at 6:45pm and Sunday at 12:30pm at the Regal Hollywood 20. 

Photo by Wyatt Kostygan. Barbara Kopple at the World of Beer Filmmakers' Lounge.

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