Saturday, May 27, 2017

Laura Poitras Named 2017 Guggenheim Honoree by American Film Institute

2017 Guggenheim honoree Laura Poitras (Photo: Jan Stürmann)

From our friends at AFI DOCS...

AFI DOCS Will Celebrate Academy Award-Winning Documentarian on June 16

The American Film Institute (AFI) has announced that AFI DOCS will pay tribute to Laura Poitras - the groundbreaking director of RISK (2016) and the Academy Award-winning Edward Snowden portrait CITIZENFOUR (2014) - as the festival's 2017 Charles Guggenheim Symposium honoree.

Each year, the AFI DOCS Charles Guggenheim Symposium honors a master of the nonfiction art form. Taking place at the Newseum on June 16, the Symposium will include an in-depth conversation with Poitras along with clips from her acclaimed works. Poitras' latest film RISK, a six-year project following WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, was released by Neon on May 5 and will air on Showtime this summer. Poitras' impressive documentary catalog also includes THE OATH (2010), MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY (2006) and FLAG WARS (2003.)


"Poitras has the extraordinary instinct and ability to put her camera in the heart of history as it unfolds, regardless of the risk," said Michael Lumpkin, Director, AFI DOCS. "Using her keen eye, Poitras reveals worlds just beyond what we can see. We are honored to celebrate her remarkable career and dedication to the documentary form."

Poitras' first feature-length documentary, FLAG WARS, was nominated for an Emmy and won a Peabody Award, cementing her stature as a top-notch documentarian from the outset. Next, she was nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Academy Award for MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY, the first installment in her post-9/11 trilogy. In 2015, Poitras won the Academy Award for CITIZENFOUR. That same year, Poitras co-founded Field of Vision, an entity that commissions and creates original short-form nonfiction films about global events.

Poitras joins a renowned list of Guggenheim Symposium honorees: Charles Guggenheim (2003), Barbara Kopple (2004), Martin Scorsese (2006), Jonathan Demme (2007), Spike Lee (2008), Albert Maysles (2009), Frederick Wiseman (2010), Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker (2011), Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (2012), Errol Morris (2013), Alex Gibney (2014), Stanley Nelson (2015) and Werner Herzog (2016.)

AFI DOCS is proud to have AT&T return as this year's Presenting Sponsor. Passes and tickets to AFI DOCS, including the Charles Guggenheim Symposium, are now on sale at AFI.com/afidocs.

About AFI DOCS:
AFI DOCS is the American Film Institute's annual documentary festival in Washington, DC. Presenting the year's best documentaries, AFI DOCS is the only festival in the U.S. dedicated to screenings and events that connect audiences, filmmakers and policy leaders in the heart of our nation's government. The AFI DOCS advisory board includes Ken Burns, Davis Guggenheim, Chris Hegedus, Werner Herzog, Rory Kennedy, Barbara Kopple, Spike Lee, Errol Morris, Stanley Nelson, D A Pennebaker, Agnès Varda and Frederick Wiseman. Now in its 15th year, the festival will be held June 14-18, 2017, in landmark Washington, DC, venues and at the historic AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, MD. Visit AFI.com/AFIDOCS and connect on twitter.com/AFIDOCSfacebook.com/AFIDOCSyoutube.com/AFI and instagram.com/AmericanFilmInstitute.

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