REVIEWS & MEDIA
AWARDS
STEVENSON WINS AT DOC EDGE FILM FESTIVAL
JUNE 19, 2020
The Oscar-qualifying 15th annual Doc Edge International Documentary Film Festival (Doc Edge) is thrilled to announce the winners of the 2020 Doc Edge Awards held online on 19 June.
The Festival and all its associated events run online this year across the country until 5 July. These awards are a celebration of the vital work of exceptional filmmakers who tell stories from our backyard and around the world.
STEVENSON: LOST AND FOUND was awarded in two categories:
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Best New Zealand Director: Sally Williams
Jury comments
"Faced with an enormous volume of archival material generated by the long and prolific career of James Stevenson, director Sally Williams honours her subject by centering his art and worldview. Williams deftly turns a Stevenson style lens upon the subject himself, employing the same sort of whimsical and unexpected perspectives evident in his body of work to create a delightful marriage of content and form – a kind of ‘art imitating art’.
The skill and success of the direction is evident when such a highly crafted piece of work seems natural and effortless, with the resulting film appearing to be the only way the story could have been told. The filmmaker navigates sensitive issues of family history and declining health to create an affectionate, admiring and compassionate portrait that resists sentimentality and hagiography."
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Best New Zealand Editing: Deborah Peretz
Jury comments
"Encapsulating the life of a person within a 90-minute time frame is an extremely challenging task - especially when that person has led as fascinating a life as James Stevenson. However, Deborah Peretz and Sally Williams have masterfully weaved together a cohesive narrative from an enormous volume of material – ranging from interviews, archival footage, animation and the work of the artist himself. The film transitions from exposition, to animation, to heartfelt emotion, and back again with smooth rhythm - never descending into a plodding chronology. It goes even further, translating the humour of the cartoonist into cinematic form, with a sense of comedic timing that pays homage to the style of Stevenson himself."
REVIEWS
"This is a beautifully imagined portrait of the inimitable and beloved Jim Stevenson, a man who went where talent and the spirit took him which was almost anywhere.
New Yorker cartoonist, children’s writer, poetic journalist, he was the kind of artist who is regularly underrated because he can do so many things.
Saying the film does him and his work justice is saying a great deal—it is a life of prodigious accomplishment (not just the art but nine children!), of great joy and great sadness, a tragedy in the middle and a love story at the end.
And it’s all True!"
MOLLY HASKELL - FILM CRITIC
"...unexpectedly moving as Williams captures an engaging subject, an American original who viewed and parodied New Yorkers with the kind of comfortable distance
required to make great art."
JOHN FINK - THE FILM STAGE
MEDIA
