The 22nd Annual Hamptons International Film Festival, which ended last night, is pleased to announce the winners of the 2014. Audience Awards. Congratulations to all our award winners!
Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature: The Imitation Game
Directed by Morten Tyldum
WINNER: 2014 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize
Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a monumental performance as British mathematician Alan Turing in Morten Tyldum’s stirring historical drama. Told via flashback, The Imitation Game tracks the young, brilliant, and socially awkward Turing in the early days of World War II as he applies for a top-secret position tasked with decoding the “unbreakable” Nazi cipher machine called Enigma, used to encrypt all military radio transmissions. His work was famously labeled by Winston Churchill as “the greatest single contribution to victory,” but after the war he suffered great personal and professional turmoil as he dealt with his homosexuality in a time when it was illegal.
Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature: Iris
Directed by Albert Maysles
The great documentarian Albert Maysles’ latest film is about fashion- and interior-design maven Iris Apfel, now 93 years old, as she celebrates the late wave of popularity she enjoyed on the heels the Met’s 2006 exhibition of her collection of often affordably priced fashion accessories. Maysles (Grey Gardens), who pops up from time to time as a cheerful on-camera presence, follows Iris as she makes selections for the touring exhibition, advises young women on their fashion choices, and bargains with store owners, usually in the company of her husband of 66 years, Carl, now 100.
Audience Award for Best Short Film: Feast
Director: Patrick Osborne
Feast is the story of one man’s love life as seen through the eyes of his best friend, Winston, the dog.
Director Patrick Osborne, who joined Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2008 as an animator on Bolt, took part in the studio’s Spark Program. The experimental short, Pet, which he created, was a hit among his fellow Disney artists. Osborne, whose credits include Disney’s 2010 feature Tangled and 2012’s Oscar®-winning short Paperman, for which he served as head of animation, was later tapped as co-head of animation for the upcoming feature Big Hero 6, but his plans changed when he pitched the idea for Feast as part of WDAS’s new shorts program.
“We are so delighted with the choices that the passionate filmgoers here in the Hamptons made with this year’s Audience Awards, particularly in seeing that our audiences embraced our Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Award winner, The Imitation Game, “ stated Artistic Director David Nugent.
