MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE TO HONOR SARAH POLLEY, KAZUO ISHIGURO, AND LAURA POITRAS AT 2022 MOVING IMAGE AWARDS GALA

 

 

from left, Sarah Polley (credit: Derek Shapton), Laura Poitras (credit: Jan Stürmann), and Kazuo Ishiguro (courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics).

 

 

The celebratory annual event on December 1 raises funds to support year-round Museum programming, including education and tours for youth and seniors

 

Astoria, New York, November 7, 2022 — The Board of Trustees of Museum of the Moving Image today announced that acclaimed filmmaker Sarah Polley (Women Talking), renowned storyteller Kazuo Ishiguro (Living), and Academy Award–winning documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras (All the Beauty and the Bloodshed) will be honored at their annual 2022 Moving Image Awards on Thursday, December 1, in Astoria, Queens. The esteemed honorees will be celebrated by friends and collaborators with a special program in the grand Sumner M. Redstone Theater, preceded by a cocktail reception and followed by dessert in the Hearst Lobby. Additional special guests to be announced.

 

“It is a great honor to recognize Sarah Polley, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, and Laura Poitras as our 2022 Moving Image Award honorees,” said Carl Goodman, MoMI's Executive Director. “These exceptional artists, whose work ranges from narrative directing to screenwriting to nonfiction filmmaking, highlight the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of the moving image. We eagerly anticipate welcoming them, along with our supporters, to the Museum on December 1, to celebrate their remarkable achievements.”

 

Sarah Polley received an Oscar® nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for her first film as director, Away From Her, based on the short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro. This film also garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for star Julie Christie. Her next film Take This Waltz starred Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, and Sarah Silverman. Stories We Tell, her documentary which examines secrets and memory in her own family, won Best Documentary Film awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Board of Review, and the New York Film Critics Circle, as well as a Writer’s Guild of America award for its screenplay. Polley executive produced and wrote the Netflix limited series Alias, Grace, which she adapted from Margaret Atwood’s novel.

 

As an actor, Polley starred in a wide variety of films including Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter (Best Supporting Actress award from the Boston Society of Film Critics), Doug Liman’s Go (Independent Spirit Award nomination), Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, Jaco Van Dormael’s Mr. Nobody opposite Jared Leto, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Weight of Water opposite Ciaran Hinds, David Cronenberg’s Existenz, Isabel Coixet’s The Secret Life of Words and My Life Without Me (Canadian Screen Award, Best Actress), Audrey Wells’s Guinevere, Wim Wenders’s Don’t Come Knocking, Michael Winterbottom’s The Claim, and Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

 

In 2022, Polley released Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory, an autobiographical collection of essays detailing her relationship with her body and how her memory of past and present experiences has contributed to her evolving understanding of self.

 

Kazuo Ishiguro is a Nobel Prize–winning novelist, screenwriter, and song lyricist. Born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954, he moved to Britain with his parents when he was five years old. His books, translated into over fifty languages, have earned him many honors around the world, and The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go were adapted into acclaimed films. He received a knighthood in 2018 from the United Kingdom, and holds the decorations of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France, and the Order of the Rising Sun – Gold and Silver Star from Japan. His most recent screenplay is Living, a re-imagining of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, due for release in December 2022. He has served on film festival juries at Cannes, Venice, and London.

 

Laura Poitras received an Academy Award for her film CITIZENFOUR, the third installment of her post-9/11 trilogy. Her reporting on the NSA’s global mass surveillance programs received the Pulitzer Prize. Her film about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, My Country, My Country, was nominated for an Oscar. Her first solo museum exhibition, Astro Noise, was presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2016.

 

Her 2021 film Terror Contagion was part of the anthology, Year of the Everlasting Storm, executive produced by Jafar Panahi. Poitras’s latest film, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, documents internationally renowned artist Nan Goldin’s life, ground-breaking artwork, and her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis. The film premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival in September 2022 where it was awarded the Golden Lion.

 

Poitras has been targeted by the U.S. government for her work documenting post-9/11 America. In 2006, she was placed on a secret terrorist watchlist, and detained dozens of times at the U.S. border.

 

Funds raised from the Moving Image Awards will support the Museum’s mission to explore all facets of film, television, and digital media, including support for education and community engagement programs which serve youth, adults, and their families across all of New York and beyond.

 

For more information and to purchase tickets for the Moving Image Awards Honoring Sarah Polley, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Laura Poitras, please visit movingimage.us/event/2022-moving-image-awards.

 

Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) is the only institution in the United States that deals comprehensively with the art, technology, enjoyment, and social impact of film, television, and digital media. In its stunning facility in Astoria, New York, the Museum presents exhibitions; screenings; discussion programs featuring actors, directors, and creative leaders; and education programs. It houses the nation’s largest collection of moving image artifacts and screens over 500 films annually. Its exhibitions—including the core exhibition Behind the Screen and The Jim Henson Exhibition—are noted for their integration of material objects, interactive experiences, and audiovisual presentations. For more information about the MoMI, visit movingimage.us.