Independent Spirit Awards reward spirit of independence

The movie awards marathon that was the weekend just gone kicked off in Los Angeles on Friday night, with the 25th Film Independent Spirit Awards. Lee Daniels' Precious proved to be the major winner on the night, taking home five awards, including Best Feature.

Daniels was named Best Director, while his movie's leading ladies Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique bagged the Best Female Lead and Best Supporting Female prizes respectively. Precious writer Geoffrey Fletcher rounded out the quintet of wins for the film with the award for Best First Screenplay.

There were prizes too for Jeff Bridges and Crazy Heart, while Woody Harrelson won Best Supporting Male for his role in 2012... sorry, The Messenger. This writer's personal goat-getter, the utterly crapulous (500) Days of Summer received the prize for Best Screenplay, and the recipient of last year's Someone To Watch award, director Lynn Shelton, was back again this year to claim the John Cassavetes Award (given to the best feature made for under $500,000) for her comedy Humpday. There was British representation on the winners' rostrum too, with An Education being named Best Foreign Film and Anvil! The Story of Anvil (which was written and directed by London-born Sacha Gervasi) winning Best Documentary.

The full list of winners is as follows:

Best Feature – Precious (Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness, Gary Magnuss)

Best Director – Lee Daniels (Precious)

Best First Feature - Crazy Heart (Scott Cooper, Robert Duvall, Rob Carliner, Judy Cairo, T Bone Burnett)

John Cassavetes Award - Humpday (Lynn Shelton)

Best Screenplay – (500) Days of Summer (Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber)

Best First Screenplay – Precious (Geoffrey Fletcher)

Best Female Lead – Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)

Best Male Lead – Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)

Best Supporting Female – Mo'Nique (Precious)

Best Supporting Male – Woody Harrelson (The Messenger)

Best Cinematography – Roger Deakins (A Serious Man)

Best Documentary – Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi)

Best Foreign Film – An Education (Lone Scheerfig)

Robert Altman Award [given to one film's director, casting director and its ensemble cast] – A Serious Man (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Ellen Chenoweth, Rachel Tenner, Richard Kind, Sari Lennick, Jessica McManus, Fred Melamed, Michael Stuhlbarg, Aaron Wolff)

Producers Award – Karen Chien (The Exploding Girl, Santa Mesa)

Someone to Watch Award – Kyle Patrick Alvarez (Easier With Practice)

Truer Than Fiction Award – Bill Ross, Turner Ross (45365)

This 25th edition of the Film Independent Spirit Awards found the winds of change blowing through the event itself, with the familiarly informal big top on the beach setting having been given the heave-ho in favour of a move to a rooftop in downtown LA. The hour was later too, as afternoon made way for an evening schedule - allowing for such fun 'n' frolics as Ben Stiller announcing the Best Feature winner while a trio of supposed porn stars writhed around alongside him. Eddie Izzard took a break from appearing on UK telly screens yapping about marathons to host the ceremony, which also featured musical performances from Jeff Bridges (singing Fallin' and Flyin' from Crazy Heart) and the now-resurgent Anvil.

Whether a movie should strictly be classified as independent or not is a question which is as dense and tricky as whether Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a crappier movie than X-Men Origins: Wolverine. But as far as the Spirit Awards are concerned, if your film cost less than $20m and was put together outside the studio system then you are in with a shout of some trophy-fondling action. And it was the current challenges facing film-makers operating in the independent sphere that were on the mind of Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper as he collected his award for Best First Feature.

“Once the credit market collapsed and the equity dried up, many people found their films either in limbo or not getting financed at all... I have a feeling that Crazy Heart wouldn't get financed now if I had to shop it around town. So that was a fortuitous bit of timing.”

Precious has of course proved to be one of those few independent films that are fortunate enough each year to generate sufficient buzz and acclaim to enable them to break through and do decent business at the movie-house cash registers. And while awards wins such as its Jury Prize at Sundance in early 2009 was a nudge in the ribs that folks might want to sit up and pay attention to Lee Daniels' movie, the further endorsement given to it at the Spirits on Friday will only help to maintain this public interest.

Not that such matters appeared to be on the Precious director's mind during his acceptance speech, “Kathryn Bigelow is not here tonight. But I am.” For her part, Daniels' fellow producer Sarah Siegel-Magness gushed, “Thanks so much for allowing two white people from Colorado to enter your world... we together have made an amazing film that will be our children's legacy.” Nice to know she is keeping both feet firmly on the ground. Continuing her clean sweep of Supporting Actress trophies this awards-season, Mo'Nique chose to big up another in her speech, rather than honking her own horn, telling co-star Gabourey Sidibe that, “you are a special gift to the universe, baby.”

Quotes come courtesy of The Washington Post, The LA Times and The Hollywood Reporter.