The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees of the 91st annual Academy Awards early Tuesday morning. Two of the Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature feature work by New York Film Academy (NYFA) faculty members, while another two nominees have been guest speakers for NYFA students.
The 2019 Oscars ceremony will air live on ABC on Sunday, February 24. Notably, the ceremony may go without a host for the first time in years. In general, most of the nominees aren’t too surprising, mirroring similar lists to the BAFTAs and Golden Globes.
Two of the five Best Documentary Feature nominees are RBG and Free Solo. RBG, the wildly popular documentary from CNN Films profiling Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also picked up an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. The film was shot by director of photography and NYFA Documentary cinematography instructor Claudia Raschke, and directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen.
Raschke has worked on four other films previously nominated for Academy Awards, as well as Peabody, DuPont, and National Board of Review Award winners. Her oeuvre includes acclaimed documentaries as varied as My Architect, about Louis Kahn, Mad Hot Ballroom, which focuses on a New York dance program, and Particle Fever, which tracks the experiments of the Large Hadron Collider that ultimately discovered the Higgs boson (aka the “God particle”).
Free Solo is the critically-acclaimed and visually arresting National Geographic Films documentary following rock climber Alex Honnold as he makes a record-breaking attempt to scale El Capitan without the aid of ropes. The film’s editor, NYFA Documentary editing instructor Bob Eisenhardt, ACE, has edited over 60 films — mostly feature documentaries — including Everything is Copy (HBO), Jerusalem (IMAX), and Sundance Audience Award-winner Meru, directed by Free Solo directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi.
Eisenhardt was nominated for the Best Documentary Short Academy Award for Spaces: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph, and is a three-time Emmy winner and recipient of the coveted “Eddie” aka American Cinema Editors Award. Another two films Eisenhardt edited have previously been nominated for Oscars: The Divided Trail: A Native American Odyssey and No End In Sight.
Andrea Swift, Chair of NYFA’s Documentary Filmmaking department, is delighted to have such esteemed artists teaching as part of the school’s faculty. When Free Solo and RBG were first shortlisted for this year’s Academy Awards, Swift told NYFA, “For documentary masters like Claudia and Bob to work closely with the students on their films day in and day out — it just doesn’t get any better.”
In addition to the two Best Documentary Feature nominees, two previous NYFA guest speakers also picked up nods in acting categories. Adam Driver, who spoke with NYFA students in New York City last spring, was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his work in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman.
Glenn Close, who has been a guest speaker for New York Film Academy’s Los Angeles campus, was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role for The Wife — a role which recently earned her a Golden Globe. Accepting the Golden Globe after a surprising win, Close said in an impassioned speech, “Women — we’re nurturers — and that’s what’s expected of us… but we have to find personal fulfillment. We have to follow our dreams. We have to say, ‘I can do that’ and ‘I should be allowed to do that.’”
Additionally, NYFA alum Francesco Panzieri worked as a VFX artist on Avengers: Infinity War, which has earned an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects. Panzieri, who attended the 1-Year 3D Animation & VFX program at NYFA in 2008, has worked as a visual effects artist on Spider-Man: Homecoming, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and HBO’s Westworld.
The New York Film Academy congratulates this year’s nominees for the Academy Award and looks forward to seeing the winners announced next month!
Here is a full list of the 2019 Academy Award nominees:
Best Picture
Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star Is Born
Vice
Directing
BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee
Cold War, Paweł Pawlikowski
The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos
Roma, Alfonso Cuarón
Vice, Adam McKay
Original Screenplay
The Favourite, Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara
First Reformed, Paul Schrader
Green Book, Nick Vallelonga, Brian Currie, and Peter Farrelly
Roma, Alfonso Cuarón
Vice, Adam McKay
Adapted Screenplay
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
BlacKkKlansman, Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, and Spike Lee
Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty
If Beale Street Could Talk, Barry Jenkins
A Star Is Born, Eric Roth, Bradley Cooper, and Will Fetters
Actor in a Leading Role
Christian Bale, Vice
Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born
Willem Dafoe, At Eternity’s Gate
Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody
Viggo Mortensen, Green Book
Actress in a Leading Role
Yalitza Aparicio, Roma
Glenn Close, The Wife
Olivia Colman, The Favourite
Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born
Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Actress in a Supporting Role
Amy Adams, Vice
Marina de Tavira, Roma
Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
Emma Stone, The Favourite
Rachel Weisz, The Favourite
Actor in a Supporting Role
Mahershala Ali, Green Book
Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman
Sam Elliott, A Star Is Born
Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Sam Rockwell, Vice
Best Documentary Feature
Free Solo
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Minding the Gap
Of Fathers and Sons
RBG
Documentary Short
Black Sheep
End Game
Lifeboat
A Night at the Garden
Period. End of Sentence.
Foreign Language Film
Capernaum, Lebanon
Cold War, Poland
Never Look Away, Germany
Roma, Mexico
Shoplifters, Japan
Animated Feature
Incredibles 2
Isle of Dogs
Mirai
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Animated Short Film
Animal Behavior
Bao
Late Afternoon
One Small Step
Weekends
Live Action Short
Detainment
Fauve
Marguerite
Mother
Skin
Original Score
Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
If Beale Street Could Talk
Isle of Dogs
Mary Poppins Returns
Original Song
“All the Stars,” Black Panther
“I’ll Fight,” RBG
“The Place Where Lost Things Go,” Mary Poppins Returns
“Shallow,” A Star Is Born
“When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings,” The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Cinematography
Cold War, Lukasz Zal
The Favourite, Robbie Ryan
Never Look Away, Caleb Deschanel
Roma, Alfonso Cuarón
A Star Is Born, Matthew Libatique
Film Editing
BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Vice
Production Design
Black Panther
The Favourite
First Man
Mary Poppins Returns
Roma
Costume Design
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Black Panther
The Favourite
Mary Poppins Returns
Mary Queen of Scots
Sound Mixing
Black Panther
Bohemian Rhapsody
First Man
Roma
A Star Is Born
Sound Editing
Black Panther
Bohemian Rhapsody
First Man
A Quiet Place
Roma
Makeup and Hairstyle
Border
Mary Queen of Scots
Vice
Visual Effects
Avengers: Infinity War
Christopher Robin
First Man
Ready Player One
Solo: A Star Wars Story