Alex Gibney Named 2014 Guggenheim Honoree By The American Film Institute

Alex Gibney Named 2014 Guggenheim Honoree By The American Film Institute

Filmmakers and Policy Leaders to Attend June 20, 2014 AFI DOCS Charles Guggenheim Symposium at the National Archives in Washington, DC

WASHINGTON, May 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Film Institute announced today that AFI DOCS will pay tribute to Academy Award(® )winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney as its 2014 AFI DOCS Charles Guggenheim honoree during its 12th edition held June 18-22, 2014 in Washington, DC and Silver Spring, MD.

The AFI DOCS Charles Guggenheim Symposium honors masters of the non-fiction art form who inspire audiences by documenting and exploring the human experience. The Guggenheim Symposium will be held on Friday, June 20 at the National Archives' William G. McGowan Theater and includes a presentation of Gibney's work and a moderator-led discussion and Q&A with Gibney.

"Alex Gibney's personal drive to find and expose truth in film makes him one of the most important documentarians of this and any generation," said Christine O'Malley, Interim Director, AFI DOCS. "His films have etched a place in American history, both as compelling independent storytelling and journalism, so it particularly fitting that AFI pay tribute to him in Washington and at the National Archives."

Gibney's 2007 film, TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE, received an Oscar(®) for Best Feature-Length Documentary, a Best Director nomination from the Director's Guild of America, as well as a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Documentary Screenplay. His devotion to telling the story of the central character Dilawar earned not only the enduring respect of the filmmaking community, but of policymakers grappling with the issue of torture and the conduct of the U.S. military in the last decade.

Gibney received his first Academy Award(®) nomination for ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM (2005). He also served as an Executive Producer on the Academy Award(®)-nominated NO END IN SIGHT (2007), the same year TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE won the Oscar(®) for Best Feature-Length Documentary.

Gibney joins a legendary list of Guggenheim honorees, each a master of documentary film: Charles Guggenheim (2003), Barbara Kopple (2004), Martin Scorsese (2006), Jonathan Demme (2007), Spike Lee (2008), Albert Maysles (2009), Frederick Wiseman (2010), Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker (2011), Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (2012) and Errol Morris (2013).

Tickets to the Guggenheim Symposium and festival events will be available in June. At AFI DOCS this year, screenings and discussions will continue to connect audiences, artists, issue experts, film subjects and policy leaders. Details will be announced in the coming weeks at AFIDOCS.com.

American Airlines, the official airline of AFI, is a proud sponsor of AFI DOCS.

The Washington Post is proud to be a major media sponsor of AFI DOCS.

About the National Archives and Records Administration

The Charles Guggenheim Center for the Documentary Film at the National Archives was established in 2004 in honor of four-time Oscar®- winner and past president of the Foundation for the National Archives, Charles Guggenheim. The Center's mission is to advance public understanding of the process, challenges, and social impact of documentary filmmaking and to promote the education of young people and professionals. The Center is both a living legacy of an internationally acclaimed producer and director and an extension of America's premier resource for documentary film research.

The National Archives is an independent Federal agency that preserves and shares with the public records that trace the story of our nation, government, and the American people. From the Declaration of Independence to accounts of ordinary Americans, the holdings of the National Archives directly touch the lives of millions of people. The National Archives, as the nation's record keeper, holds one of the world's largest moving image repositories, with more than 360,000 reels of motion picture film titles. The National Archives carries out its mission through a nationwide network of archives, records centers, and Presidential Libraries, and online at http://www.archives.gov.

SOURCE American Film Institute

American Film Institute

CONTACT: Lauren Selman, AFI DOCS PR, 301.651.5152 or Lselman@AFI.com, or Liza Ameen, American Film Institute, 323.856.7885 or Lameen@AFI.com

Web Site: http://www.afi.com


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