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The Women Film Critics Circle Announces Awards Nominations 2009

By Prairie Miller

The Women Film Critics Circle has announced their 2009 nominations for the best movies this year by and about women, and outstanding achievements by women, who get to be rarely honored historically, in the film world. The WFCC Awards Ceremony will be broadcast live on Wednesday 12/9 at 11am EST, on WBAI Radio in NY 99.5 FM, and streaming online and archived at wbai.org and criticalwomen.net.

The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of 47 women film critics and scholars from around the country and internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media. They came together in 2004 to form the first women critics' organization in the United States, in the belief that women's perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully.

Critical Women On Film, a presentation of The Women Film Critics Circle, is their journal of discussion and theory, and a gathering of women's voices expressing a fresh and differently experienced perspective from the primarily male dominated film criticism world. Critical Women On Film is online at: Criticalwomen.net.

THE WOMEN FILM CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS NOMINATIONS 2009

BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN
American Violet
Everlasting Moments
Coco Before Chanel
My One And Only

BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN
Amreeka: Cherien Dabis
Bright Star: Jane Campion
Julie & Julia: Nora Ephron
Sugar: Anna Boden

BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER [Screenwriting Award]
Amreeka: Cherien Dabis
Sunshine Cleaning: Megan Holley
The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee: Rebecca Miller
Rage: Sally Potter

BEST ACTRESS
Nicole Beharie: American Violet
Abbie Cornish: Bright Star
Amreeka: Nisreen Faour
Renee Zellweger: My One And Only

BEST ACTOR
Jeff Bridges: Crazy Heart
Ben Foster: The Messenger
Jake Gyllenhaal: Brothers
Kevin Spacey: Shrink

BEST YOUNG ACTRESS
Elle Fanning: Phoebe In Wonderland
Sidibe Gabourey: Precious
Carey Mulligan: An Education
Ryan Simpkins: Gardens Of The Night

BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS
Ellen Page: Whip It
Meryl Streep: Julie & Julia
Charlyne Yi: Paper Heart
Renee Zellweger: My One And Only

BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
The Baader Meinhof Complex
Everlasting Moments
Lemon Tree
Seraphine

BEST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Amreeka: Nisreen Faour
Inglourious Basterds: Mélanie Laurent
Lemon Tree: Hiam Abbass
The Messenger: Samantha Morton
My Sister's Keeper: Cameron Diaz

BEST UNRELEASED MOVIE BY OR ABOUT WOMEN [Includes films released on DVD or TV, or screened at film festivals]
Grey Gardens

BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES
Amelia
The Golden Boys
Julie & Julia
Paper Heart

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Gertrude Berg [Posthumous]: Yoo Hoo Mrs. Goldberg

ACTING AND ACTIVISM: Emma Thompson - For her work on and off screen against sex trafficking

ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women:
Gardens Of The Night
Off Jackson Avenue
Precious
The Lovely Bones

JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America
American Violet
Amreeka
Good Hair
Precious

KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman's place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity
The Baader Meinhof Complex
An Education
Lemon Tree
My One And Only

COURAGE IN ACTING [Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen]
Isabella Rossellini: Green Porno

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD [Supporting performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored]
Patricia Clarkson: Phoebe In Wonderland
Kerry Fox: Bright Star
Samantha Morton: The Messenger
4Olivia Williams: An Education

BEST DOCUMENTARIES BY WOMEN:

GROUNDBREAKER: The Beaches of Agnès, Agnès Varda

ABOVE AND BEYOND: American Casino, Leslie Cockburn

COURAGE IN FILMMAKING: Tattooed Under Fire, Nancy Schiesari

ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained about noise. Her killer tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from a shower20rack in her bathroom, to make it look like a suicide. He later confessed that he was having a "bad day." Shelly, who left behind a baby daughter, had just completed her film Waitress, which she also starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.

JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: The daughter of a laundress and a musician, Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer, starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him. Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs, where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.

KAREN MORLEY AWARD: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was driven out of Hollywood for her leftist political convictions by the Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for female stars in those days. Morley maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.

Prairie Miller is a multimedia journalist online, in print and on radio. Contact her through NewsBlaze.