The recipients were filmmakers Deborah Shaffer and Rachel Reichman for their film, “Queen of Hearts: Audrey Flack”
It was presented by Kevin Miserocchi from the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, sponsors of the award.

PRODUCERS: Davina Pardo, Deborah Shaffer, Amy Sultan
EDITOR: Rachel Reichman CINEMATOGRAPHER: Elizabeth Nichols

At 88 years-old, Audrey Flack holds a unique place in the history of contemporary art in America. She has been a trailblazer, from her early days as an Abstract Expressionist in the 50’s, to her successful career as the sole female Photorealist in the 70’s, to her monumental public sculptures of recent decades. Queen of Hearts follows Flack as she takes her work in a brand new direction and reveals her long-term struggles as the mother of a child with autism.

 Deborah Shaffer has been making social issue documentaries since the early 1970’s. In the 1980s, she directed Witness to War, which won an Academy Award; Fire From The Mountain, which received an Emmy nomination; and Dance of Hope, which received the Prix d'Or at the International Festival of Audiovisual Programming. She directed and wrote Secrets Underground for the WGBH series “Discovering Women” in 1994. In 2001 she directed two shows for the PBS series “Art 21: Art in the 21st Century,” which was nominated for an Emmy. Rwanda: Ladies First, which she co-directed and wrote for WNET’s “Wide Angle,” was awarded an Emmy in 2004. Her most recent film, To Be Heard, won awards at numerous festivals and aired on PBS in 2012. 

Rachel Reichman has edited scores of prize-winning documentaries, including Hitchcock/Truffaut (Directed by Kent Jones), A Letter to Elia (Directed by Kent Jones and Martin Scorsese), and Women, War and Peace (Directed by Gini Reticker). She directed the independent feature films The Work, starring Sonja Sohn, which premiered at MoMA in New Directors/New Films in 1996, and The Riverbed, which premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 1986.

Festival and award photography by c.b. grubb