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'The Artist', 'Project Nim' Directors Win 2011 Directors Guild Awards

by Alex Billington
January 29, 2012
Source: DGA.org

Will the old Hollywood silent B&W film go all the way and sweep the awards season? It's look like that might be the case. French director Michel Hazanavicius has won the 2011 DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for The Artist. Only six times since the DGA Award's inception in 1948 has the winner not gone on to receive the Academy Award for Best Director. Last year Tom Hooper won as well. The Artist is a fantastic film and Hazanavicius is a wonderful guy (watch my interview with him here) and I'm not surprised he won, as this film is winning pretty much every award Hollywood can give out.

The other nominees for the 2011 DGA Awards included: Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris, David Fincher for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Alexander Payne for The Descendants and Martin Scorsese for Hugo.

The winners of the Directors Guild of America Outstanding Directorial Achievement Awards for 2011 were announced tonight during the 64th Annual DGA Awards Dinner held at the Grand Ballroom in Los Angeles. Following the welcome by DGA President Taylor Hackford to an audience of more than 1,600 DGA guests, actor Kelsey Grammer hosted the ceremony. In addition to Hazanavicius, filmmaker James Marsh and his Nim Chimpsky chimp doc Project Nim won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. You can see the full list of DGA winners (for television and commercials, too) on DGA.org.

If it wasn't obvious enough with The Artist winning the Producers Guild Award just a few weeks ago, and landing plenty of Oscar nominations, it's probably going to end up winning Best Picture and sweeping most of the Academy Awards in a few weeks. However, that's perfectly fine with me, as it truly is a wonderful film deserving of all the love, and I think the backlash it's getting is entirely unnecessary and unfounded. It's a great film and I suggest just seeing and enjoying it yourself. We'll be keeping watch as we near the Oscars, as the DGAs are one of the final big awards left before the Academy wraps up the 2011 season once and for all.

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