Is Cinema Eye Honors a prelude to The Academy Award category for Best Documentary? The fifteen features shortlisted for an Oscar affirm the artistry of the nonfiction film. A champion of the art of doc, Netflix has distributed several of this year’s best, including The Great Hack and American Factory. The films have been available to stream for a while, but I saw them on the big screen this weekend, at The Roxy Hotel and at the Crosby Street Hotel, with filmmakers on hand to discuss their art.

Steve Bognar talked about the complexities of American Factory, how our perspective on the global economy shifts as foreign countries come to us for cheap labor and opportunities. Focusing on a Chinese owned factory in Dayton, Ohio, the film, co-directed by Julia Reichart who could not attend, shows what happened when General Motors left the city, and their factory, eliminating jobs. One woman said she earned $29/hour working for the car industry, but now when the Chinese-owned Fuyao glass factory offered her a much-needed job, she had to accept $12/hour. We also see a shift in culture and labor ethics, the urgency of union affiliation, and resistance to it. With no easy answer, the film tells a compelling and resonant story. This award-winning film has won numerous awards, most recently Cinema Eye’s Honors for Outstanding Nonfiction Feature and Outstanding Direction.

On Saturday night, The Great Hack, screened at the Roxy Hotel, makes the case about data as lucrative commodity, even more than oil, and what it means that those buying data can and do manipulate our elections, and our democracy. Filmmakers Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer addressed the issues with a film community that included Alex Gibney, Chris Hegedus, and others. Their film The Square showed the connections and political implications of the internet for the Arab Spring. Now, the internet, Facebook especially is used to divide us, a point made going through Brexit and the politics of stoked fears. A whistleblower, their central character Brittany Kaiserr is the most complex character of all, having worked in the Obama administration, and then took a job with Cambridge Analytica that ended up helping Trump get elected. As I write, a Cambridge Analytica leak reveals an “industrial” scale of global manipulation through disinformation, as reported in The Guardian and Washington Post. The feature, awarded Cinema Eye Honor for Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design or Animation, was preceded by Ghosts of Sugarland, honored with Cinema Eye Outstanding Achievement for Nonfiction Short Filmmaking.

However it goes for Oscar nods, “Outstanding” is the operative word!