EXCLUSIVE: DOC NYC today announced the honorees for its Visionaries Tribute at the upcoming 12th edition of the prestigious festival – the largest in the U.S. dedicated to nonfiction film.
Filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, and Independent Lens founding executive producer Lois Vossen will receive Lifetime Achievement awards at the ceremony on November 12 at New York’s Gotham Hall. The festival runs in person and online from Nov. 12-30.
Filmmaker Elizabeth Lo, whose feature documentary Mistress Dispeller is an Oscar contender, will receive the Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence. DOC NYC’s Leading Light Award will go to Carlos A. Gutiérrez, co-founding executive director of Cinema Tropical.
“Over the past 12 years, the Visionaries Tribute has become an essential date on the documentary calendar,” said DOC NYC co-founder and Director of Special Projects Thom Powers, who oversees the event. “This year’s honorees represent the spirit of perseverance against adversity. Our Lifetime Achievement recipients, Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson, and Lois Vossen have made a deep impact on this community over many years. Elizabeth Lo has created unforgettable cinematic moments in films such as Mistress Dispeller and Stray. And Carlos Gutiérrez has been the leading promoter of Latin American filmmakers in the U.S.”
Brewster and Stephenson directed Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, winner of the Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking Award at last year’s Emmys. That film, about the late poet and activist Nikki Giovanni, won the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at Sundance and was shortlisted for the Academy Award. Their 2023 documentary short Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games, also made the Oscar shortlist. True North, Stephenson’s film about the Black Power Movement in Montreal in the late 1960s, just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Brewster and Stephenson “co-founded Rada Studio to balance their family life with their passion for the arts,” notes a release. “Together, they have built an impressive portfolio of fiction films, documentaries, immersive XR installations, and books. Through a Black Atlantic lens, they reimagine narratives of resistance and healing, weaving fiction, immersive, experimental, and hybrid forms that center a Black Radical tradition and the lived experiences of the Black diaspora…”
Vossen is the founding executive producer of Independent Lens, which premiered on PBS in 2002. “She leads the programming of a diverse slate of 25-30 original documentaries, made by independent filmmakers, with each season covering an array of social, political, and cultural issues, showcasing Independent Lens as an evolving multiplatform series,” PBS writes. “Under her leadership, Independent Lens has become synonymous with high-quality, award-winning documentaries on timely topics including Philly DA, Belly of the Beast, I Am Not Your Negro, Tower, and The Invisible War.”
DOC NYC notes that Independent Lens has received 11 Academy Award nominations and 75 Emmy, Peabody, and duPont–Columbia University Awards. Vossen was inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) Silver Circle and honored as Nonprofit Leader of the Year by the Anthem Awards. Independent Lens has won Best Series six times at the IDA Documentary Awards.
Lo was born and raised in Hong Kong. Her documentary Mistress Dispeller explores the phenomenon of mistress dispellers who advertise an unusual service in China. A wife who discovers her husband is having an affair can hire a dispeller to break up the relationship between straying spouse and mistress, in exchange for a fee. Mistress Dispeller was recently acquired by Oscilloscope Laboratories for U.S. distribution. Lo’s 2020 debut feature, Stray, earned a New York Times “Critic’s Pick” designation and was released by Magnolia Pictures and Hulu.
The Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence is named for the pioneering husband and wife filmmaking team and includes a $5,000 cash prize contributed by Drew Associates. Past honorees include Lucy Walker, Maite Alberdi, Ondi Timoner, Peter Nicks, Alexander Nanau, Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Dawn Porter, Kim Longinotto, and Laura Poitras.
Jill Drew, the general manager of Drew Associates, who established the award at DOC NYC, commented, “Elizabeth Lo knows how to let her characters reveal themselves in action. When she commits to telling a story, she draws on all the skills and subtlety of her craft, allowing her film to flow in the best tradition of cinéma vérité.”
Carlos A. Gutiérrez, recipient of the Leading Light Award, is the co-founding executive director of Cinema Tropical, the New York-based media arts non-profit organization founded in 2001 and the leading promoter of Latin American cinema in the U.S. As a guest curator, he has organized series at institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, Film at Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim Museum, BAM Film, and Anthology Film Archives. He co-curated the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in 2007 and again in 2025 for its 70th anniversary. He is a founding member of the Distribution Advocates collective and currently serves as artistic director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Latin Wave film festival, and co-director of Cinema Tucsón.
DOC NYC’s Lifetime Achievement Award honors individuals with a substantial body of documentary film work. Past recipients are Alan Berliner, Marcia Smith, Michael Moore, Deborah Shaffer, Werner Herzog, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Joan Churchill, Raoul Peck, Sam Pollard, Jean Tsien, Martin Scorsese, Michael Apted, Wim Wenders, Orlando Bagwell, Sheila Nevins, Errol Morris, Stanley Nelson, Jonathan Demme, Barbara Kopple, Jon Alpert, Frederick Wiseman, D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, and Albert Maysles.
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