A quickie post highlighting winners from tonight's Sundance Film Festival Awards celebration.

First – Ava DuVernay, who seemed surprised to hear her name called, won the Directing Award in the Dramatic competition for her sophomore effort Middle Of Nowhere – a deliberate, frank, matured work; my review HERE. I'll have to go do some research on this, but I think it's been a long time (if ever) since an African American woman won this award. I'll go dig and come back with an update. UPDATE: Yup, this IS the very first time a black woman has won this particular award. I went back to the 1980s, before the festival even started giving out the award. So, Ava's made historty today. A trivia question for sometime in the future.

Second – Benh Zeitlin's Beasts Of The Southern Wild won the US Dramatic Cinematography Award, and the grand-daddy of them all, the Grand Jury Prize Award; I called it a striking feature debut on courage & resiliency; my review HERE.

Third – Detropia won the US Documentary Editing Award – a moving, painterly mourning of a once economically vibrant city; my review HERE.

That's it for now! 

Congrats to all the winners! Check out the full list HERE.