Premios ACE — Association of Latin Entertainment Critics of New York — Latin ACE Award, Best Documentary Film of 2014
Premios ACE — Association of Latin Entertainment Critics of New York — 2015
Little Spain: A Century of History won the Latin ACE Award from the Association of Latin Entertainment Critics of New York in 2015, for Best Documentary Film of 2014. It was the first of two consecutive Best Documentary awards the Association gave to Arthur Balder’s films, in 2015 and 2016.
The Association
The Asociación de Cronistas de Espectáculos de Nueva York — the Association of Latin Entertainment Critics, known by its initials ACE — was founded in New York on 12 December 1967 as a non-profit cultural organisation, and has presented its awards every year since 25 May 1969. Its categories cover theatre, film, television, cable and variety, and since 1983 a separate annual gala has honoured musicians. Over more than half a century it has given awards to figures including Plácido Domingo, Julio Iglesias and Juan Gabriel. On 27 March 1992 the United States House of Representatives formally recognised the organisation, through Congressman José E. Serrano of New York.
The ACE is, in other words, the body through which the Spanish-speaking press of New York has judged its own cultural output since the late 1960s — critics writing in Spanish, in the city, for the readership the newspapers of Little Spain once served.
What the award meant for this film
That is what gives the 2015 award its particular weight. Little Spain is a film about the Spanish colony of Manhattan — the shops and societies of 14th Street, the church of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, the rooms of La Nacional — and the prize came not from a festival jury abroad but from the Hispanic critics of New York itself, the institutional descendants of the press that covered that neighbourhood while it still existed.
It was also the film’s first major recognition. The ACE Award was announced at the start of 2015, before the Gijón selection in the autumn and before Donald Kuspit’s review that summer. It is what put the film in the Spanish national press.
Reported in Spain
The award was carried in Spain within weeks. On 2 February 2015 ABC ran it on the back page of its national edition, under the headline “El documental que narra la historia de ‘Little Spain’ ha sido premiado en EEUU”, written by José María Carrascal, long the paper’s correspondent in New York. His subheading was plain: “El filme gana el Premio de la ACE al Mejor Documental.”
Two weeks later, on 15 February 2015, XL Semanal — among the largest weekend magazines in Spain — reported that “el documental ha sido galardonado por la ACE de Nueva York con el premio al Mejor Documental de 2014”, in a feature on the Spaniards who built a quarter of Manhattan.
Related
- ABC — the ACE Award reported (2 February 2015)
- XL Semanal — “Los españoles que conquistaron Manhattan”
- Gijón International Film Festival 2015
- The history of Little Spain, Manhattan
- La Nacional — the Spanish Benevolent Society, 1868–2000
- All press coverage