Brokeback wins honours at independent film awards

LOS ANGELES - The gay cowboys of Brokeback Mountain has lassoed the best feature prize at the Independent Spirit Awards, the art-house world's equivalent of the Oscars, a day before the picture competes for a leading eight honours at the Academy Awards.

Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee was named best director for the his work on the acclaimed drama, but the film had to share the spotlight with three other double-winners that will also vie for Oscar glory.

Capote took home the awards for male lead (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and screenplay (Dan Futterman); Transamerica won for female lead (Felicity Huffman) and first screenplay (Duncan Tucker); and Crash picked up honours for supporting male (Matt Dillon) and first feature.

In other categories, the controversial Palestinian suicide-bomber drama Paradise Now won for best foreign film, and the big-business morality tale Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room won for best documentary. Both are competing for Oscars in their respective fields.

The Independent Spirit Awards, now in their 21st year, honour low-budget films based on such criteria as original, provocative subject matter and the degree of independent financing.

There is traditionally little crossover with the Academy Awards, since the Oscars generally favour big studio films. But this year could prove the exception as Brokeback Mountain has swept virtually every awards show.

Hoffman is also the favourite to win an Oscar for his role as novelist Truman Capote. But Huffman's performance as a preoperative transsexual faces stiff competition for the actress prize from Reese Witherspoon, who played country singer June Carter in Walk the Line.

The Independent Spirit for supporting female went to Amy Adams, for her role as a kind-hearted southern belle in Junebug. Both Dillon, who played a mean-spirited cop, and Adams are up for Oscars in generally competitive fields.

The leading Independent Spirit nominee, the family drama The Squid and the Whale, was beaten in all of its six categories.

Brokeback Mountain and Capote were among the quartet of films with four nominations. Brokeback star Heath Ledger lost out to Hoffman, and co-star Michelle Williams to Adams.

Capote lost the best feature category to Brokeback Mountain and the cinematography prize to George Clooney's newsroom saga Good Night, and Good Luck, which also had four nominations. Tommy Lee Jones' frontier fable The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, the other four-time contender, lost all its races.

The Independent Spirit Awards are organized by Film Independent, a group that nurtures indie filmmakers, and winners are determined by the group's 9,000 members nationwide.

The event, hosted by comedian Sarah Silverman, took place under a marquee on Santa Monica Beach, a considerably more relaxed setting than the Oscars, which are held in a theatre inside a Hollywood shopping mall.

- REUTERS