Nominations are open for 2025. Submissions are due August 31, 2024.
The award is global in scope with no geographic or political boundaries limiting subject matter or production team. The topic of the film or video must be any aspect of the built environment including the history of buildings, interiors, monuments, landscapes,
cultural landscapes, urbanism, designers, engineers, clients, preservation, conservation, citizen engagement, or other topics related to the history of the built environment.
Films and videos representing a wide range of methodologies
will be considered including documentaries, critiques, theoretical works and documentary recreations of lost sites. Films and videos by independent directors and producers, including those with a K-12 educational focus, are also welcome.
Films or videos must have an initial release date within the past three years. Honorable Mentions may also be awarded.
Entries for consideration will be submitted, on a DVD or a link to an online viewing site such as Vimeo,
to the award committee members and the SAH office by the director, producer, or producer’s distributor.
Nominees will also submit a 150–250-word narrative that addresses the goals of the film/video, the intended audience,
where the work has been screened/aired/viewed, and what kind of response the work has received.
The most important criterion is the work’s contribution to the understanding of the built environment, defined either as deepening
that understanding or as bringing that understanding to new audiences. A second criterion is a high standard of research and analysis, whether the production was for a scholarly audience, a general audience, or both. A third criterion is excellence
in design and production.
| July 1, 2024 | Nominations open |
| August 31, 2024 at 11:00 pm CDT | Nomination period closes |
| September–November 2024 | Committee deliberations |
| January 2025 | Award(s) announcement |
| April-May 2024 | Awards conferred at 78th Annual Conference |
| 2023 | We Love We Self Up Here
Kannan Arunasalam, Director and Tao DuFour and Natalie Melas, Producers, 2021 | |
| 2022 | Not Just Roads | |
| 2021 | Uppland Based on research by Killian Doherty and directed by Edward Lawrenson, 2018 | |
| 2020 | The First Line of China City Dreamers, 2018 Director: Joseph Hillel Producer: Ziad Touma Learning from Buffalo, 2018Filmmaker: Rima Yamazaki | |
| 2019 | Vilanova Artigas – the Architect and the Light Directed by Laura Artigas and Peter Gorski Olé Produções, 2015 | |
| 2018 | Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future Director: Peter Rosen Peter Rosen Productions, 2016 | |
| 2017 | Talking to My Father Filmmaker: Sé Merry Doyle Loopline Film, 2015 | |
| Honorable Mention: Tower House sixpackfilm, 2013 Filmmaker: Karl-Heinz Klopf A Tropical House sixpackfilm, 2015 Filmmaker:Karl-Heinz Klopf | ||
| 2016 | The New Rijksmuseum Filmmaker: Oeke Hoogendijk First Run Features, 2014 | |
| Honorable Mention: Haus Tugendhat Pandora Film, 2013 Filmmakers: Dieter Reifarth (director) and Filipp Goldscheider (producer) | ||
| 2015 | The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux and the Buffalo Park System Library of American Landscape History in association with Florentine Films/Hott Productions, Inc, 2013 | |
| 2014 | Unfinished Spaces Filmmakers: Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray Bullfrog Films, 2012 |
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The semi-autobiographical account of a European plantation manager on Sumatra during Dutch colonial rule becomes a starting point for reflections on the structure of the plantation itself.
