The Location Managers Guild International (LMGI) has announced that Director David Yates will receive this year’s Eva Monley Award at the 8th Annual LMGI Awards on Saturday, October 23, at 2:00 pm PDT in a virtual ceremony, dubbed “Celebrate the Where.” The award recognizes and honors industry members who support the vision of location professionals, and you can register to stream the ceremony HERE. Yates is best known for directing the second half of Warner Bros‘ Harry Potter franchise and the three Fantastic Beasts movies, two of which have been released.
Each year, the LMGI presents their Honorary Eva Monley Award to a filmmaker whose efforts have demonstrated “above and beyond” support of the work of location professionals. Named in honor of the late Eva Monley, who was the go-to person to scout and organize logistics in remote locations for John Huston, Otto Preminger, David Lean and many others. Immensely curious, capable and self-reliant, Eva thrived in a peripatetic film career spanning 50 years. A spirited, innovative person whose pioneering contributions to the location profession inspired the award being names after her. Previous Honorees have included talents such as Alexander Payne, Wes Anderson, Danny Boyle, Peter Weir and Christopher McQuarrie.
The theme of this year’s program is “Celebrate the Where.” Actor and director Isaiah Mustafa will return to host the 8th Annual LMGI Awards which honor the outstanding and creative visual contributions by location professionals in film, television and commercials from around the globe. The LMGI Awards also recognize outstanding service by film commissions for their support “above and beyond” during the production process. This year’s show will be produced by Erick Weiss, Honeysweet Creative, and IngleDodd Media and written by Shelly Goldstein.
In making the announcement, John Rakich, LMGI President and Awards Committee Chair, said, “We are delighted to honor David Yates whose wonderful films have always made full use of his location professionals’ work. We are also happy to welcome back actor/director Isaiah Mustafa and his comic sensibility to host the LMGI Awards for the second year.”
The four Potter films directed by Yates were Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 and Part 2. He continued his collaboration with J.K. Rowling by directing Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
In 2016, Yates directed the action-adventure The Legend of Tarzan, starring Alexander Skarsgård, Margot Robbie, Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz. Yates won his first BAFTA Award for his work on the BBC miniseries The Way We Live Now. In 2003, he directed the drama series State of Play, for which he received a BAFTA Award nomination and won the Directors Guild of Great Britain (DGGB) Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. The following year Yates won another BAFTA Award for the two-part drama Sex Traffic which also earned him a DGGB nomination. The gritty look at sex trafficking also won numerous international awards. Yates earned an Emmy® nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special for his work on the 2005 HBO movie The Girl in the Café.
This year, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 8th Annual LMGI Awards will, once again, be presented on a digital platform, streaming to a worldwide and more inclusive audience.
You can see this year’s LMGI Awards nominees here. As previously reported, Aine Furey will receive this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
