Today was the deadline for documentary submissions for the 78th Academy Awards.
Unlike the narrative categories (Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Cinematography and the like) where films are eligible if they are released during the calendar year, documentary eligibility ended yesterday. Today is the first day of eligibility for the 79th awards, which will be presented in 2007.
A few years ago, the documentary branch of the Academy changed the rules to favor films that had received a genuine theatrical release. Prior to this, films only had to play in one theater in New York and Los Angeles, so producers would book the Laemmle Monica for a Saturday-Sunday 10 AM screening just to qualify for a nomination. The change was done, in part, to rectify what many felt were outrageous oversights in the nominations, and has proved to be very successful, despite some controversy.
In fact, I believe the success of Fahrenheit 9/11 and the subsequent Michael Moore speech at the Oscars drew so much attention to the category that people were, perhaps for the first time, actually paying attention to the other nominees. So when Spellbound and Winged Migration came out in the months following the Oscar telecast, there was a built-in curiousity and they ended up becoming two of the biggest documentary films ever released.
Last year, television commentators were sure to mention that a popular film like Super Size Me received a nod as well as Tupac: Resurrection. Again, the documentary nominees were news. When Born Into Brothels won, it had made just $718,000 in 12 weeks. 19 weeks later, it had grossed 3.5 million and stands as the 19th highest grossing all time.
This year's nominees may come from films that are already big successes (Mad Hot Ballroom, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), critical darlings (Murderball, Grizzly Man) or from films that are sort of sneaking in through a side door. The IDA - International Documentary Association - has worked a way around the Oscar rules by sponsoring a moving festival that plays in enough cities to qualify those selected films for Oscar consideration. This festival used to be called DOCtober, then it was called inFACT and now it's just called Docuweek.
Among the films selected for this year's Docuweek are Darwin's Nightmare, Lost Children, Protocols of Zion and Occupation: Dreamland. One of the films in last year's inFACT? Oscar winner Born Into Brothels.
But personally, I'm hoping for a battle royale between the kid friendly Penguins and the vulgar Aristocrats. Who wouldn't want to tune in to see the winner of that fight? Who wouldn't want to hear Diane and Charlie and Joel talk that one over?
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