All these wonderful things

The Great Lost Opportunity of Current's 50 Docs List

Our long national nightmare is finally over.

Current TV, the still-finding-its-identity network co-founded by Al Gore and newish home to left wing commentator Keith Olbermann, concludes its 5-week documentary film countdown - "50 Docs to See Before You Die" - tonight with the naming of its top 10 choices.

Revealed yesterday by the NY Times' Mike Hale, the top choice of the show's expert panel is Steve James' 1994 classic HOOP DREAMS, with Errol Morris' THE THIN BLUE LINE and Michael Moore's ROGER & ME coming in 2nd and 3rd.  The latter two films had previously been identified by the show as the demarcation of the beginning of the current "golden age" of documentary filmmaking on which the "50 Docs" list would focus.

It's this take on the modern age of documentary that seems to have brought the list and the series the most criticism: the late '80s cutoff forms a handy but ultimately confusing way for the series to eliminate any of the classic films by the Maysles, Robert Drew, Fred Wiseman, early Pennebaker, KOYAANISQATSI, HEARTS AND MINDS, HARLAN COUNTY, SHERMAN'S MARCH and any number of other influential works from contention. 

Despite the fact that the Times' Hale notes the "modern documentary" angle and bemoans the focus on "a relentless preference for the story-based or issue-based films that people now seem to think define the documentary field", commenters on the story still wrestle with the series/list's artificial construct - where is WOODSTOCK? THE LAST WALTZ? 7 UP? THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK? SHOAH?  The fact that potential viewers are still confused or find the current (get it) focus impractical suggests a basic problem with the premise.

Still, these are lists and lists are supposed to be fun, right?  Get past the confusion and the Times' comment section is filled with people's righteous indigation that their modern favorites have been overlooked.  Or those who argue that something should be higher on the list or lower or not on the list at all.

So if it gets people talking about documentaries, then who's to quibble, right?

Allow us.

March Marks the Start of Festival Season with True/False, Miami and SXSW About to Unspool

Now that we've got award season out of the way (I tweeted on Monday that "Moving Cinema Eye to January was the best decision ever. I can't imagine planning an awards show right now."), we can dive full force into the films of 2011.  And nothing underlines that more than the impending launch of two major US film festivals - True/False and SXSW - and the documentary rebirth of the Miami Film Festival, courtesy of doc-master Thom Powers, that festival's new documentary programmer. 

Miami kicks off unofficially tonight with an outdoor screening of Sarah McCarthy's THE SOUND OF MUMBAI, a crowd-pleasing film that premiered in Powers' 2010 Toronto line-up and has been picked up by the folks at HBO.  During the week that follows, Miami will screen a potent round-up of the best of Sundance 2011, including James Marsh's PROJECT NIM, Morgan Spurlock's THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD, Marshall Curry's IF A TREE FALLS, Steve James' THE INTERRUPTERS, Liz Garbus' BOBBY FISCHER AGAINST THE WORLD, Andrew Rossi's PAGE ONE, David Weissman's WE WERE HERE, Daniele Anastasion and Eric Strauss' THE REDEMPTION OF GENERAL BUTT NAKED, Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood's MAGIC TRIP and Göran Hugo Olsson's THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE.

[Full disclosure: I am on the documentary jury at the Miami Film Festival this year.]

Marsh, James, Garbus, Rossi, Ollson and Anastasion/Strauss will also be screening their films this weekend at True/False in Columbia, Missouri, where Marsh will be presented with the fest's True Vision Award (which has previously gone to Laura Poitras, Alex Gibney, Kim Longinotto and Kirby Dick) and the subjects of James' film THE INTERRUPTERS will be the beneficiaries of the fest's True Life Fund.

The Most Honored Documentary of 2010 is EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

After a full year in which Laura Poitras' THE OATH and Jeff Malmberg's MARWENCOL dominated our Nonfiction Feature Honor Roll with a full slate of festival jury prizes and year-end documentary awards, the onslaught of 2010's various film critics honors have handed the mantle of most honored documentary of the year to Banksy's EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP.

EXIT now has a full 24 mentions on the Honor Roll - a combination of year-end documentary award nominations and critics prizes - which is 8 ahead of the 2nd place film, MARWENCOL and 10 ahead of Poitras' THE OATH and fellow Oscar shortlisted doc, Charles Ferguson's INSIDE JOB.

Three other Oscar shortlisted features - Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger's RESTREPO, Amir Bar-Lev's THE TILLMAN STORY and Davis Guggenheim's WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' have 12 mentions each. 

After being absent from the list for most of the year (the film played out of competition at Sundance and Berlin), EXIT sprinted to the top of the Honor Roll chart on the basis of a somewhat surprising critical consensus - surprising not on the merits but because critics have tended to award issue-based docs over more entertaining fare.  Even last year when ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL was making a strong year-end showing among some critics, in the end the awards tended to favor the eventual Oscar winner, Louie Psihoyos' THE COVE. 

WASTE LAND Takes Top Prize at IDA Awards

A long night at Los Angeles' DGA Theater - punctuated by warm and sometimes biting humor from host Morgan Spurlock and an ace acceptance speech by Pioneer Award winners Alan and Susan Raymond - ended with the International Documentary Associations Documentary Feature Award going to Lucy Walker's WASTE LAND. 

It was the first time that the IDA had opened up its final voting to its general membership (nominees were determined by blue ribbon panels), which gave an edge to the audience pleasing WASTE LAND over its fellow nominees EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, THE OATH, STEAM OF LIFE and SWEETGRASS.

In fact, it's the latest in a long series of awards - including numerous Audience prizes - for WASTE LAND, which chronicles what happens when Brazilian artist Vik Muniz creates large scale portraits of garbage dump pickers using materials found at the dump.  We've long been forecasting a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination for the film, which was shortlisted last month.  WASTE LAND also received the IDA's Pare Lorentz Prize, one of several awards whose winner was announced prior to the event.

The award for Documentary Short went to Kiran Deol's WOMAN REBEL, which is also on the Academy's short list in its category. 

As Critics Prepare to Weigh in, THE OATH and MARWENCOL Still Lead Honor Roll

Think of it as a different kind of shortlist. 

The Academy weighed in their list of 15 films that will move forward in the Oscar race.  Some of those titles have done really well in awards and nominations leading up to the Granddaddy of them all while others haven't made a blip on the radar until now.

On our annual Nonfiction Feature Honor Roll, we usually find that things really begin to coallesce as the year ends.  Thus far we've heard from festival juries & audiences, and we've got nominees for each of the year's other big nonfiction awards (Spirits, Cinema Eye, IDA & Gothams).Starting today, with the National Board of Review weighing in on the year's best films, we'll start hearing from critics groups and then the various guilds.

But if we were to take the information we have to date - which 15 films would make the Honor Roll shortlist?  [We'll give you a hint - only 6 of the 15 are on the Academy's shortlist.]

THE OATH and WASTE LAND Among Pre-Announced Winners for Friday's IDA Awards

Laura Poitas' THE OATH and Lucy Walker's WASTE LAND, both of which are nominated for Best Feature Documentary at this Friday's IDA Awards, will definitely go home with some hardware as the IDA announced winners in several categories late Monday.

THE OATH, which won the Gotham Award last night for Best Documentary, will share the IDA's Humanitas Award with Roberto Hernández and Geoffrey Smith's PRESUMED GUILTY.  WASTE LAND will pick up the group's Pare Larentz Award. 

The Gothams Curse Lives! Laura Poitras Wins Best Doc for THE OATH

In a case of sweet justice - but also sign that the two award bodies just don't see eye to eye - Laura Poitras' THE OATH took home the Gotham Award tonight for Best Documentary, besting Oscar favorite INSIDE JOB and insuring that the Gothams Curse continues - no doc has ever won the Gotham and the Oscar in the same year.

THE OATH was famously left off the Academy's shortlist of 15 - perhaps the most egregious omission since Werner Herzog's GRIZZLY MAN - when Oscar announced its favorites just over a week ago.  THE OATH is nominated for Best Documentary at Friday's IDA Awards and has four nominations at January's Cinema Eye Honors, including Outstanding Feature and Outstanding Direction.

But as we speculated earlier today, INSIDE JOB may have been hoping for a snub tonight considering the history between the Gothams and Oscar.  One can only wonder if there will be any juice for WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN', which received the Gotham's first Audience Award.

Next up - Spirit Award nominations in the AM on Tuesday.

 

Oscar Goes Bigger for 2011: EXIT & 4 Other Million Dollar Grossers Lead Shortlist Pack

Yesterday afternoon, the Academy announced its documentary shortlist.  As we mentioned at the time, the headline was that EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP had defied most of the odds to hurdle what we thought would be the most difficult barrier stopping it from winning the Oscar - making the shortlist at all - while the most shocking snub was the failure to advance Laura Poitras' THE OATH, a film that we had pegged as a frontrunner and which had already been nominated for the top award at Cinema Eye, the IDA and the Gothams.

But more about those in a minute.

So, first off, it's not a terrible list.  I've seen a few folks contend that it's off-the-charts bad, and trust me, I've seen off-the-charts bad, and this isn't that.

It's curious, that's certain, but mostly because it's actually the kind of list that I think the Academy has been hoping for for years - a slick, brassy list of 15 that's chockablock full of big films and big directors: there's 5 million-dollar grossers in the bunch (the first time that has ever happened) and that doesn't include the headline-grabbing films about Pat Tillman and Eliot Spitzer and natural gas fracking, nor a just-opening, crowd-pleasing film about Brazilian garbage workers.

That makes at least 9 high-profile titles out of 15, which explains why a number of Oscar prognosticators felt pretty good about this year's list (and their pre-announcement predictions, which had centered on films that had a big theatrical launch and therefore that they'd actually heard of - not usually a good barometer).

A lot of these are big productions, too (which makes sense when you consider that Best Picture at the Oscars goes to the producers, not the directors), and for the first time in several years, many if not most of the big players seem to have a horse in the race - Sony Pictures Classics, Weinstein Co., HBO, NatGeo, Magnolia, Paramount, Cinetic, Oscilloscope (those that don't, like Roadside, either weren't really in the doc game this year or, like Zeitgeist and IFC, missed out with their own high profile titles).

And there are big name directors - two Oscar winners (Gibney and Guggenheim) and another nominee (Charles Ferguson), not to mention perhaps the world's most famous anonymous street artist.

This is the kind of shiny list that a lot of people can be (and likely are) pretty happy with, both inside and outside the Academy.

There are always going to be "snubs".  It's getting so that I dislike even using the word, because a "snub" almost implies that there's something unusual going on.  But if there are 3-5 or more "snubs" every year, it hardly seems novel.  Feels like we need a different word.

LAST TRAIN HOME, ARMADILLO, EXIT, MARWENCOL & THE OATH Lead 2011 Cinema Eye Nominations

Nominations were just announced at Sheffield Doc/Fest in the United Kingdom for the 4th Annual Cinema Eye Honors and the film with the most nominations is Lixin Fan's LAST TRAIN HOME, garnering 7 nominations, tying the record set previously by WALTZ WITH BASHIR and THE COVE.

Nominated with LAST TRAIN HOME for Outstanding Feature Film is Janus Metz' ARMADILLO, Banksy's EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (both with six nominations), Jeff Malmberg's MARWENCOL and Laura Poitras' THE OATH (which each garnered four nods).

Fan, Malmberg, Metz and Poitras were nominated for Outstanding Direction with legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman for LA DANSE: THE PARIS OPERA BALLET.  Wiseman is having a career resurgence with LA DANSE (which was nominated in three categories) and his new film BOXING GYM.

THE OATH has now been nominated for each of the major year end documentary prizes to date (Gothams and IDA previously).  EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP was also nominated for Best Documentary by the IDA.  MARWENCOL, which declined to pursue an Oscar nomination over the cost of fulfilling the Academy's requirements, was recently named the recipient of the IDA's Emerging Filmmaker Award.

It's the first year end awards recognition from ARMADILLO, which premiered at Cannes and has been a box office sensation in its native Denmark but is just having its US premiere tonight at DOC NYC, and LAST TRAIN HOME, which took top prize at IDFA last year and has seen steady theatrical business in the US and Canada.

Charles Ferguson's INSIDE JOB, considered by many to be the Oscar favorite, received three nominations, including a nod for Outstanding Production.  Ferguson was nominated previously for Cinema Eye for his debut film NO END IN SIGHT.

CATFISH, A FILM UNFINISHED, INTO ETERNITY, THE RED CHAPEL, RESTREPO, THE SOUND OF INSECTS - SECRET OF A MUMMY and SWEETGRASS all had two nominations.

From an international perspective, the nominations are dominated by Danish documentaries.  In addition to ARMADILLO, both INTO ETERNITY and THE RED CHAPEL are nominated for Outstanding International Feature (the other nominees are EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP and LAST TRAIN HOME).  

A full list of nominees is after the jump.

IDA Nominates EXIT, THE OATH, STEAM OF LIFE, SWEETGRASS & WASTE LAND for Top Doc

Last week, the International Documentary Association announced its five nominees for Best Documentary and Best Short, along with nominees and recipients of a number of its other awards that will be handed out Friday night December 3 in Los Angeles.

And in somewhat of a departure for the organization – but in keeping with the new tone and direction set by President Eddie Schmidt and Executive Director Michael Lumpkin – the five films selected for Best Documentary largely eschewed political topics, causes and agendas, focusing instead on character studies and artistic themes.

The nominated films are Banksy’s EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, Laura Poitras’ THE OATH, Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen’s STEAM OF LIFE, Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s SWEETGRASS and Lucy Walker’s WASTE LAND.

THE OATH and SWEETGRASS were both previously nominated for the Gotham Award for Best Documentary.  STEAM OF LIFE and WASTE LAND both qualified for Oscar consideration through the IDA’s DocuWeeks program.

The IDA also gave a nod to another film about art and burgeoning artists, awarding the Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Filmmaker to MARWENCOL director Jeff Malmberg.

Notably not on the IDA’s list – presumed Oscar frontrunners INSIDE JOB, RESTREPO, A FILM UNFINISHED, THE TILLMAN STORY and WAITING FOR “SUPERMAN”.

In the short film category, HBO nearly swept the nominees, garnering 4 of the 5 nominees for their films, including 2 of last year’s Oscar nominees – THE LAST TRUCK: CLOSING OF A GM PLANT by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert and THE LAST CAMPAIGN OF GOVERNOR BOOTH GARDNER by Daniel Junge.

Next up on the awards docket is the announcement of this year’s Cinema Eye nominees, coming tomorrow at Doc/Fest in Sheffield, UK.

A full list of IDA nominees is after the jump.