All these wonderful things

Nomination Dispute on Oscar Doc Short POSTER GIRL Ignites Divisive Fight at the Academy

For most of the world, the press release sent out by the Academy one week ago today seemed simple and direct.  Headed "Oscar Credits Determined for Documentary Short Subjects", the release was only somewhat notable in that it announced the first Oscar nomination for Mitchell Block, a veteran player and somewhat controversial figure in the documentary world, for the short film POSTER GIRL, which was directed by Sara Nesson.

But what seemed simple on the outside masked an fierce dispute within the Academy's Documentary Branch.  Two different committees had ruled that Block had not done enough work on the film to qualify for an Oscar nod, but those decisions were overturned by a four-person review committee that represented the Academy's Board of Governors.  How and why the decision went to the four-person committee is at the crux of the conflict.

Perhaps none of this would be known outside of the Academy if Freida Lee Mock, the Oscar winning filmmaker and former Doc Branch Governor, had not emailed some of the details to Roger Ebert, who last Friday wrote about the dispute and then quickly deleted the blog post, reportedly after hearing from Movie City News' David Poland.  By late Friday afternoon, all that remained was Poland's own post, which was sympathetic to Block and critical of Mock, but which remained somewhat vague as to what actually happened.

While Poland suggested that the situation was a smear job against Block, conversations with a number of Academy members over the weekend reveal a much more complicated - and a far more divisive - battle than has been publicly made known.  And while the heart of the dispute rests with the Academy's real desire to limit inappropriate producer credits, it's set against a backdrop of a series of personal grudges that date back to the late 1980s.

Charles Ferguson Wins the DGA Documentary Award for INSIDE JOB

Saturday night in Los Angeles, Charles Ferguson picked up the DGA Award for INSIDE JOB, winning top honors from a field that included Davis Guggenheim (WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN'), Alex Gibney (CLIENT 9), Lixin Fan (LAST TRAIN HOME) and Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger (RESTREPO).

The presentation of the award picked up some unexpected humor/irony as presenter Helen Mirren lamented the poor financial state of documentary filmmakers just before presenting the award to Ferguson, who a decade ago sold his software company to Microsoft for more than $100 million dollars.

The DGA win is an important one for the Oscar-nominated INSIDE JOB, which was regarded as this year's Oscar favorite after its debut last May at Cannes, but which, in terms of major awards, had only scored a New York Film Critics Circle prize prior to Saturday, where it narrowly topped the surging EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (also Oscar-nommed).  EXIT director Banksy was not nominated for the DGA award.

Other than the NYFCC, the few times that INSIDE JOB has gone head-to-head with EXIT, neither film came out the victor.  Both were nominated for Audience Choice and Production at the Cinema Eye Honors (JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK and LAST TRAIN HOME took those awards, respectively, although EXIT did win two awards including Outstanding Nonfiction Feature) and for the Broadcast Film Critics Award (where WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' won).  JOB was nomned for the Gotham Award, but lost out to THE OATH.

Unraveling the Myths Behind SUPERMAN's Oscar "Snub"

Lots of folks were working overtime this morning, trying to reason out why Davis Guggenheim's WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' didn't get the Oscar nomination that so many (including us in our final predictions) forecasted. 

Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood website blames it the politics - arguing Guggenheim is learning "the price a political apostate pays in Hollywood for straying off  the liberal plantation".  Says John Nolte

"But how could America’s teachers unions not have been thrilled with the news that Guggenheim's damning indictment of the devastation they have brought down upon America’s public school system and millions upon millions of children was snubbed by the Academy this morning?"

The conservative National Review agrees that the omission was "extremely disappointing" (it also opines for the lack of THE LOTTERY as well), but stops short of calling it a liberal blacklisting.

The Washington Post (writing from a hometown in which some of 'SUPERMAN' takes place) said it was because the film "was not good/accurate enough to be selected" and levels a number of truthfulness claims at the film.  The AP's Jake Coyle also speculates along that line, saying it went missing "perhaps because some experts deemed it an inaccurate exaggeration of charter schools".

Dave Karger at Entertainment Weekly says it's because the Doc Branch is so "quirky".

And finally, in a conversation with the Washington City Paper's Benjamin Freed, Oscar blogger Scott Feinberg goes to the old saw that Doc Branch voters are "older, retired and perhaps less in touch", even though he acknowledges that that hardly explains the nomination for EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (or the creatively made GASLAND).

So there's the theories - liberal bias, accuracy and that quirky, old, retired documentary branch.

Wrong on all three counts.  Here's why WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' didn't get nominated today:

DGA Nominates Fan, Ferguson, Gibney, Guggenheim, Hetherington & Junger for Doc Award

The Directors Guild has announced its nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary for 2010 and indieWIRE has the list.

In short - many of the big names left standing on Oscar's Documentary Shortlist are noted by the DGA: Charles Ferguson for INSIDE JOB, Alex Gibney for CLIENT 9, Davis Guggenheim for WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' and Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger for RESTREPO.  The fifth nominee is Lixin Fan, whose LAST TRAIN HOME leads all nominees for next Tuesday's Cinema Eye Honors.

The DGA rarely syncs up with the Oscars - last year's win by THE COVE's Louie Psihoyos at both is the exception that proves the rule - and usually includes at least one wild card nominee that seemingly comes out-of-the-blue.  Not this time, however, as the DGA went more mainstream in their choices than is their tradition.

The DGA Awards take place Saturday, January 29 in Los Angeles.

 

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. 

POSITION AMONG THE STARS Takes Top Prize at IDFA, WASTE LAND Grabs Audience

The Dutch film POSITION AMONG THE STARS by filmmaker Leonard Retel Helmrich took two prizes this afternoon at IDFA in Amsterdam, including the festival's coveted top prize for Best Feature-Length Documentary.

With the win, Retel Helmrich becomes the first filmmaker ever to take IDFA's prize twice - he previously won the award in 2004 for THE SHAPE OF THE MOON.

For the past four years, the IDFA winner would move on to screen at Sundance in Park City, become one of the top films of international festival circuit and be nominated for multiple Cinema Eye Honors (THE MONASTERY in 2006, STRANDED in 2007, BURMA VJ in 2008 and LAST TRAIN HOME in 2009).

POSITION also received the Dutch Documentary prize, which was created last year. 

The Feature-Length jury said that POSITION "is a magical, patient and insightful example of free cinema... (that uses) unique cinematic sensibilities (to produce) a relevant and eternal story."

Continuing its dominance of international audience awards, Lucy Walker's WASTE LAND received the votes from the crowds.  Last year, that award went to another film that won a number of festival audience prizes - Louie Psihoyos' THE COVE.  WASTE LAND is on the Academy's 15-film shortlist and we've pegged it as a favorite for a nomination.

The runners-up for the Audience Award were Jan Tenhaven's AUTUMN GOLD (which took the Doc U Award) and Alexander Nanau's THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ION B.

Full list of winners are after the jump.  You can find our report on all of this year's finalists here.

The Shortlist is Coming! The Shortlist is Coming!

'Twas the week before Thanksgiving and all through the house, all the documentary filmmakers were waiting to hear whether they'd made the Academy's list of 15 features that would vie for the Best Documentary Oscar.  Word on the street is that the announcement could come as early as today and as late as Monday.  And no one is sure whether the Academy will give the shortlisted filmmaker a heads-up phone call, as was the practice for years, or whether the list will be sprung without warning, as happened in 2009.

We did a early-prediction piece back in September that tried to assess the state of the Oscar campaigns coming at the eligibility deadline.  And back then, we named INSIDE JOB and RESTREPO as the two frontrunners.

We're no longer so sure about that...

We still think that INSIDE JOB is toward the front of the pack - the Charles Ferguson film has built on its early critical huzzahs out of Cannes and has settled in nicely at the box office: 1.5M and counting. RESTREPO, meanwhile, seems to have stumbled a bit.  Its summer release is getting not the tiniest bit overshadowed by the soon-to-be-released, super-cinematic Danish film ARMADILLO (which, not for nothing, scored 6 Cinema Eye nominations a couple weeks ago).  ARMADILLO is also in the hunt for this year's Oscar.

I'd still be very surprised if RESTREPO isn't on the shortlist when it's unveiled, but the omission isn't out-of-the-question.

Also bumped up to front-runner status: Davis Guggenheim's zeitgeisty WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN'.  Take away the fact that Guggenheim already has his Oscar (and his family has something like half a dozen), 'SUPERMAN' is certain to be the biggest "serious issue" doc of 2010 - at least at the box office - and that usually has meant something.  Plus, Guggenheim is known throughout the larger film community as a good guy who moves adeptly between nonfiction and narrative.

Still, when you go out into the documemtary community - and that's the path all these films must take to get a nomination - it's hard to find folks who LOVE either film.  You find a lot of respect for the solid way that the films were made, but nobody's really doing cartwheels.

It's a third film - the only one to score nominations from Cinema Eye, the IDA and the Gothams thus far - that people really seem to love: Laura Poitras' THE OATH.

We think it's a near-lock for a nomination.  And it may (crazy as it sounds) have a shot to win it all.  Here's why: