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An Award Season (Finally) Ends as INSIDE JOB Wins; Ferguson and Marrs Defend Banksy, Enter Oscar History

In just a few minutes it was over.  A solid plug for documentaries and an outstanding year of films by presenter (and documentary doyenne-wannabe) Oprah Winfrey, a quick montage of the five nominated features, the opening of an envelope, a strong political statement from a newly-minted Oscar winning director and a thank you to the documentary community from a just-crowned Oscar winning producer. 

And then it was done.

After months of speculation and the presentation of countless peer, festival and critics awards, the Oscar went to Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs for INSIDE JOB.

Ferguson took his Oscar and seized his moment: "Forgive me, but I must start by pointing out that three years after a horrible financial crisis caused by massive fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail and that's wrong."

In her speech, Marrs spoke of the larger documentary community: "Having only made two films, I still feel that Charles and I are newcomers to this community, but from the beginning we've been made to feel incredibly welcome and supported for which I'm immensely grateful."

Backstage, the filmmakers were asked by questioner about their fellow nominee, Banksy, who inspired a great deal of speculation prior to the ceremony over what he might do if his film, EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, won the Oscar.  Asked whether all the Banksy talk distracted from documentary, Marrs spoke out in the artist's defense:

"I would never question the integrity of another filmmaker, and I appreciate the fact that there was a film that was fun and funny, and I don't think documentarians should necessarily feel obligated to make films about these really heavy subjects. Although, in some ways, I guess making a film about art is, but I appreciated there was one like that in the mix because I think documentarians should be able to make films about whatever they want."

Ferguson added, "I thought the Banksy film was lovely.  A beautiful film."

Our Oscar and Spirit Awards Predictions

With Los Angeles abuzz in pre-Oscar festivities, it seems that it's become time to weigh in on this year's awards and to offer a few predictions about who might go home with some hardware.

Saturday afternoon, amidst what is predicted to be a stormy and cold Spirit Awards under the tent in Santa Monica, it seems safe to say that the Documentary Feature award will go to either EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP or RESTREPO.  The history of the Spirit Awards is that, in the documentary category at least, exposure/box office potency = the win. Only twice in the ten years of the Best Documentary award has the winner not been a film with the highest box office take - last year was one of those when ANVIL! topped FOOD, INC.

[Check out our list of all of the Spirit Awards nominees and winners in the documentary categories here.]

With that said, it's hard to imagine that the FIND membership will go with MARWENCOL or SWEETGRASS, which had lower-profile theatrical releases, or to THUNDER SOUL, which is set to be released by Roadside Attractions this fall.

Just by tradition alone, you'd have to pick EXIT as the winner here.  It grossed about three times the amount that RESTREPO did, and it fits in with the pop culture themes that tend to win on Saturday (i.e. previous winners DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, SOME KIND OF MONSTER, ANVIL!).  A non-pop culture, vérite-style film, which, aside from a sprinkling of interviews with the subjects, RESTREPO is, hasn't won the Documentary award at the Spirits since 2000 (DARK DAYS).

Note: MARWENCOL and SWEETGRASS, along with SUMMER PASTURE, were nominated for the Spirit Awards' grant prize, the Truer Than Fiction Award, which recognizes upcoming nonfiction filmmakers (and which has been won in the past by Bill and Turner Ross (45365), Margaret Brown (THE ORDER OF MYTHS) and Ian Olds & Garrett Scott (OPERATION: DREAMLAND).  For the first time in the Spirit Awards history, this award (along with the other grant prizes for upcoming narrative filmmaker and producer) will not be announced during the Spirit Awards themselves - they were shifted to a brunch event that took place in January.  MARWENCOL was named as this year's winner.

So, if EXIT looks like a straight-away winner at the Spirit Awards, then the question is whether Banksy and Jaimie D'Cruz triumph on Sunday afternoon in the Kodak Theatre.

For Your Consideration: EXIT For the Win

With screenings of this year's Oscar nominated documentary features coming to a close and ballots about to be turned in, I took some time over the last few days to think about this year's nominated films and which film should stand as the film to represent 2010, which was, by any measure, a remarkable year in nonfiction filmmaking.

One thing that surprises is the fact that most of this year's nominees are newcomers to documentary (even if they've had great success in other fields).  Banksy is one of the world's best known street artists, Sebastian Junger is a noted author and journalist, Tim Hetherington is a respected cinematographer and Josh Fox has led a successful theater company in New York for more than a decade.  It is somewhat strange to realize that Lucy Walker, now with four documentary features under her belt, is the Grande Dame of the category, or that Charles Ferguson becomes that rarest of documentary creatures - Oscar nominated for his debut and his sophomore effort.

Some of these filmmakers I know quite well.  Some I've just met during the past year.  Some I may never meet and will only know through email exchanges.  And while personal relationships can complicate writing a piece like this, I felt that a year like 2010 required going on record.  So, here are my thoughts on the films that will forever stand as representative of last year, at least at the Academy, along with my pick - which if you've been paying close attention over the last six months (not that you should), probably won't come as much of a surprise.

And the nominees are...

Well, we went four for five in our predictions (we had a feeling that either INSIDE JOB or WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' would be a surprise omission, but we backed the wrong horse...). Back in November, we were also 4-for-5 (we didn't have RESTREPO or SUPERMAN on the list, but we did have INSIDE JOB). 

Lots of folks were guessing that it would be a year full of the biggest films of the year, but our usual formula of 3 box office successes, one international film and one issue film held true.

Here's who will vie for the final round and the big golden man:

For Best Documentary Feature:

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP
Banksy and Jaimie D'Cruz

GASLAND
Josh Fox and Trish Adlesic

INSIDE JOB
Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs

RESTREPO
Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger

WASTE LAND
Lucy Walker and Angus Aynsley

The Day Before: Predicting This Year's Oscar Doc Feature Nods

Early tomorrow morning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will unveil the five feature films that will stand as this year's Documentary Feature representatives on Oscar night.  We've been talking for months about what a great year this has been for documentary - and it was amazing last week to be able to celebrate that year at Cinema Eye - but for many folks, it's this list of five that will forever stand for the year in documentary 2010.

But who makes the list?

One thing that many Oscar watchers miss about this part of the Documentary Feature voting is that the process allows branch members to show their support, as well as their dislike, of each of the 15 films on the shortlist.  Voters have ranked all 15 films on a scale of 6-10, with 6 being the lowest.  If there's more than a couple voters (and it may not even take that many) who give that low score of "6" to a film, it's enough to remove it from contention.

And because the vote is cast in secret without a jury or committee process to allow for cajoling and persuasion, in theory at least, voters can feel safe scoring down a film without needing to justify it to the group.

But there's no telling whether the voters - nearly all of them documentary filmmakers themselves - will actually hand out those low grades.

That's what makes this year - with some films that provoke very strong reactions - particularly difficult to call. 

Since Oscar's final five has never been - in its history - culled from the top five money makers, it's highly unlikely that you will see a list of five drawn exclusively from the top hits: WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN', INSIDE JOB, EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, RESTREPO and THE TILLMAN STORY. 

Here on the blog, we look at history and note that it's likely that three of these top films will make the list - and we'd frankly be lying to you if we said with any assurity which three films it will be.

A Week of Awards Confirms That It's a Wide Open Oscar Race

If anyone thought that the first week of year-end film awards was going to help settle on a frontrunner for the Documentary Feature Oscar, they were mistaken.

In fact, the scattershot results only confirmed that this year's race is the most wide-open contest in years.

First, the Gothams settled on shockingly-out-of-the-race THE OATH for their documentary prize winner.  Next, as they announced their nods, the Spirits bypassed heavyweights like INSIDE JOB and WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN', settling instead on shortlisted titles like EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP and RESTREPO.

Then Thursday, the National Board of Review, which has a shockingly good record as an Oscar predictor in the past decade, handed its top docu prize to Davis Guggenheim's 'SUPERMAN' and annointed A FILM UNFINISHED, INSIDE JOB, JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK, RESTREPO and THE TILLMAN STORY as runners-up. 

The next day, the Producers Guild named six nominees for their Documentary Award: CLIENT 9, EARTH MADE OF GLASS, INSIDE JOB, SMASH HIS CAMERA, THE TILLMAN STORY and 'SUPERMAN'.  Only Deborah Scranton's EARTH and Leon Gast's SMASH weren't on the Academy Shortlist.

Later that night, Lucy Walker's WASTE LAND recieved the most votes from the IDA membership and won that organization's top prize, besting EXIT.

But the next day, both WASTE LAND and EXIT lost out at the British Independent Film Awards - with the victory going to shortlisted doc ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE.

Then, over the weekend, the DC Film Critics became the first critics group to weigh in, naming their nominees on Saturday and their winners on Sunday.  The five nominees were all shortlisters: EXIT, INSIDE JOB, RESTREPO, TILLMAN and 'SUPERMAN' - and the winner was Banksy's EXIT.

Finally, at Sunday's European Film Awards, the Documentary prize went to Patricio Guzman's NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT (the other two nominees were ARMADILLO and STEAM OF LIFE).

And as critics are now weighing in with their lists of top films (in addition to their awards), we should note that Sight and Sound's list of films of 2010 includes several documentaries, including THE ARBOR (#5), THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NICOLAE CEAUSESCU and NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIST (tied at #8) and EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (tied at #20).

New York Magazine's David Edelstein also weighed in, listing 4 docs in a top 11 for the year: CLIENT 9 and INSIDE JOB tied at #2, EXIT at #8 and MARWENCOL at #9.

The coming week is a bit quieter, but next weekend we get the Boston, Los Angeles and New York critics to weigh in one after the other.

So if you're tallying at home, here's how the week went for the Shortlisted films:

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. 

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.