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Bar-Lev, Ferguson, Hetherington, Junger & Weyermann Among 10 Invited to Join Academy

[Filmmakers Amir Bar-Lev (left) and Tim Hetherington at the Cinema Eye Honors Nominees Reception in January in New York City.  Photo by Simon Luethi.]

In what constitutes the largest, single-year class of invites to the Academy's Documentary Branch in years, ten have been invited to join AMPAS, including recently minted Oscar winner Charles Ferguson, filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev (MY KID COULD PAINT THAT, THE TILLMAN STORY), Participant Media EVP Diane Weyermann and Davis Guggenheim's producing partner Leslie Chilcott.

The headline, though, was the Academy's invitation to RESTREPO filmmakers' Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger.  It's almost unheard of for the Academy to invite filmmakers based on a single feature film, even if it's Oscar nominated, and is almost certainly a reaction to Hetherington's death in Libya two months ago.  Hetherington is the Academy's first posthumous invitee.

The invite list also includes Carl Deal, whose partner on TROUBLE THE WATER, Tia Lessin, was invited to join a couple years ago, as well as three recently nominated for the Academy's Documentary Short prize: Jon Alpert (CHINA'S UNNATURAL DISASTER: THE TEARS OF THE SICHUAN PROVINCE) and Thomas Lennon & Ruby Yang (THE WARRIORS OF QIUGANG), who won the Short Oscar a few years ago for THE BLOOD OF THE YINGZHOU DISTRICT.

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.

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.

Reactions from Oscar Nominees Tim Hetherington and Banksy

Just got off the phone with Oscar nominee Tim Hetherington, co-director of RESTREPO who confessed to not sleeping much last night.  He relayed that someone recently asked his co-director, Sebastian Junger, whether getting nominated for an Oscar was foremost in his mind when he was shooting in Afghanistan and Junger replied, "Well, actually the foremost thing in my head was not to get killed."

Hetherington said that the big question in the film getting or not getting the nomination was whether the film would continue to have an active life for another couple of months - and he expressed hope that the film might be able to play a part in the discussion over the US' Afghanistan policy.

"We wanted to make a film that didn't divide people along partisan lines.  We knew if we'd made a politcized film, it wouldn't have had the reaction it had.  Sebastian and I care deeply about what's happening in Afghanistan and we wanted to reach as many people as possible.  (It's important to remember that) we are at war.  This film is about something that's happening right now, in the present."

Meanwhile, EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP Director Banksy, who now can add Academy Award nominee to his CV, just issued a statement through his publicist:

"This is a big surprise. I don't agree with the concept of award ceremonies, but I'm prepared to make an exception for the ones I'm nominated for. The last time there was a naked man covered in gold paint in my house, it was me."

In December we did interviews with Banksy and with Hetherington & Junger.  We'll add more nominee reactions to this space as they come in.

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.

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.