Academy Award for Documentary Feature
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The Academy Award for Documentary Feature is one of the most prestigious awards for documentary films.
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[edit] Controversies
The Award for Documentary Feature is arguably the most controversial of the Academy Awards. Many of the documentaries admired today as the most influential and critically acclaimed were not even nominated: notable examples include The Thin Blue Line, Roger and Me, and Hoop Dreams. The controversy over Hoop Dreams was enough to force the Academy Awards to change their documentary voting system.[citation needed]
Whether the new rules are successful is still debated, since 2005's Grizzly Man, a documentary strong enough to appear on many critics' top 10 lists[citation needed] was not nominated, and did not even make the Academy's internally distributed top 15 list.
In addition, there is continued debate[citation needed] over the role television distribution should play in the selection process. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, at the time the highest grossing documentary film ever made, was ineligible because Moore had opted to have it played on television prior to the 2004 Election. Conversely, the 1982 winner Just Another Missing Kid, directed by John Zaritsky, was created by editing together footage he originally shot for the Canadian investigative journalism TV show The Fifth Estate.
[edit] Winners and nomineees
Following the Academy's practice, films are listed below by the "award year" (that is, the year they were released under the Academy's rules for eligibility). In practice, due to the limited nature of documentary distribution, a film may be released in different years in different venues, sometimes years after production is complete.
[edit] 1940s
In 1942, there was one Documentary category and four winners.
From 1943 there were two separate documentary categories (features and short films)
- 1943 - Desert Victory
- 1944 - The Fighting Lady
- 1945 - The True Glory
- 1946 - none given
- 1947 - Design for Death
- 1948 - The Secret Land
- 1949 - Daybreak in Udi
[edit] 1950s
- 1950 - The Titan: Story of Michelangelo
- 1951 - Kon-Tiki
- 1952 - The Sea Around Us
- 1953 - The Living Desert
- 1954 - The Vanishing Prairie
- 1955 - Helen Keller in Her Story
- 1956 - The Silent World
- 1957 - Albert Schweitzer
- 1958 - White Wilderness
- 1959 - Serengeti Shall Not Die
[edit] 1960s
- 1960 - The Horse with the Flying Tail
- 1961 - Sky Above and Mud Beneath
- 1962 - Black Fox: The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler
- 1963 - Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel With the World
- 1964 - Jacques-Yves Cousteau's World Without Sun
- 1965 - The Eleanor Roosevelt Story
- 1966 - The War Game
- 1967 - The Anderson Platoon
- 1968 - Journey Into Self Note: At the 41st Awards ceremony on April 14, 1969, Young Americans was announced as the winner of the Documentary Feature Oscar. On May 7, 1969, the film was declared ineligible after it was revealed that the film had played in October of 1967, therefore ineligible for a 1968 Award. The first runner-up, Journey Into Self, was awarded the statuette on May 8, 1969.
- 1969 - Arthur Rubinstein - The Love of Life
[edit] 1970s
- 1970 - Woodstock
- 1971 - The Hellstrom Chronicle
- 1972 - Marjoe, directed by Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan
- 1973 - The Great American Cowboy by Kieth Merrill
- 1974 - Hearts and Minds
- 1975 - The Man Who Skied Down Everest
- 1976 - Harlan County, USA, directed by Barbara Kopple
- 1977 - Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?
- 1978 - Scared Straight!
- 1979 - Best Boy
[edit] 1980s
- 1980 From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China directed by Murray Lerner
- Agee
- The Day After Trinity
- Front Line
- The Yellow Star - The Persecution of the Jews in Europe 1933-45
- 1981 Genocide directed by Arnold Schwartzman
- Against Wind and Tide: A Cuban Odyssey
- Brooklyn Bridge
- Eight Minutes to Midnight: A Portrait of Dr. Helen Caldicott
- El Salvador: Another Vietnam
- 1982 Just Another Missing Kid directed by John Zaritsky
- A Portrait of Giselle
- After the Axe
- Ben's Mill
- In Our Water
- 1983 He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' directed by Emile Ardolino
- Children of Darkness
- First Contact
- The Profession of Arms
- Seeing Red
- 1984 The Times of Harvey Milk directed by Robert Epstein and Richard Schmiechen
- High Schools
- In the Name of the People
- Marlene
- Streetwise
- 1985 Broken Rainbow directed by Maria Florio and Victoria Mudd
- Las Madres--The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo
- Soldiers in Hiding
- The Statue of Liberty
- Unfinished Business
- 1986 - (tie):
- 1987 - The Ten-Year Lunch
- 1988 - Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
- 1989 - Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt
[edit] 1990s
- 1990 American Dream directed by Barbara Kopple and Arthur Cohn
- Berkeley in the Sixties
- Building Bombs
- Forever Activists: Stories from the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
- Waldo Salt: A Screenwriter's Journey
- 1991 In the Shadow of the Stars directed by Allie Light and Irving Saraf
- Death on the Job
- Doing Time: Life Inside the Big House
- The Restless Conscience
- Wild by Law
- 1992 The Panama Deception directed by Barbara Trent and David Kasper
- Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker
- Fires of Kuwait
- Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II
- Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann
- 1995 - Anne Frank Remembered
- 1996 - When We Were Kings
- 1997 - The Long Way Home
- Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life
- Colors Straight Up
- 4 Little Girls
- Waco: The Rules of Engagement
- 1998 - The Last Days
- 1999 - One Day in September
[edit] 2000s
- 2000 Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport directed by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer
- Legacy
- Long Night's Journey into Day
- Scottsboro: An American Tragedy
- Sound and Fury
- 2001 Murder on a Sunday Morning directed by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade
- Children Underground
- LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton
- Promises
- War Photographer
- 2002 Bowling for Columbine directed by Michael Moore
- Daughter From Danang
- Le Peuple migrateur (Winged Migration)
- Prisoner of Paradise
- Spellbound
- 2003 The Fog of War directed by Errol Morris
- 2004 Born into Brothels directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski
- The Story of the Weeping Camel
- Super Size Me
- Tupac: Resurrection
- Twist of Faith
- 2005 March of the Penguins directed by Luc Jacquet
- 2006 An Inconvenient Truth directed by Davis Guggenheim
