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.
Controversy
The Award for Best Documentary is the most plagued and controversial award of the Academies. Many of the most influential and critically acclaimed documentaries not only didn't win the award, but often weren't even nominated, including most notably Thin Blue Line, Roger and Me, and Hoop Dreams. The controversy over Hoop Dreams was enough to actually force the Academy Awards to change their documentary voting system.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—wasn't nominated, and didn't even make their internally distributed top 15 list.
There is continued debate on what role television dispribution should play and the nature of what is produced for the mediums of televsion and film. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, at the time the highest grossing documentary film, was famously ineligible because Moore had opted to have it played on television prior to the 2004 Election. On the opposite end the 1982 winning film Just Another Missing Kid directed by John Zaritsky was created by editing together footage he originally shot for the Canadian investigative journalism show The Fifth Estate.
Winners
Following the Academy's practice, films are listed by the "award year", which is also the year in which the film was released under the Academy's rules for eligibility. 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.For 1942 there was one Documentary category and four winners
1940s
- 1942
- *Battle of Midway
- *Kokoda Front Line
- *Moscow Strikes Back
- *Prelude To War
- 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
1950s
- 1950 -
- 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
1960s
- 1960 - The Horse with the Flying Tail
- 1961 - Sky Above and Mud Beneath
- 1962 -
- 1963 -
- 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
1970s
- 1970 - Woodstock
- 1971 - The Hellstrom Chronicle
- 1972 - Marjoe, directed by Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan
- 1973 - The Great American Cowboy
- 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
1980s
- 1980 -
- 1981 - Genocide
- 1982 - Just Another Missing Kid
- 1983 - He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin'
- 1984 - The Times of Harvey Milk
- 1985 - Broken Rainbow
- 1986 - (tie):
- *
- *Down and Out in America
- 1987 -
- 1988 -
- 1989 -
1990s
- 1990 - American Dream, directed by Barbara Kopple
- 1991 - In the Shadow of the Stars
- 1992 - The Panama Deception
- 1993 -
- 1994 -
- 1995 - Anne Frank Remembered
- 1996 - When We Were Kings
- 1997 - The Long Way Home
- 1998 - The Last Days
- 1999 - One Day in September
2000s
- 2000 -
- 2001 - Murder on a Sunday Morning
- Also nominated:
- * Children Underground
- *
- * Promises
- * War Photographer
- 2002 - Bowling for Columbine, directed by Michael Moore
- 2003 - The Fog of War, directed by Errol Morris
- 2004 - Born into Brothels, directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski
- 2005 - March of the Penguins, directed by Luc Jacquet
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