Academy Award for
Documentary Feature
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,
inluding 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.
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
1942
Battle of Midway
Kokoda Front Line
Moscow Strikes Back
Prelude To War
From 1943 there were two separate documentary categories
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
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
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
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
1980 - From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in
China
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):
Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got
Down and Out in America
1987 - The Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table
1988 - Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
1989 - Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt
1990 - American Dream, directed by Barbara
Kopple
1991 - In the Shadow of the Stars
1992 - The Panama Deception
1993 - I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School
1994 - Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision
1995 - Anne Frank Remembered
1996 - When We Were Kings
1997 - The Long Way Home
1998 - The Last Days
1999 - One Day in September
2000 - Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
2001 - Murder on a Sunday Morning
2002 - Bowling for Columbine, directed by Michael Moore
Also nominated:
Daughter From Danang
Le Peuple migrateur (Winged Migration)
Prisoner of Paradise
Spellbound
2003 - The Fog of War, directed by Errol Morris
Also nominated:
Balseros
Capturing the Friedmans
My Architect
The Weather Underground
2004 - Born into Brothels, directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski
Also nominated:
The Story of the Weeping Camel, directed by Luigi Falorni, Byambasuren Davaa
Super Size Me, directed by Morgan Spurlock
Tupac: Resurrection, directed by Lauren Lazin, Karolyn Ali
Twist of Faith, directed by Kirby Dick, Eddie Schmidt
2005 - March of the Penguins, directed by Luc Jacquet
Also nominated:
Darwin's Nightmare
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Murderball
Street Fight