Robert Jonathan Demme was an American filmmaker, whose career directing, producing, and screenwriting spanned more than 30 years and 70 feature films, documentaries, and television productions. He was an Academy Award and a Directors Guild of America Award winner, and received nominations for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and three Independent Spirit Awards.
Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and author. His work has continually explored race relations, issues within the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues. Lee has won numerous accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and two Peabody Awards. He has also been honored with an Honorary BAFTA Award in 2002, an Honorary César in 2003, and the Academy Honorary Award in 2015.
The Hopi are Native Americans who primarily live in northeastern Arizona. The majority are enrolled in the Hopi Tribe of Arizona and live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona; however, some Hopi people are enrolled in the Colorado River Indian Tribes of the Colorado River Indian Reservation at the border of Arizona and California.
The Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film is an award for documentary films. In 1941, the first awards for feature-length documentaries were bestowed as Special Awards to Kukan and Target for Tonight. They have since been bestowed competitively each year, with the exception of 1946. Copies of every winning film are held by the Academy Film Archive.
Alan Wolf Arkin was an American actor, filmmaker and musician. In a career spanning seven decades, he received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Tony Award as well as nominations for six Emmy Awards.
Frank Wilton Marshall is an American film producer and director. He often collaborates with his wife, film producer Kathleen Kennedy, with whom he founded the production company Amblin Entertainment, along with Steven Spielberg. In 1991, he founded, with Kennedy, The Kennedy/Marshall Company, a film production company. Since May 2012, with Kennedy taking on the role of President of Lucasfilm, Marshall has been Kennedy/Marshall's sole principal.
Carmine Valentino Coppola was an American composer, flautist, pianist, and songwriter who contributed original music to the films The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, The Outsiders, The Black Stallion, and The Godfather Part III. He is the father of film director Francis Ford Coppola. In the course of his career, he won both the Academy Award for Best Original Score and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, with BAFTA Award for Best Film Music and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media nominations.
The Hopi Reservation is a Native American reservation for the Hopi and Arizona Tewa people, surrounded entirely by the Navajo Nation, in Navajo and Coconino counties in northeastern Arizona, United States. The site has a land area of 2,531.773 sq mi (6,557.262 km2) and, as of the 2020 census had a population of 7,791.
Peabody Energy mined coal at the Black Mesa plateau in the southwestern United States from the 1960s until 2019. The plateau overlaps the Navajo and Hopi reservations.
American Dream is a 1990 British-American cinéma vérité documentary film directed by Barbara Kopple and co-directed by Cathy Caplan, Thomas Haneke, and Lawrence Silk.
The 58th Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), took place on March 24, 1986, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles beginning at 6:00 p.m. PST / 9:00 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards in 23 categories honoring films released in 1985. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Stanley Donen and directed by Marty Pasetta. Actors Alan Alda, Jane Fonda, and Robin Williams co-hosted the show. Fonda hosted the gala for the second time, having previously been a co-host of the 49th ceremony held in 1977. Meanwhile, this was Alda and Williams's first Oscars hosting stint. Eight days earlier, in a ceremony held at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on March 16, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Macdonald Carey.
The Weather Underground is a 2002 documentary film based on the rise and fall of the American radical far-left Communist organization Weather Underground.
Unfinished Business is a 1985 documentary film directed and produced by Steven Okazaki.
Festival is a 1967 American documentary film about the Newport Folk Festivals of the mid-1960’s, and the burgeoning counterculture movement of the era, written, produced, and directed by Murray Lerner.
The Statue of Liberty is a 1985 American documentary film on the history of the Statue of Liberty. It was produced and directed by Ken Burns. The film, which first aired in October 1985, was narrated by historian David McCullough.
The Kayenta mine was a surface coal mine operated by Peabody Western Coal Company, a subsidiary of Peabody Energy) on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona from 1973 to 2019. About 400 acres were mined and reclaimed each year, providing about 8 million tons of coal annually to the Navajo Generating Station.
3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets, also known as 3 1/2 Minutes, is a 2015 American documentary film written and directed by Marc Silver. The film is based on the events surrounding the 2012 murder of Jordan Russell Davis and examines the shooting itself, as well as the subsequent trial, media coverage and protests that resulted from the shooting.
Katherine Smith (1918–2017) was a Navajo activist, cultural educator, land defender, and resistor who protected Navajo land and refused to leave Big Mountain. A 1985 documentary Broken Rainbow depicts the struggle of the Navajo amid government enforced relocation of thousands from Black Mesa in Arizona after the enactment of the Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974. The documentary film about the relocation was nominated for an Oscar.
Hale County This Morning, This Evening is a 2018 American documentary film about the lives of black people in Hale County, Alabama. It is directed by RaMell Ross and produced by RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, Su Kim, and is Ross's first nonfiction feature. The documentary is the winner of 2018 Sundance Film Festival award for U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision, 2018 Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Cinema Eye Honors Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. After its theatrical run, it aired on the PBS series Independent Lens and eventually won a 2020 Peabody Award.
Roberta Blackgoat was a Native American activist, public speaker, writer, environmentalist, and artist. Blackgoat is best known for her political activism in opposition to the American federal government's Navajo Relocation Program.
