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.
Richard Edmund Williams was a Canadian-British animator, voice actor, and painter. A three-time Academy Award winner, he is best known as the animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) -- for which he won two Academy Awards—and as the director of his unfinished feature film The Thief and the Cobbler (1993). His work on the short film A Christmas Carol (1971) earned him his first Academy Award. He was also a film title sequence designer and animator. Other works in this field include the title sequences for What's New Pussycat? (1965) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), title and linking sequences in The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the intros of the eponymous cartoon feline for two of the later Pink Panther films. In 2002 he published The Animator's Survival Kit, an authoritative manual of animation methods and techniques, which has since been turned into a 16-DVD box set as well as an iOS app. From 2008 he worked as artist in residence at Aardman Animations in Bristol, and in 2015 he received both Oscar and BAFTA nominations in the best animated short category for his short film Prologue.
"Rainbow Connection" is a song from the 1979 film The Muppet Movie, with music and lyrics written by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher. The song was performed by Jim Henson – as Kermit the Frog – in the film. "Rainbow Connection" reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1979, with the song remaining in the Top 40 for seven weeks in total. Williams and Ascher received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song at the 52nd Academy Awards.
Josh Ralph, known professionally as J. Ralph, is an American composer, producer, singer/songwriter and social activist who focuses on creating awareness and change through music and film.
Michael Victor Sporn was an American animator who founded his New York City-based company, Michael Sporn Animation, in 1980, and produced and directed numerous animated TV specials and short spots.
Barry Morrow is an American screenwriter and producer. He wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay for Rain Man. He is the father of Emmy Award-winning animator, writer, and storyboard artist, Clayton Morrow, and father-in-law of animator and storyboard artist, Cindy Morrow.
The 82nd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2009 and took place on March 7, 2010, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST. The ceremony was scheduled after its usual late-February date to avoid conflicting with the 2010 Winter Olympics. During the ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Academy Awards in 24 categories. The ceremony was televised in the United States by ABC, and was produced by Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman and directed by Hamish Hamilton. Actors Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin hosted the show. Martin hosted for the third time; he first presided over the 73rd ceremony held in 2001 and last hosted the 75th ceremony held in 2003. Meanwhile, this was Baldwin's first Oscars hosting stint. This was also the first telecast to have multiple hosts since the 59th ceremony held in 1987.
Shine Global Inc, is a non-profit media company that was founded in 2005 by Susan MacLaury, and Albie Hecht. Susan MacLaury is the Executive Director of Shine Global. Shine Global has produced projects including War/Dance, a 2008 Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary and Inocente, the Academy Award Winner for Best Documentary Short Subject in 2013.
Roger Ross Williams is an American director, producer and writer and the first African American director to win an Academy Award (Oscar), with his short film Music by Prudence; this film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film in 2009.
Prudence Mabhena is a Zimbabwean singer. Prudence Mabhena was born with Arthrogryposis, and was severely disabled. The society she was born into considers disabilities to carry the taint of witchcraft. Because of this, she was abandoned by her family. As a result, she was raised by her maternal grandmother who sang to her while working on her farm. She later attended King George VI School for the disabled in Bulawayo.
Elinor Burkett is an American journalist, author, film producer, and documentary director.
Disability in the arts is an aspect within various arts disciplines of inclusive practices involving disability. It manifests itself in the output and mission of some stage and modern dance performing-arts companies, and as the subject matter of individual works of art, such as the work of specific painters and those who draw.
iThemba is a feature-length documentary film shot in Zimbabwe, directed and produced by Elinor Burkett and produced by Errol Webber, who also shot and edited the film. It premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in November 2010.
Susan MacLaury is the co-founder and executive director of the non-profit media company Shine Global, a licensed social worker, and a retired educator. She is also an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated producer.
Daniel Junge is an American documentary filmmaker. On February 26, 2012, he won the Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film Saving Face, which he co-directed along with Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
The Sessions is a 2012 American drama film written and directed by Ben Lewin. It is based on the 1990 article "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate" by Mark O'Brien, a poet paralyzed from the neck down due to polio, who hired a sex surrogate to lose his virginity. John Hawkes and Helen Hunt star as O'Brien and sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene, respectively.
Edward Aneurin Williams was a British composer and electronic music pioneer, best known for his work on the BBC Television series Life on Earth, and as the creator of Soundbeam. Two of the documentaries he composed scores for were Academy Award winners, including Dylan Thomas (1961), which won an Oscar in 1963, and Wild Wings (1965), which won an Oscar in 1967.
Gabrielle is a 2013 Canadian drama film directed by Louise Archambault and starring Gabrielle Marion-Rivard as Gabrielle, a young woman with Williams syndrome who participates in a choir of developmentally disabled adults, and begins a romantic relationship with her choirmate Martin. It features a cast from a real choir for people with disabilities, with Marion-Rivard being an actress who actually has Williams syndrome.
Chau, Beyond the Lines is a 2015 American short-documentary film about a 16-year-old disabled by the effects of Agent Orange, who aspires to become an artist and clothing designer. It is directed by Courtney Marsh and produced by Jerry Franck and Marsh.
Aaron Kopp is a US-based cinematographer and film director who grew up in Eswatini.
