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.
John Nicholas Cassavetes was a Greek-American filmmaker and actor. He began as an actor in film and television before helping to pioneer modern American independent cinema as a writer and director, often self-financing, producing, and distributing his own films. He received nominations for three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy Award.
Allan Carr was an American producer and manager of stage for the screen. He was nominated for numerous awards, winning a Tony Award and two People's Choice Awards, and was named Producer of the Year by the National Association of Theatre Owners.
Peter Adair was a filmmaker and artist, best known for his pioneering gay and lesbian documentary Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977).
Paragraph 175 is a 2000 documentary film, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and narrated by Rupert Everett. The film was produced by Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, Janet Cole, Michael Ehrenzweig, Sheila Nevins and Howard Rosenman.
Paul Greengrass is an English film director, film producer, screenwriter and former journalist.
The Celluloid Closet is a 1996 American documentary film directed and co-written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and executive produced by Howard Rosenman. The film is based on Vito Russo's 1981 book The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, and on lecture and film clip presentations he gave from 1972 to 1982. Russo had researched the history of how motion pictures, especially Hollywood films, had portrayed gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender characters.
Donald Paul Hahn is an American film producer who is credited with producing some of the most successful animated films in history, including Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.
The Times of Harvey Milk is a 1984 American documentary film that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and then on November 1, 1984, at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. The film was directed by Rob Epstein, produced by Richard Schmiechen, and narrated by Harvey Fierstein, with an original score by Mark Isham.
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt is a 1989 American documentary film that tells the story of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, with a musical score written and performed by Bobby McFerrin, the film focuses on several people who are represented by panels in the Quilt, combining personal reminiscences with archive footage of the subjects, along with footage of various politicians, health professionals and other people with AIDS. Each section of the film is punctuated with statistics detailing the number of Americans diagnosed with and dead from AIDS through the early years of the epidemic. The film ends with the first display of the complete Quilt at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during the 1987 Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
Jeffrey Schwarz is an American Emmy Award-winning film producer, director, and editor. He is known for an extensive body of documentary work including Commitment to Life, Boulevard! A Hollywood Story, The Fabulous Allan Carr, Tab Hunter Confidential, I Am Divine, Vito, Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon and Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story.
Audrey Marie Marrs is an American film producer, the Chief Operating Officer of Representational Pictures, Inc. She is a former punk rock musician and co-founder of Ladyfest.
Dustin Lance Black is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and LGBT rights activist. He is known for writing the film Milk, for which he won the Oscar for best original screenplay in 2009. He has also subsequently written the screenplays for the film J. Edgar and the 2022 crime miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven.
Bill Guttentag is an American dramatic and documentary film writer-producer-director. His films have premiered at the Sundance, Cannes, Telluride and Tribeca film festivals, and he has won two Academy Awards.
Jeffrey Friedman is an American filmmaker. In 2021, he and Rob Epstein won a Grammy Award for their work on the documentary film Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
The East End Film Festival was one of the UK's largest film festivals. Founded in 2000 and operating in various venues across East London, the festival focused on emerging British, Eastern European, and Asian films. It ceased operations on March 4, 2020 due to COVID-19.
Matt Tyrnauer is an American film director. He directed the documentary feature Valentino: The Last Emperor (2009), which was short listed for an Oscar nomination in 2010, Citizen Jane: Battle for the City (2016), the Emmy nominated, Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (2017), the 2018 documentary Studio 54 detailing New York's famed Studio 54 nightclub, Where's My Roy Cohn? (2019), and the Showtime four-part series, The Reagans (2020). Tyrnauer also developed, and executive produced, with producing partner Corey Reeser, the docuseries Home, directing its Hong Kong episode, about the Gary Chang's Domestic Transformer home. The nine-part series premiered on Apple TV Plus in April 2020. Currently, Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood is being adapted as a narrative film, with Tyrnauer and Reeser producing, Luca Guadagnino directing and Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg writing the script. Tyrnauer has been Editor-At-Large and Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair, where he has contributed many feature articles.
Lovelace is a 2013 American biographical drama film centered on porn actress Linda Lovelace, star of Deep Throat, a landmark 1972 film at the forefront of the Golden Age of Porn. Lovelace covers her life from age 21 to 32.
Julia Bell Reichert was an American Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, activist, and feminist. She was a co-founder of New Day Films. Reichert's filmmaking career spanned over 50 years as a director and producer of documentaries.
