Errol Mark Morris is an American film director known for documentaries that interrogate the epistemology of their subjects, and the invention of the Interrotron. In 2003, his documentary film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. His film The Thin Blue Line placed fifth on a Sight & Sound poll of the greatest documentaries ever made. Morris is known for making films about unusual subjects; Fast, Cheap & Out of Control interweaves the stories of an animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist, and a naked mole-rat specialist.
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.
This is a list of films by year that have received an Academy Award together with the other nominations for best documentary short film. Following the Academy's practice, the year listed for each film is the year of release: the awards are announced and presented early in the following year. Copies of every winning film are held by the Academy Film Archive. Fifteen films are shortlisted before nominations are announced.
Dolphins is an IMAX documentary produced in 2000. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. Directed by Greg MacGillivray, with Chris Palmer serving as executive producer, this feature follows a few scientists studying dolphins as they work to learn more about dolphins. The main focus is on research into dolphin communication and intelligence, along with some exploration of feeding habits and human interaction. Several species of dolphins are shown, primarily the bottlenose dolphin, the dusky dolphin, and the Atlantic spotted dolphin. Dolphins is narrated by Pierce Brosnan with music by Sting.
Ronald Mann is a Canadian documentary film director.
Charles Eli Guggenheim was an American documentary film director, producer, and screenwriter. He was the most honored documentary filmmaker in the academy history, winning four Oscars from twelve nominations.
One Survivor Remembers is a 1995 documentary short film by Kary Antholis.
The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club, also known as The Life of Kevin Carter, is a 2004 American documentary short film about the suicide of South African photojournalist Kevin Carter. The film is produced and directed by Dan Krauss as a master's project at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. It received a nomination for the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject.
Joyce Chopra is an American director.
Glass is a 1958 Dutch short documentary film by director and producer Bert Haanstra. The film won the Oscar for Documentary Short Subject in 1959. The film is about the glass industry in the Netherlands. It contrasts the handmade crystal from the Royal Leerdam Glass Factory with automated bottle making machines. Short segments of artisans making various glass goods by hand are joined with those of mass production. It is often acclaimed to be the perfect short documentary.
Steven Toll Okazaki is an American documentary filmmaker known for his raw, cinéma vérité-style documentaries that frequently show ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances. He has received a Peabody Award, a Primetime Emmy and has been nominated for four Academy Awards, winning an Oscar for the documentary short subject, Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo.
Days of Waiting (1991) is a documentary short film directed, written and produced by Steven Okazaki about Estelle Ishigo, a Caucasian artist who went voluntarily to an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. The film was inspired by Ishigo's book, Lone Heart Mountain, and won an Academy Award for Best Documentary and a Peabody Award. It was presented on PBS by POV and the Center for Asian American Media.
The Redwoods is a 1967 American short documentary film produced by Trevor Greenwood and Mark Jonathan Harris. It was produced for the Sierra Club as part of their campaign for a national park to protect the redwood forest. In 1968, it won an Oscar at the 40th Academy Awards for Documentary Short Subject.
Don't is a 1974 short American documentary film following the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, directed by Robin Lehman. It won an Oscar at the 47th Academy Awards in 1975 for Best Documentary Short Subject.
The animated documentary is a moving image form that combines animation and documentary. This form should not be confused with documentaries about movie and TV animation history that feature excerpts.
Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square is a 1998 short animated documentary directed by Shui-Bo Wang and distributed by the National Film Board of Canada. It is an autobiography about the director's life, career and ultimate disillusionment with the Chinese Communist Party. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, but lost to The Personals.
The Films Division of India (FDI), commonly referred as Films Division, was established in 1948 following the independence of India. It was the first state film production and distribution unit, under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, with its main intent being to "produce documentaries and news magazines for publicity of Government programmes" and the cinematic record of Indian history.
The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306 is a 2008 documentary short film created to honor the 40th annual remembrance of the life and death of Martin Luther King Jr. Directed by Adam Pertofsky, the film received a 2008 Oscar nomination in the "Best Documentary Short Subject" Category at the 81st Academy Awards.
Mushroom Pictures is an Australian film production and distribution company that is part of the Mushroom Records group.
Inocente is a 2012 short documentary film directed by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix. The film received the 2013 Academy Award for Best Documentary. The film is an inspiring coming-of-age story of a 15-year-old girl in California. Though homeless and undocumented, she refuses to give up on her dream of being an artist, proving that the hand she has been dealt does not define her – her dreams do.
