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.
The Philadelphia Story is a 1940 American romantic comedy film starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart and Ruth Hussey. Directed by George Cukor, the film is based on the 1939 Broadway play of the same name by Philip Barry about a socialite whose wedding plans are complicated by the simultaneous arrival of her ex-husband and a tabloid magazine journalist. The socialite, played by Hepburn in both productions, was inspired by Helen Hope Montgomery Scott (1904–1995), a Philadelphia heiress who had married Barry's friend.
William Norman McLaren, LL. D. was a Scottish Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was a pioneer in a number of areas of animation and filmmaking, including hand-drawn animation, drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation and graphical sound. McLaren was also an artist and printmaker, and explored his interest in dance in his films.
The March of Time is an American newsreel series sponsored by Time Inc. and shown in movie theaters from 1935 to 1951. It was based on a radio news series broadcast from 1931 to 1945 that was produced by advertising agency Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO). The "voice" of both series was Westbrook Van Voorhis. Produced and written by Louis de Rochemont and his brother Richard de Rochemont, The March of Time was recognized with an Academy Honorary Award in 1937.
The Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF) is a film festival held annually in Calgary, Alberta, in late September and early October.
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.
Irving Lerner was an American filmmaker.
Willard Ames Van Dyke was an American filmmaker, photographer, arts administrator, teacher, and former director of the film department at the Museum of Modern Art.
It's All True is an unfinished Orson Welles feature film comprising three stories about Latin America. "My Friend Bonito" was supervised by Welles and directed by Norman Foster in Mexico in 1941. "Carnaval" and "Jangadeiros" were directed by Welles in Brazil in 1942. It was to have been Welles's third film for RKO Radio Pictures, after Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). The project was a co-production of RKO and the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs that was later terminated by RKO.
Alexandr Hackenschmied, born Alexander Siegfried George Hackenschmied, known later as Alexander Hammid was a Czech-American photographer, film director, cinematographer and film editor. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1938 and became involved in American avant-garde cinema. He is best known for three films: Crisis (1939), Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) and To Be Alive! (1964). He made Meshes of the Afternoon with Maya Deren, to whom he was married from 1942 to 1947. His second marriage was to the photographer Hella Heyman, who had also collaborated with Hammid and Deren on several films.
Churchill's Island is a 1941 propaganda film chronicling the defence of Britain during the Second World War. The film was written and directed by Stuart Legg and produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) for the Director of Information, Government of Canada.
Paddle to the Sea is a 1966 National Film Board of Canada short live-action film directed, shot and edited by Bill Mason. It is based on the 1941 children's book Paddle-to-the-Sea by American author and illustrator Holling C. Holling, and follows the adventures of a child's hand-carved toy Indian in a canoe as it makes its way from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, through Canada's waterways. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film at the 40th Academy Awards.
Battle for Life is a nature documentary series made from 1932 until 1934 by Horace Woodard and Stacy Woodard, The short films include the 1935 Oscar award-winning City of Wax, about honey bees. The one-reel short films were released by Educational Pictures. A homemade camera setup for closeups was used. The Woodards followed the series with another series titled Struggle to Live.
A Chance to Live is a 1949 American short documentary film directed by James L. Shute, produced by Richard de Rochemont for Time Inc. and distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox. It is part of The March of Time series and portrays Monsignor John Patrick Carroll-Abbing building and running a Boys' Home in Italy.
So Much for So Little is a 1949 American animated short documentary film directed by Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng. In 1950, it won an Oscar at the 22nd Academy Awards for Documentary Short Subject, tying with A Chance to Live. It was created by Warner Bros. Cartoons for the United States Public Health Service. As a work of the United States Government, the film is in the public domain. The Academy Film Archive preserved So Much for So Little in 2005. Produced during the Harry S. Truman administration, it attained renewed relevance during the modern Medicare for All movement in the United States nearly seven decades later.
The Seeing Eye is a 1951 American short documentary film produced by Gordon Hollingshead in Technicolor as a Technicolor Special about The Seeing Eye, a guide dog training school in Morristown, New Jersey. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. The Seeing Eye was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2006.
Children Without is a 1964 American short documentary film directed by Charles Guggenheim, about a young girl and her brother growing up in the housing projects of Detroit. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, losing to another film by Guggenheim, Nine from Little Rock. Children Without was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
Stuart Legg was a pioneering English documentary filmmaker. At the 14th Academy Awards in 1941, Legg's National Film Board of Canada film Churchill's Island became the first-ever documentary to win an Oscar.
Desert Wonderland is a 1942 American short documentary film directed by Russ Shields and Jack Kuhne exploring the Grand Canyon. It was nominated for an Academy Award at the 15th Academy Awards for Best Short Subject (One-Reel). The film was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
Lawrence Muzzy Lansburgh was an American producer, director, and screenwriter known for his films featuring animals.
