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 Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter is a 1980 documentary film and the first movie made by Connie Field about the American women who went to work during World War II to do "men's jobs." In 1996, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
When We Were Kings is a 1996 American documentary film directed by Leon Gast about the "Rumble in the Jungle" heavyweight championship match that was held on October 30, 1974, in Zaire between world heavyweight champion George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. It features archival footage of celebrities, including James Brown, B.B. King, and promoter Don King, in the lead-up to the fight and accompanying Zaire 74 music festival, alongside interview footage of Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, Spike Lee and Thomas Hauser from the 1990s.
Street Fight is a 2005 documentary film by Marshall Curry, chronicling the 2002 Newark mayoral election which pitted upstart Cory Booker against the incumbent Sharpe James for Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Other credits include Rory Kennedy, Liz Garbus, Mary Manhardt, Marisa Karplus, and Adam Etline. Street Fight screened at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival and was later aired on the PBS series P.O.V. on July 5, 2005, and CBC Newsworld in Canada on May 7, 2006. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Darwin's Nightmare is a 2004 Austrian-French-Belgian documentary film written and directed by Hubert Sauper, dealing with the environmental and social effects of the fishing industry around Lake Victoria in Tanzania. It premiered at the 2004 Venice Film Festival, and was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 78th Academy Awards. The Boston Globe called it "the year's best documentary about the animal world."
The 20th Academy Awards were held on March 20, 1948, to honor the films of 1947. It is notable for being the last Oscars until 2005 in which no film won more than three awards.
The Primetime Emmy Awards – part of a wide range of Emmy Awards – are bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), in recognition of excellence in U.S. American primetime television programming. The award categories are divided into three classes: the regular Primetime Emmy Awards, the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards to honor technical and other similar behind-the-scenes achievements, and the Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards for recognizing significant contributions to the engineering and technological aspects of television. First given out in 1949, the award was originally referred to as simply the "Emmy Award" until the International Emmy Award and the Daytime Emmy Award were created in the early 1970s to expand the Emmy to other sectors of the television industry.
Chris Noonan is an Australian filmmaker and actor. He is best known for the family film Babe (1995), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Jimmy Jean-Louis is a Haitian actor and producer. Born in Pétion-Ville, he moved to Paris at a young age with his family in search of a better life. His early roles were in French television commercials and Spanish musical theatre.Eventually settling in Los Angeles in the late 1990s, he had small roles in The Bourne Identity, Tears of the Sun and Arliss before breaking into larger roles in American television and film. He played the character of "the Haitian" on the NBC television series Heroes from 2006-2009. He played the title character in the 2012 French telefilm Toussaint Louverture.
The National Board of Review Award for Best Documentary Feature is one of the annual awards given to the producer of the film by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.
James Moll is an American director and producer of film documentaries and television documentaries. His documentary work has earned him an Academy Award, two Emmys, and a Grammy. Moll's production company, Allentown Productions Inc., has been based at Universal Studios since 1994, primarily producing film and television projects focused on stories of non-fiction. Moll serves on the Executive Committee of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and serves as a chair of the Documentary Award for the Directors Guild of America.
Adam Clayton Powell is a 1989 American documentary film directed by Richard Kilberg.
Soundtrack for a Revolution is a 2009 documentary film written and directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman. This documentary traces the story of the Civil Rights Movement and the struggles fought by young African-American activists with an emphasis on the power of music. Soundtrack for a Revolution had its international premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Soundtrack for a Revolution was selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the Oscar shortlist for the Documentary Feature category of the 82nd Academy Awards. Guttentag and Sturman were nominated for Best Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America. The film has screened at numerous festivals including Cannes, Tribeca, IDFA and Sheffield Doc/Fest.
Searching for Sugar Man is a 2012 documentary film about a South African cultural phenomenon, written and directed by Malik Bendjelloul, which details the efforts in the late 1990s of two Cape Town fans, Stephen "Sugar" Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom, to find out whether the rumoured death of American musician Sixto Rodriguez was true and, if not, to discover what had become of him. Rodriguez's music, which had never achieved success in the United States, had become very popular in South Africa, although little was known about him in that country.
Ishaya Bako(listen) is a Nigerian film director and screenwriter.
Jeta Amata is a Nigerian filmmaker, born on August 21, 1974 to popular Nigerian actor Zack Amata. He comes from a family of veteran filmmakers including Ifoghale Amata, Zack Amata and Fred Amata. Growing up in the film industry, following his family’s passion for film, Jeta produced and directed his first film at the age of 21, making it no surprise when he began to rise in the world of film and entertainment.
The Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Diaspora Documentary is an annual merit by the Africa Film Academy to reward the best diaspora documentaries for the year. Prior to the creation of the category in 2011, diaspora documentaries submitted normally compete with African documentaries for the Best Documentary category.
Dear Mandela is a 2012 South-African/American documentary focusing on three friends who are members of shackdwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. They fight eviction by making a legal challenge against the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act of 2007 which ends up going to the final court of appeal, the Constitutional Court. The challenge is successful but also results in a violent attack on the Kennedy Road informal settlement in 2009. The film-makers were themselves caught up in the attack.
Hawa Essuman is a film director based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her 2017 feature-length documentary Silas, co-directed with Anjali Neyar, tells the story of Liberian environmental activist Silas Siakor's fight to preserve the country's rainforests from commercial logging. The film won multiple awards, including the Amnesty International Durban Human Rights Award (2018) and the Audience Award for best documentary at the Riverrun Film Festival (2018). Hawa's first feature film, Soul Boy (2010), also received a series of awards. In addition, Hawa has produced a range of TV programmes, commercial films, music videos and adverts.
