The Best Documentary Short award is probably the least watched, least understood and least appreciated category at the Academy Awards. Okay, maybe it’s tied with Best Sound Editing. Still, that’s too bad. Fortunately, some of the winners have made the most of this underdog status in their speeches, such as when Jessica Yu joked in […]

This week, the documentary world mourns the passing of a beloved editor, we look forward to the Oscars and look back at Sundance, and we take a peek at Patti Smith’s new memoir. Documentary editor Karen Schmeer was killed in a hit-and-run accident in New York City last week. Filmmaker Errol Morris, who worked with […]

Nominations for the 2010 Academy Awards were announced this morning in Los Angeles, and we were thrilled to hear that two upcoming POV films, Food, Inc. and The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, were nominated for Best Documentary Feature. About Food, Inc.: How much do we know about the […]

Over on the Thompson on Hollywood blog today, there is a three-part video interview with filmmaker Robert Kenner about his goals for Food, Inc., the difficulties he encountered in making the film, and his hope that the film will “make all of us think about it because that’s what’s going to change the system.” Check […]

We’re excited to announce that the POV/PBS broadcast of the Academy Award shortlisted film, Food, Inc., has been set for Wednesday, April 21 at 9 PM on most PBS stations. You can check listings on your local PBS station closer to the date, but if you don’t want to miss this broadcast be sure to […]

It’s head-scratching season again, which is to say: it’s Oscar time. Last week, the shortlist of 15 documentaries being considered for the five Academy Award nominations was announced. And, sure enough, there were some head-scratchers out there. The most confounding was the exclusion of Michael Moore‘s Capitalism. Sure, this further confirms what I said a […]

So it turns out, to the surprise of very few people, that Man on Wire IS the doc of the year. As our own Tom Roston predicted last week, Man on Wire won the best documentary award at last night’s Oscars. (It also won Best Doc at the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday.) The win […]

Academy Award forecasting is such fun. I wish I could put together a chart with the various factors that I see determining the film with the best odds of winning the doc Oscar this year. Without a graphics department on my side, I’ll just mention the main variables: quality of film (yes, that matters!), popularity […]

Oscar is coming! The nominees were announced late last week and I am sure my POV minders are psyched to see one of their own on the list of five: Ellen Kuras‘ The Betrayal (Nerakhoon), which will be broadcast on PBS in 2009, joins: Encounters at the End of the World, Werner Herzog The Garden, […]

Academy Award nominations were announced this morning, and some of the most critically acclaimed documentaries of the year took their rightful place on the list of nominees: The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) by Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath (POV 2009) Encounters at the End of the World by Werner Herzog The Garden by Scott Hamilton Kennedy Man […]

For film critics, the end of the year means casting an eye over the last twelve months of offerings and whittling down their “Best of” lists. Award season has begun, and as various regional critics associations (Houston! Chicago! Toronto! etc.) weigh in with their pronouncements, everyone begins the countdown to the Academy Awards, which take […]

So, as you heard here and probably elsewhere, the 15-film short list to be considered for the Oscar nomination for best documentary was announced last week. All I can do here now is throw out a big GULP; boy, was I wrong. In September, I cranked out my prognostications about what would be on the […]

Congratulations to all the filmmakers on the 15-film shortlist for the Oscar for Best Documentary! Upcoming POV film The Betrayal (Nerakhoon), by Ellen Kuras, which will air on PBS in 2009, was among the films included. In January 2008, the POV Blog followed Ellen as she spent a day at the Sundance Film Festival, where […]

With the Oscar deadline for submissions now long passed by (September 2; in order to be eligible, a film had to show for one week in Los Angeles and Manhattan), I figured it’s time to stick my head out the window and check who’s in the running for an Academy Award for this year. I […]

As we blogged a couple weeks ago in our Arthouse Confidential post about independent theaters, there’s a lot of cool stuff going on at local arthouse cinemas around the country. If you’re lucky enough to live near one, you can take advantage of all sorts of great opportunities to see films that may be otherwise […]

The documentary winners of the 80th Annual Academy Awards were announced on Sunday night. Best Documentary Feature Taxi to the Dark Side Alex Gibney and Eva Orner Best Documentary Short Subject Freeheld Cynthia Wade and Vanessa Roth Reactions from the blogosphere are slowly trickling in. First, a shout-out to our own Tom Roston, who was […]

The Oscars are taking place this Sunday, so I’ll do my best to break down who has the best shot at winning in the Documentary Feature category. First, let’s just do away with Operation Homecoming and War/Dance. You know it hurts me to say it, after having advocated so strongly for both films, but their […]

San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood has undergone a timewarp transformation over the past few days for the filming of Milk, Gus Van Sant‘s new movie based on the life and times of Harvey Milk. Milk was a 1970s-era activist and politician who was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most remarkable people of the 20th century […]