Proud Brown University alumnus Doc Soup Man Tom Roston thinks his alma mater has outdone all others in producing great documentary filmmakers.

After watching last night’s exciting win for Kathryn Bigelow and realizing that today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, I found myself wondering who had been the first woman director to win Best Documentary? And for that matter, how many documentaries directed by women have won Oscars in the history of the Academy […]

It’s been a while since I’ve done a list (see my 10 most lugubrious docs and the 10 sexiest) — and as an unabashed advocate of the genre, here’s another. What makes for a great moment in a documentary? That can sometimes be a complicated issue, because some of the “greatest” moments are also the […]

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 […]

The shortlist for the 2009 Cinema Eye Honors has just been released: 15 feature documentaries and 5 short nonfiction films have been recognized for their excellence. We’re thrilled for all the filmmakers named, and we’re especially pleased to see three POV films on the lists! The Betrayal (Nerakhoon), by Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath, made […]

It’s almost the end of the year, which means that film award season is in full swing. The Academy Award shortlist for best documentary came out a few weeks ago, and the Satellite Award nominees for best documentary were announced at the end of November. This morning, the nominees for the Independent Spirit Awards were […]

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 […]

You’ve heard me talk about it before, but, finally, Ellen Kuras‘ The Betrayal is making it to the public this Friday, at the IFC Film Center so forgive me if I have little more to say. The movie, 23 years in the making, is about a Laotian immigrant family’s experience in America; after its opening […]

Two major festivals have been taking place over the past two weeks, making June a time for a real feast for documentary lovers in the New York and Washington, D.C. areas. The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival runs through June 26 at Lincoln Center. The festival showcases films from the U.S. and around the […]

This weekend, the documentary The Unforeseen will begin trickling into theaters. On the surface, it’s about urban sprawl in Austin, Texas. It traces the history of the booming growth of that city, and the tensions that arose between developers and environmentalists trying to protect a natural spring-fed watering hole called Barton Springs. As a piece […]

My dancing days are done! I’m back home from Sundance, and well-satiated by a great dose of documentaries. It’s been a pretty remarkable festival for docs. Despite some pre-festival chatter that docs might get a cold reception, the films at Sundance showed a real diversity of subject matter and accomplishments in craft — and ranged […]

POV correspondent Kris Wilton spent the day with cinematographer-turned-documentary-director Ellen Kuras at the Sundance Film Festial on Sunday, January 20. Ellen Kuras is a legendary director of photography who has worked with an impressive array of directors, including Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and Michel Gondry on some of the most stunning films of the last […]

Filmmakers Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath premiered their film, Nerakhoon (The Betrayal), earlier today at the Sundance Film Festival. The film chronicles the epic story of a family forced to emigrate from Laos after the chaos of the secret air war waged by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. Kuras has spent the last 23 […]