THE TIME OF HARVEY MILK (1984), a true classic. Have you seen it?
If there's anything that makes me feel unsophisticated when it comes to the cinema it's my general relationship to documentaries. Like your average movie consumer (non cinephile division) I only see them if the subject matter interests me. If there were a narrative equation wouldn't that be "i'll only see this or that genre"? And ewww, that's not the way to be. Variety is always best when consuming art. Man cannot live by multi-quandrant blockbusters OR art films alone.
Over the years as The Film Experience has expanded we've given more space to documentaries largely because Glenn & Amir are obsessed with them. So for today's Posterized, a special edition surveying the last 30 years of the Best Documentary Feature category. I went back that far because The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) is basically one of my favorite things that I've ever seen in my life and I wanted to know if YOU have seen it. I enjoyed Milk (2008) a lot when it came out but it was very deja vu since so much of it was in this great film.
Anyway, I'm taking an informal survey to gauge your interest in this type of movie (and it's adjacent Oscar category) in the comments so do tell. How many of these Oscar winners have you seen? There's actually 31 of them in the past 30 years since there was one tie. I have only seen 10 which I am embarrassed to admit as an Oscar pundit but there it is. I am not a total completist each year. Most of these films are available on DVD still though sadly not many are streaming.
1985 Broken Rainbow (Floria & Mudd)
1986 [TIE] •Artie Shaw: Time is All You've Got (Berman)
Down and Out in America (Grant)
1987• The Ten-Year Lunch (Slesin)
1988* Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (Ophüls)
1989 Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (Epstein & Couturié) - RECENTLY DISCUSSED HERE
1990 American Dream (Kopple & Cohn)
1991• In the Shadow of the Stars (Light & Saraf)
1992 The Panama Deception (Trent & Kasper)
1993 I Am a Promise (Raymond & Raymond)
1994• Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (Mock)
1995* Anne Frank Remembered (Blair)
1996 When We Were Kings
1997* The Long Way Home
1998* The Last Days
1999 One Day in September (Cohn & Macdonald)
2000* Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of Kindertransport (Harris & Oppenheimer)
2001 Murder on a Sunday Morning (de Lestrade & Poncet)
2002 Bowling for Columbine (Moore)
2003 The Fog of War (Morris & Williams)
2004 Born Into Brothels (Kauffman & Briski)
2005 March of the Penguins (Jacquet & Darondeau)
2006 An Inconvenient Truth (Guggenheim)
2007 Taxi to the Dark Side (Gibney & Orner)
2008 Man on Wire (Chinn & Marsh) Netflix Instant Watch
2009 The Cove (Psihoyos & Stevens)
2010 Inside Job (Ferguson & Marrs)
2011 Undefeated (Martin, Lindsay, Middlemas) Netflix Instant Watch
2012• Searching for Sugar Man (Bendjelloul & Chinn)
2013• 20 Feet From Stardom (Neville, Friesen & Rogers) Netflix Instant Watch
* I asterisked the films about World War II so you could see why Oscar got that reputation (which isn't true but seems true) that they'll go for anything WW II or Holocaust related.
• I dotted the docs about The Arts because it's another semi-common thread.
What can we glean from all of this? Perhaps those of you with a better grasp on the art of documentaries can tell us but it does appear that the shifts in the rules, branch, and committee voting over the years have helped with the variety. As with Foreign Film this particular branch/committee was often under attack for ignoring breakout hits or critically lauded standouts in given years. It is hard to look at this list now (especially if you include the nominees) and notice that instant and enduring classics like Grizzly Man, Hoop Dreams, and Paris is Burning are all missing, you know?