PGA Documentary Nominations: Are They Actually Bad Luck for Oscar?

Precursor awards are like microwave popcorn. It takes a second for the bag to heat up and then things really start popping. Today the Producers Guild of America named their nominees for Theatrical Documentary Features. The Producers Guild Award winners will be presented on Saturday, January 23, 2016 in Los Angeles. 

Documentary Feature Nominees

• AMY (Reviewed, Top Box Office Doc Hits)
• THE HUNTING GROUND (Top Box Office Doc Hits) 
• THE LOOK OF SILENCE (Reviewed)
• MERU (Top Box Office Doc Hits)
• SOMETHING BETTER TO COME

The only one of these titles I hadn't personally heard of before today was Something Better to Come, a poverty-doc about children living on a gabarge dump in Moscow. More on what this list does and doesn't mean for Oscar after the jump...

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Oscar Updates: Doc, Shorts, and Animation Charts

The Academy branches have been furiously screening all sort of less heralded fare of late. Tim already talked us through the animated shorts and I'm most intrigued by the Chilean allegory about a bear ripped from his circus life and a film about Russian astronauts. But there's more to uncover!

Heads up that we've updated that shorts, animation, and documentary section of our famed Oscar Charts. Click over and read up on the fascinating competitions.

As with all things Oscar, the shorts categories do get more attention than they once did many moons ago -- particularly with that mini theatrical tour of the nominated films each year --  but it's still not much.

Live Action Shorts
This year we've got barbers shaving cartel leaders, interpreters delivering babies, nuns interrupted, little boys in big wars, father and daughter visits gone awry, and much more in the Live Action shorts category. There's even a title with Q'Orianka Kilcher from The New World (!!!) and Vincent Kartheiser from Mad Men in the mix called Winter Light that bills itself as a "revisionist Western thriller". The ten finalists are quite a mix of types with thrillers, comedies, dramas, war films, and westerns accounted for.

Documentary Shorts
This tends to be the category most likely to trigger massive depressive episodes and this year is no exception: war, ebola, war, honor killings, war, The Holocaust, rape, and did I mention war? I personally can't even deal. Not this particular season.

Animated Features
This category continues to feel sewn up for Inside Out but the real drama is "how many nominees will we get?" since there's less films eligible than usual. If they still go with five, do you think Peanuts can surprise?

Documentary Features
I've been grilling members of the documentary branch over cocktails and light h'ors doeuvres at various parties of late. One charming older gentleman even pulled out a handwritten list of his favorites to read from only to pocket it again as if to torture me from suspense. High profile competitors (Amy, Going Clear, The Look of Silence, Best of Enemies) definitely have fans. Not that that means anything as this branch often surprises with both their finalist list and what gets shut out so nothing can be called "safe". But if something is safe maybe it's Cartel Land which has been name-checked with great frequency. Random shoutouts abound including Iris, Winter's on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom, Where to Invade Next, and Meru. Sadly I haven't heard one mention of friskier / weirder critical darlings like The Wolfpack or Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog.

See the charts

'Sherpa' and 'Only the Dead' Capture the Escalation of Tragedy

Glenn here to discuss two Australian films on Oscar's documentary long list.

Jennifer Peedom’s Sherpa began life as an otherwise unassuming documentary about a man most people would never get to know. If the production of this Australian-made documentary about Mount Everest’s most revered guide had continued as planned, it would have no doubt been an informative and satisfying portrait of Phurba Tashi and his people – the Sherpa are an ethnic group – as well as their quiet village life in the mountains of Nepal.

But the production didn't go as planned...

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Ballet 422 & A Ballerina’s Tale

Manuel here talking about two documentaries about the New York City ballet scene.

Ballet 422 follows Justin Peck, the youngest ever choreographer tapped with creating a ballet for the New York City Ballet. As a behind-the-scenes look at how a ballet piece is put together, from choosing a musical piece to deciding what color the costumes should be, the Jody Lee Lipes film is illuminating. The film, available on Netflix already, mines all of Peck’s whose nervousness in the run-up to the debut of his ballet for all the drama it’s worth, though the more fascinating moments of the doc come courtesy of the grueling rehearsal process that’s peppered throughout. More interesting, perhaps, is the latent argument for contemporaneity and youthfulness that characterizes the decision to choose up-and-comer Peck for this prestigious honor, but in making a film about dance, it makes sense that those larger cultural conversations are kept in the background rather than taking center stage.

A Ballerina's Tale has loftier goals. Currently playing in select cities, the film follows ballet superstar Misty Copeland. Nelson George’s doc is at both a look at the effects of the punishing art of ballet dancing on Copeland, as well as a living document of the systemic and institutional biases that the first black ballerina to be promoted to principal dancer in ABT's 75-year history, has had to deal with on a daily basis. It is a testament to Copeland’s commitment to honoring those that came before her, that what would easily (and in many ways still is) a vanity project that enshrines her as a central part of African-American cultural history, A Ballerina’s Tale spends most of its running time contextualizing Copeland’s own rise to fame and the way she’s used her platform to advocate for a more diverse vision of ballet, one that moves beyond the relatively recent post-Balanchine history of ballet as overrun with prepubescent, waif-like white ballerinas.

Ballet 422 and A Ballerina's Tale, (the former on the hunt for the Documentary Oscar), make a great double feature on an art that’s clearly struggling with how to appeal and mirror its modern audiences. Any TFE readers who are also ballet aficionados care to weigh in?

IDA Nominations Honor Amy, Kurt, Nina and Marlon

Glenn here. The nominations and specialty category winners were announced today for the 31st International Documentary Association Awards. It's a line-up heavy on artist portraits, Ukraine, and films heavy on the use of archive footage. Last year's IDA list featured three eventual Oscar nominees (Finding Vivian Maier, Salt of the Earth and the winner of both Citizenfour), but other years since 2010 the number has only been two. Except 2011 when the IDA people went way off course (in the best possible way) and awarded Patricio Guzman's Nostalgia for the Light with no eventual Oscar nominees in their list (Guzman's The Pearl Button didn't find favor from them this year, though).

I see no reason why this year won't follow that ratio status quo. But firstly let's take a look at the nominees.

BEST FEATURE

• Amy
• The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
• Listen to Me Marlon
• The Look of Silence
• The Russian Woodpecker
• What Happened, Miss Simone?

I am extremely pleased to see the excellent Russian Woodpecker cited here. If Oscar could pay attention to that superb examination of paranoia amid the Ukrainian revolution then I would be more than ecstatic. And if you have the chance to see it then do yourself a favour. But what about the rest...

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