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Monday, February 4, 2013

Oscar Oddity #8: The Documentary Streak

Last year's doc winners for Undefeated.

The 85th Oscar nominations have yielded another odd stat.

For the third consecutive year, the Documentary Feature category consists entirely of films with multiple directors/producers. In other words, it's the third straight year that no documentary is represented by one nominee. Each film has two or three credited nominees. This is the longest streak of this kind, as the category usually has at least one film directed/produced by one person. It's an unnoticed streak, but I thought it was interesting.

Here are the nominees responsible for this streak:

5 Broken Cameras
(Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi)

The Gatekeepers
(Dror Moreh, Philippa Kowarsky and Estelle Fialon)

How to Survive a Plague
(David France and Howard Gertler)

The Invisible War
(Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering)

Searching for Sugar Man
(Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn)

It's also worth mentioning that this will be the sixth consecutive year that multiple nominees will win for Best Documentary Feature Film. The last solo winner was Davis Guggenheim for An Inconvenient Truth (2006).

Note: Individual nominees weren't credited from 1942-45, and the award wasn't given in 1946.

15 comments:

  1. I love these facts! Thanks

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  2. Love it! Amazing that you picked up on that.

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    1. Thanks! I try to hunt down the most random (and hopefully unknown) stats.

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  3. I really dig these facts too. I just eat this shit up. Great research here!

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    1. Thanks! Haha, nice. Love digging up obscure Oscar trivia.

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  4. That is interesting -- I love the fact that you dig into this stuff and present it so beautifully on your blog. It looks like 2012 was a great year for documentaries.

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    1. Thanks so much! :) It does look that way. Of the nominees, I've only seen The Invisible War, but I should see most of these in the next couple of weeks.

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  5. 2012 was a good year for docs. I've only seen Sugarman of the nominees. A pity The Imposter, & Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007 didn't get noms, since they're in my top 10 of the year.

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    1. I need to see all three of those, which I should be doing very soon. Interesting that two of them cracked your top 10.

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  6. I've been really into the documentaries this year. Trying to watch all the nominated ones, and any I may have missed! So far I've only seen Invisible War, How to Survive a Plague and The Imposter.

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    1. I've got a lot of catching up to do (only seen The Invisible War), but I'll hopefully see all of them before Oscar night.

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  7. Very intrigued by Searching for Sugar Man and The Gatekeepers!

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