VARIOUS: This year's Academy Award nominees for best documentary film are honored by the International Documentary Association in Beverly Hills

The International Documentary Association (IDA) held it's 25th annual celebration of documentary filmmakers nominated for Oscars, at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills Wednesday evening (February 21). The filmmakers of ten documentaries -- five features, five shorts -- gathered to mingle with each other before the awards are handed out Sunday, and to share stories of their own filming adventures. The evening was also a well-deserved pat on the back for the documentarians who work in a field that goes largely unnoticed to the general public and often have difficulty in finding funding for their films, but press on anyway. "I think it's a tremendous group of films, and I think that all the films, I've been thinking about it, they're all really serious films, and also very well-crafted films, so I'm really honoured, and I'm very very happy that James Longley's film was also nominated, which is also about Iraq, which is wonderful because he was very helpful to me when I was working, so it's great," says Laura Poitras, director of "My Country, My Country." Poitras' film, "My Country, My Country" is one of two documentary features about Iraq that is nominated for the Academy Award, highlighting the strain that the US occupation of that country has brought to both Iraqi citizens and American soldiers. The other film, "Iraq in Fragments" is a atypic of life in Iraq after the U.S. occupation in 2003. Director James Longley, working at great risk to his personal safety, shows a country pulled in different directions by religion and ethnicity through the eyes and words only of Iraqis. "You know, these kinds of situations happen -- colleagues of mine were kidnapped and threatened on television, colleagues of mine were ambushed and killed on the roads between Baghdad and Najav, so it made you think, and it definitely put a crimp in what you were able to do as a filmmaker, it put a huge crimp in what journalists were able to do in Iraq, and its only gotten worse since I finished my film," says Longley. Amy Berg was nominated for "Deliver Us From Evil," a disturbing documentary about an Irish pedophile priest in Northern California who continued to abuse children over the years as the Roman Catholic hierarchy transferred him among parishes while knowing of his problems. The priest, now living in Ireland, agreed to appear on camera after five months and displays a chilling lack of remorse about the abuse, making Berg uneasy at times during filming. "Well, he's part of the problem, but he's also a victim at the same time, and it's a cycle of abuse, so you have to remember that he's not all there -- he's a sick person who is abused by the church, who is calling him a criminal, and it's just a system that just continuously repeats itself, so it was difficult to cover it, but it was definitely important, so I tried to keep my mind focused on that," says Amy Berg. Another film dealing with issues surrounding Christianity, "Jesus Camp," also gives extraordinary insight into the Evangelical Christian movement's determination to drill its values into children. "Well it's almost like a, our distributor, Magnolia, likes to refer to the film as sort of a Rorschach test on how one feels about religion, and actually, a lot of born-again Christians in the Midwest would see the films together as a group, and they wouldn't laugh at the same places as a more secular audience, or a more urban audience, and they would walk out of the film perhaps feeling empowered and happy with the situation, whereas a lot of more urban, secular people would say 'oh the separation of church and state is being eroded, and this has to be stopped and it's scary, and this is eye-opening.' So again, it really speaks to, sort-of this divided nation that we live in, especially when it comes to topics of faith, and how far someone's religion should go into the political realm." Despite the high calibre of documentary films nominated for the Oscar, the front-runner this year is "An Inconvenient Truth," which features former Vice President Al Gore's slideshow on the disastrous effects of global warming. As the third highest grossing documentary of its kind, it has earned $45 million world-wide, sold 1 million DVDs and is widely credited for helping shift U.S. public opinion on global warming. "Well, when we started making the film, we thought we were just making a slideshow, a film about a slideshow with a former politician, and then when the film was finished, we took it to Sundance, and we arrived at Sundance to show the film, and suddenly, we realized we were making a film with a rock star. I mean, when Al Gore came into the room, all the actors were pushed aside, all the famous directors were pushed aside, and there was Al Gore. Suddenly, I don't know, we can't even explain it, but something happened," says Davis Guggenheim, director of "An Inconvenient Truth." 2006 was a stellar year for documentaries due to the commercial success of "An Inconvenient Truth," but each film nominated peered into issues that are very much at the forefront of discussion in both America and the entire world. Sandra Ruch, executive director of the IDA, was pleased with the provocative nature of the films and told Reuters what she thinks makes a good documentary filmmaker. "A lot of stamina, a lot of passion, and a feeling that your story is the most important thing that must be told at all costs, and just never give up, keep going," says Ruch. The Academy Awards will be handed out in Los Angeles this Sunday, February 25.

ITN Source | February 28, 2007

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