Oscars Create New Rules for Doc Makers

Earlier this month, the New York Times revealed several changes in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' process of reviewing documentaries for Oscar consideration. The most notable change being that, a movie must be reviewed by either the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times in order to qualify for consideration. The reason for this new rule appears to be an attempt to narrow an ever growing field of submissions. The Academy’s documentary branch reviewed 124 films in 2011, a 23% increase from the previous year. Additionally the Academy has indicated that they are trying to eliminate documentaries intended for television, which can qualify for Academy consideration through small theatrical releases. Other policy changes revealed by the New York Times include:

The review policy comes atop other major changes that will be announced this week, according to Michael Moore, a member of the Academy’s board of governors and a prime mover behind the revisions. Mr. Moore said the Academy planned to abandon a system under which committees within the documentary branch divided up films for viewing and scoring under an intricate numerical system. Instead, the entire 157-member branch will now be allowed to vote for the five nominees and the whole 5,800-member Academy will then vote for the best documentary, even if members have seen the films only on a screener. In the past only the several hundred members who actually attended a screening voted for the best documentary, a limiting factor that Mr. Moore and others have long believed to work against the more popular and culturally significant films.

These changes have raised several questions among the documentary film community. Some are concerned that as the list of documentaries reviewed is trimmed, films that don’t have big commercial releases may be overlooked. Furthermore, requiring reviews by two major newspapers places a lot of responsibility on a handful of critics. Others have noted a possible conflict of interest with documentaries who choose the New York Times as their subject, such as last year's Page One. Questions have also been raised about consolidating the importance of print coverage and theatrical releases to New York and Los Angeles. Linda Holmes of NPR’s Monkey See Blog addresses this issue succinctly:

Indeed, the saddest part of this controversy is that the direction these rules are moving — culling the list by giving absolute supremacy to theatrical viewing and print media coverage in two coastal cities — is diametrically opposed to the best thing that has happened to documentary filmmaking in my lifetime, which is the availability of smaller films on home video. For much of the country, this is the meaningful distribution method for current documentary film. Honestly, what does a resident of Cleveland or St. Louis, not to mention a resident of a small town in Iowa, care whether a film ran for a week in an art-house theater in New York, even if the New York Times did decide to review it? He's going to see it on Netflix or on demand, or maybe on cable.

Indiewire.com posted the relevant portion of the Academy’s Press Release related to the new rule changes here.

[New York Times] [NPR] [Indiewire]