The Story of the Weeping Camel
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Tuesday, Nov. 17, a list of twelve semi-finalists for the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award. The twelve films were chosen by the Academy's documentary branch, which will also select the five final nominees. The semi-finalists are:
- Born into Brothels, about the children of Calcutta prostitutes;
- Home of the Brave, the story of murdered civil-rights activist Viola Liuzzo;
- the biographical documentary Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train;
- Academy Award-winner Jessica Yu's In the Realms of the Unreal, a portrait of artist and janitor Henry Darger;
- Sundance Film Festival opener Riding Giants, about surfing;
- The Ritchie Boys, the story of German Jews who were trained as an elite U.S. intelligence unit during World War II;
- The Story of the Weeping Camel, the tale of a camel calf and its owners, a family of Mongolian nomads;
- Super Size Me, an indictment against both the fast-food business and fast-food eaters;
- Tell Them Who You Are, filmmaker Mark Wexler's look at his relationship with his father, Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?);
- Touching the Void, a mixture of interviews and dramatic recreations depicting the fate of mountaineers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates while on a mountain-climbing trip in Peru;
- Tupac: Resurrection, an examination of the life of slain rapper Tupac Shakur;
- and Kirby Dick's Twist of Faith, about a man trying to come to terms with his past sexual abuse at the hands of a priest.
Conspicuously absent from the Academy list, whether due to eligibility or other issues, are many of the Iraq War-related political documentaries that have surfaced this year, including Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, Control Room, and Uncovered: the War on Iraq.
Fahrenheit 9/11's director/producer Michael Moore, winner of the 2002 Best Documentary Oscar for Bowling for Columbine, did not submit his blockbuster documentary in that category. Fahrenheit 9/11, however, is eligible in other Academy Award categories, including Best Picture.
Oscar nominations will be announced on January 25; the awards ceremony will take place on February 27.
Addendum: An Academy spokesperson told me that Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, the pro-John Kerry Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, and the anti-Kerry Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal were never submitted for Academy consideration. Control Room and Uncovered: The War on Iraq were disqualified because they have already been shown on television. That leaves only Nickolas Perry and Harry Thomason's The Hunting of the President, with Bill Clinton as the presidential prey and far right-wingers as the ideological hunters, which was indeed eligible but failed to make the final cut.