We are SO excited to finally announce all of the nominees for our 28th annual IDA Documentary Awards ceremony, which will be held Friday, December 7, 2012 at the Director's Guild in Los Angeles. Our Executive Director Michael Lumpkin expressed his enthusiasm about this year's selections: "This year’s documentaries have once again shown us the power of the documentary art form," Lumpkin said. "The record number of submissions we received reflects the cultural relevance of documentary storytelling."
The five films nominated in IDA’s Best Feature category include The Central Park Five (Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon), The Invisible War (Kirby Dick), The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield), Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul), and Women With Cows (Peter Gerdehag).
The five nominated films in the Best Short category are God is the Bigger Elvis (Rebecca Cammisa), Kings Point (Sari Gilman), Mondays at Racine (Cynthia Wade), Open Heart (Kief Davidson), and Saving Face (Daniel Junge, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy).
To see the nominees in the Best Continuing Series, Best Limited Series, the HUMANITAS Documentary Award, the David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award, and the ABCNEWS VIDEOSOURCE Award, please visit the Awards page.
We're thrilled that Penn Jillette will be hosting the IDA Awards. He is a cultural phenomenon as a solo personality and as half of the world-famous Emmy®-Award winning magic duo Penn & Teller. His solo exposure is enormous: Howard Stern to Glenn Beck to the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times. Dancing With The Stars, MTV Cribs and Chelsea Lately, and hosted the NBC game show Identity. As part of Penn & Teller, he has appeared more than twenty times on David Letterman, as well as on several other TV shows, from The Simpsons and Friends to Top Chef and Jimmy Fallon. He co-hosts the controversial series Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t!, which has been nominated for sixteen Emmy® Awards. His documentary, The Aristocrats, features 100 top comics telling their version of the world's dirtiest joke and was a 2005 official Sundance entry.
Winners in the Best Feature and Best Short categories are selected by IDA’s membership. Screening committees of industry professionals based in New York City, Washington, DC, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles determine other award categories.
In addition to recognizing the year’s best in documentary filmmaking and nonfiction programming, the 2012 IDA Documentary Awards will be honoring producer Arnold Shapiro with the organization’s Career Achievement Award, and presenting The Sundance Institute's groundbreaking Documentary Film Program and Fund with IDA’s Pioneer Award, which recognizes extraordinary contributions to advancing the non-fiction form and providing exceptional vision and leadership to the documentary community.
Winners will be announced live at the awards ceremony. Tickets available now!