They set in motion a process that led to a complete overhaul of the documentary selection process.
Up Against the Deadline The effective deadline for Mr. Powers's Toronto selections is late July, when the news release for the documentary selection goes out.
A strong documentary selection for 2015 includes the world premiere of Women He Undressed, Gillian Armstrong's documentary about the unsung Oscar-winning Australian costume designer Orry Kelly, who created costumes for Some Like it Hot, Gypsy and Irma la Douce.
The documentary selections diverge a bit from what the Academy is considering.
"The documentary selections this year are much more nontraditional in style — more nonfiction storytelling versus the standard format," Mr. Cooper said.
The Writers Guild documentary selections diverge a bit from what the Academy is considering, but then, that's always the case.
Nothing attests to Sundance's commitment to off-Hollywood more than its documentary selections, which year to year remain its most qualitatively consistent suit.
The documentary selections at the New York Film Festival this year may not have been made with the intention of counteracting the current tide of feel-bad, do-gooder real-life movies, but the cumulative effect is a powerful and eclectic defense of the vitality of form against the sovereignty of content.
The documentary Oscar selections have consistently drawn fire over the years for missing some of the more widely watched and culturally impactful documentaries — "Hoop Dreams," "Tyson and Mr. Mooree's own "Capitalism: A Love Story" are among the prominent films that have not received nominations over the years — while often honoring films that might be worthy but had far less presence.
The result (as the documentary's splendid selection of clips shows) was work of almost unbearable emotional extremes — in what Falk calls "ambiguity," "complexity of behavior," and "truth," and which he ascribes to Cassavetes himself: "He housed within himself every opposite, and he housed it in its extreme form".
Otherwise, there were plenty of more conventional documentaries in the selection, including Roberto Minervini's Special Mention winner Stop the Pounding Heart, which takes a surprisingly sympathetic look at a religious family in the Texas Bible belt.
