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Oscars So Black...At Least, In Documentaries

By NPR Staff
Published February 23, 2017 at 9:15 AM CST
Directors of the films "I am Not Your Negro," "Life, Animated," "13th," and "OJ: Made In America" are all up for Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Feature category. They are also all filmmakers of color. For the first time, African-American documentarians made up most of the nominees.
Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures, A&E IndieFilms, Netflix, and ESPN Films
Directors of the films "I am Not Your Negro," "Life, Animated," "13th," and "OJ: Made In America" are all up for Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Feature category. They are also all filmmakers of color. For the first time, African-American documentarians made up most of the nominees.
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A filmmaker of color is almost certain to win this year's Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. In fact, for the first time, African-American documentarians made up most of the nominees. We talk with Ava DuVernay, whose movie "13th," made her the first black female director to be nominated in this category. And the Emmy and Peabody award-winning documentarian Noland Walker, now of ITVS, tells us about how the film industry has responded to documentarians of color since he started as a production assistant on the landmark PBS documentary series, "Eyes On the Prize" in the late 1980s.

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Equity & Justice
NPR Staff
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