Nonfics

The Oscars finally created a documentary category with their 14th ceremony. This was specifically for short documentaries. Churchill’s Island beat out 10 other titles to be named the first winner. The same year, two “features” were honored with Special Academy Awards. But that wasn’t all. Short documentaries also won in two other categories, making the Best Documentary (Short Subject) category seem less distinct.

When I interviewed Ross McElwee in 2012, in support of Photographic Memory, he said his next signature first-person-style documentary was to be about the production of a Hollywood remake of Sherman’s March, his breakthrough feature from 1985. Fourteen years later, he is finally releasing that next documentary, but it’s much different from what was anticipated. First of all, Sherman’s March was never remade.

This interview was originally published on the Documentary Channel Blog in 2012. In the first part of my recent interview with Ross McElwee, we discussed his new film, Photographic Memory, and how it fits into his career, both as an autobiographical documentarian and as someone with an oeuvre of work that stands on its own outside of its personal relevance. You can read about that and more here.

This interview was originally published on the Documentary Channel Blog in 2012. I was afraid I wasn’t going to get an interview with Ross McElwee, one of my favorite documentary filmmakers. And I was also afraid that I would get one. Whether it’s because I sometimes put my foot in my mouth or act too much like a fanboy with artists I admire, there can always be the chance that I’ll come across as annoying. Or, maybe I just imagine it that way.

Have you seen the documentary Black Woodstock? How about Exposing the Myth of Southern Charm? Chances are, if you follow our recommendations, you have. But not under those titles. Their real names are Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) and Natchez, respectively. The former is an Oscar winner, yet that may not have been enough to appeal to audiences since IMDb, TV Guide, and Plex all list Questlove’s debut feature as Black Woodstock.

Six months into the year, do we know what will rank as the best documentary of 2026? By the halfway point of 2025, I’d seen most of my end-of-year top 10, though some weren’t released until later. This year, at the midway point, a few of my favorites (including Nuisance Bear, Soul Patrol, and One in a Million) are still to come, but I think my number one is a lock. The funny thing is that the two additions to the current top five were released right after I published the initial list back in May.

I have no interest in or understanding of tennis (despite taking lessons as a little kid and playing it in P.E. in middle school), so most documentaries about the sport and its players don’t appeal to me. They need a great story where the tennis clips are merely obligatory set dressing, like this year’s Billie Jean King biography, Give Me the Ball!, or they need exceptional cinematic form, à la John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection.

Thank you all for your patience this week, as I’ve been working on some side hustles to keep this newsletter going with limited paid subscribers and, for the moment, very rarely any sponsored posts or email blasts.

For the second week in a row, our Pick is a documentary about a fairly successful pop artist who became a legendary record producer. Unlike Eno, however, Peter Asher: Everywhere Man is not very notable for its construction. It’s a relatively conventional music documentary. Still, the feature similarly centers on its very present subject, who guides the storytelling through newly captured interviews.

This interview was originally published on the now-defunct Documentary Channel Blog on September 12, 2011. One of the best documentary films I’ve seen so far at the Toronto International Film Festival is Last Call at the Oasis,a big-issue doc from the producers of An Inconvenient Truthand Food, Inc.,and from the Oscar-winning director of less conventional nonfiction works such as Protagonist. Filmmaker Jessica Yu’s last feature was a fictional sports comedy called Ping Pong Playa.