Ok, first, don't forget to come to the FourDocs documentary show at the London Short Film Festival tonight. It's at 8pm at the Roxy - programme is an hour of two northern football docs (contrary to my promises, no keyboard included sadly) followed by the LSFF documentary award nominees - amazing selection. Do come.
The full line-up for the LSFF docs is on the link above, and the two football docs we're preceding it with are "Goodbye Mr Clough", Revie and Clough's classic argument on Yorkshire TV, followed by Michael Grigsby's classic Tomorrow's Saturday

Anyway, to further business, and there's a new documentaries award just set up by AJ Schnack and Indiepix (which is a really ace website by the way, if you've never been on it before) in opposition to the Oscars Shortlist furore - which, if you missed it, was pretty much about it being really underwhelming, predictable, and US-obsessed.

My twopenneth with big awards, especially the Oscars, has always been that they don't really matter unless you're a film businessman or obsessed with celebrity, and in particular with the Oscars, that they reflect the narrow world-view of American industry people. But having said that, I do recognise that the announcement of the  Oscars documentary nominess and eventual winner is the one time that docs get mass worldwide attention, so it does tend to set the agenda for a mass audience in terms of what documentary currently is. So yes, it probably does matter a bit.

So what about the new awards? Well, more information is going to come out at Sundance in a week or so, but looking at the 15 nominees now announced in the outstanding achievement category, it's certainly more representative of what's been hot in the docs community in the last year as opposed to what's tickled the critics or those with a political agenda. In other words, it's paid more attention to craft than content I'd say, and has also borne in mind if a film was (relatively) successful at the box office. It's certainly a better list, and more transparently picked, than the Oscars, but if I'm totally honest, I'm not really in agreement with either list. There's at least 5 on the newer list that I found worthy but boring, and the demand for box office returns has excluded a fair few that I thought totally exceptional. And again, it's really American.

But that's ok - I feel more comfortable with this list because I know who voted for it, and there's no obvious hidden agendas. And people taking things into their own hands - well, I always love that.