Docs join the popular crowd

While the small human-sized story has all but disappeared from studio slates, the race for best documentary feature is filled with some of the most riveting, intensely personal dramas to grace the screen this year.

They include “Capturing the Friedmans,” Andrew Jarecki’s almost novelistic examination of a Long Island family mired in a sex-crimes scandal; “My Architect,” an intensely personal look at the architect Louis Kahn by his son, Nathaniel; “Balseros,” which over seven years follows the fate of a group of boat people who fled Cuba; “The Fog of War,” a fierce one-on-one between filmmaker Errol Morris and 85-year-old former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara; and “The Weather Underground,” about the misplaced idealism of the 1960s radical group.

In a way, they are the children of “Bowling for Columbine,” last year’s Oscar winner, which proved documentaries can be entertaining and commercially successful; “Columbine” earned $21 million at the box office. While the academy’s documentary wing has been notorious for picking obscure films, this year’s crop is positively accessible.

“We’re at the beginning of something important,” says Carlos Bosch, the former Spanish TV journalist who made “Balseros.” “It’s not just about telling audiences real stories and real truths; we all also have to think it’s also entertainment.”

Another factor is a change in academy rules that mandates all documentaries must be commercially released to qualify.

“Up until last year, any movie that got a commercial profile, like ‘Roger and Me’ or ‘Crumb,’ not only didn’t win, but didn’t get nominated,” says Eamonn Bowles, president of Magnolia Pictures, which released “Capturing the Friedmans.”

“The academy may be warming to films that are more commercially successful, and the movies are meeting the academy halfway,” adds filmmaker Jarecki, who spent four years making “Capturing the Friedmans.” “The last two years have seen some wonderfully made documentaries like ‘Spellbound’ and ‘Winged Migration.’ ” “Winged Migration” and “Spellbound” were commercial successes, earning $12 million and $7 million respectively.

Yet the new popularity of documentaries is also a reflection of increasing audience sophistication. Morris believes audiences have finally realized documentaries come in more forms than the standard PBS variety. “There’s a cornucopia of doc filmmaking, from diary films to narrated historical slideshows, to cinema verite, to whatever it is that I do. It’s not one thing, it’s many things.”

Adds Jarecki: “People hunger for real stories that are told with the complexity of real life. They watch TV and it isn’t enough. TV news reporting has become increasingly narrow and black and white. So they read more newspapers and see more documentaries.”