IDA Documentary Awards to honor Robert Redford

The International Documentary Assn. will honor the actor, filmmaker and environmentalist Robert Redford with its Career Achievement Award, given to individuals who have had “a major impact on the documentary genre through a long and distinguished body of work.”

The organization also announced Thursday that it would present its Pioneer Award to Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato and its Preservation and Scholarship Award to Rithy Panh. The honors will be bestowed Dec. 5 at the IDA Documentary Awards at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles.

Redford got his start in documentary filmmaking as an executive producer on 1980’s “The Solar Film,” an Academy Award-nominated short about solar energy. His nonfiction resume also includes the features “Incident at Oglala” and “The Unforeseen,” and his Sundance Productions has produced such works as “All the President’s Men Revisited,” “Chicagoland,” “Death Row Stories” and “Cathedrals of Culture.”

Bailey and Barbato are the founders of World of Wonder Productions, and their work includes the features “Inside Deep Throat” and “Party Monster,” and the reality TV series “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “Million Dollar Listing.”

Panh, whose documentary “The Missing Picture” was nominated for the Oscar for best foreign-language film this year, is a co-founder of the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The center collects audiovisual archives on Cambodia from around the world and grants free access to the public; it also provides vocational media training and produces fiction and documentary work.

“This year we have chosen to honor four outstanding members of our global documentary community,” IDA executive director Michael Lumpkin said in a statement. “Whether changing minds, changing the world or making some of the best entertainment in our industry, Robert Redford, Randy Barbato, Fenton Bailey and Rithy Panh represent the depth, breadth and power of nonfiction storytelling in today’s world.”

A full list of nominees for this year’s IDA awards will be announced later this month.

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