Documentary update

John Steinbeck, When Bankers Were Good and the Academy Awards.

84th Academy Awards Documentary Feature category

The list of 15 films has been announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It includes Wim Wenders’ unmissable tribute to choreographer Pina Bausch and Susanne Rostock’s documentary about Harry Belafonte’s involvement in the American civil rights movement, Sing Your Song.

The list has some prominent omissions: Werner Herzog’s death-row documentary Into the Abyss and most surprisingly, Senna, Asif Kapada’s mesmerising documentary about the Brazilian Formula One racing driver who won the world championship three times. The winner of the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Senna is made up of fragments of archival footage. The result is a visually sublime exploration of the excitement and burden of Senna’s talent.

The chosen documentary films are:

Battle for Brooklyn (RUMUR Inc.)
Bill Cunningham New York (First Thought Films)
Buck (Cedar Creek Productions)
Hell and Back Again (Roast Beef Productions Limited)
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (Marshall Curry Productions, LLC)
Jane’s Journey (NEOS Film GmbH & Co. KG)
The Loving Story (Augusta Films)
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (@radical.media)
Pina (Neue Road Movies GmbH)
Project Nim (Red Box Films)
Semper Fi: Always Faithful (Tied to the Tracks Films, Inc.)
Sing Your Song (S2BN Belafonte Productions, LLC)
Undefeated (Spitfire Pictures)
Under Fire: Journalists in Combat (JUF Pictures, Inc.)
We Were Here (Weissman Projects, LLC)

The 84th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on 24 January, with the award ceremony taking place on 26 February, broadcast live on the ABC Television Network.

Melvyn Bragg’s John Steinbeck documentary

Tonight a one-hour documentary for BBC Four will follow former NS guest editor Melvyn Bragg as he explores the legacy of the Nobel Prize-winning author, John Steinbeck. Bragg travels from Oklahoma to California, focusing on the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath and asking why Steinbeck’s social concerns still hold great resonance today. Bragg visits the California orchards which formed the centrepiece of The Grapes of Wrath, where migrant labourers and growers engaged in protracted and painful political battles. Across many decades, in several America states, the classic novel has been burned and banned. Its unwavering empathy for the underprivileged and biting critique of social structures has caused it to be branded as subversive by some conservatives. Bragg also travels to the site of the “dust bowl” in Oklahoma and the Monterey coastline that helped shape Steinbeck’s ideas on ecology.

Ian Hislop: When Bankers Were Good

Today on BBC Two Ian Hislop presents a provocative and amusing film about the financiers of the Victorian era, whose behaviour belies the idea that banking is always associated with recklessness and unlimited greed. In the Victorian era there was a vigorous national debate about money’s moral purpose and its potential to corrupt. Some extremely wealthy Victorian bankers had a troubled relationship with their acquisitions and engaged in a good deal of soul-searching. Hislop champions these highly generous individuals, such as the millionaire merchant banker George Peabody who made a vast donation to London housing which still provides accommodation to 50,000 Londoners today. Hislop talks to a range of figures, including the chief rabbi Lord Sacks, chairman of the FSA Lord Turner, philanthropic financier Lord Rothschild and the historian (and NS contributor) A N Wilson.