The Journey to the Oscars and Beyond

By Michael Jacobsohn

The Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film ceremony will be held on March 2. With that in mind, I want to share some of the things that I have learned about the arduous selection process.

The Oscar for Best Documentary is a long, winding road. For starters, each film needs to have been released for a minimum of one week at a qualifying commercial theater or have opened at a prestigious film festival. It is estimated that there are about 150 documentaries that have negotiated that hurdle. Some independent filmmakers needed to rent a theater for a week in order to be eligible for that status. These cinema rentals are known as “four-walling” and can be expensive.

For years, my friend Matthew, who is an independent New York filmmaker, has gotten me free invites to these screening events. Matthew and I attended a screening of Daughters, which is a 2024 American documentary film directed by Natalie Rae and Angela Patton. The film follows four young girls in Washington, D.C., as they prepare for a special Daddy-Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, part of a unique fatherhood program in a local jail. The film is the result of an eight-year collaboration between the directors. It premiered at Sundance, where Netflix picked it up for distribution. This compelling film is well-made and opens our eyes to the tragedy of imprisonment. You feel the fathers’ and daughters’ frustration and pain.

A few days later, Matthew invited me to a screening of Sugarcane, a 2024 documentary by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie. The film follows an investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school in Canada, which was known as Sugarcane. It explores the impact of the Canadian Indian residential school system, intergenerational trauma, and the resilience of Indigenous communities. The film won the U.S. Documentary Directing Award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and is distributed by National Geographic. What stood out for me was the amazing cinematography and editing.

Typically, these intense documentaries are followed by informative Q&As, which are then followed by food and drinks and a chance to meet the filmmakers. In recent years, streamers have dominated the Oscar game. They can afford to hire public relations firms that administer the screenings. Their job is to garner votes and create buzz for their documentaries. I suspect that many attendees looked at this screening as an opportunity to network, promoting themselves and their film projects.

Most of these highly produced documentaries astonish me with how filmmakers and editors shape hundreds of hours of footage into compelling narratives. I admire how filmmakers spend years and personal fortunes to tell neglected social justice issues.

Sadly, many of these critical social justice films are ruthlessly competing to be part of Oscar madness. The minimum cost for a documentary to mount a serious Oscar campaign is around $100,000. That is a steep expense for most independent filmmakers. I urge filmmakers to rethink this travesty. More than ever, let us share our meaningful films without the rancor of winner-take-all competition. I think it is more important, in these fraught times, that we filmmakers stop competing and band together to share our most valuable voices.

On a lighter note, I was part of this year’s Gift of Music documentary music film festival, which Lyn Pentecost, Pepe Flores, and I hosted in La Sala de Pepe gallery—an intimate gallery situated at 73 Avenue C. The space is a throwback to the days of friendly Puerto Rican social clubs that dotted the Lower East Side. Unlike the uptown Oscar fever, our three-day holiday film festival was in the spirit of sharing well-made music documentaries with an engaged audience.

The two films that stood out for me were Bill Evans: Time Remembered, a 2015 film made by Bruce Spiegel—a must-see film that does an incredible job presenting some of Evans’ momentous jazz music. Although I was familiar with some of his piano compositions, I was not familiar with his backstory. This documentary shares Evans’ turbulent life and his lifelong struggle with addiction. Priceless interviews with renowned musicians are included in the film: Tony Bennett, Dr. Billy Taylor, singer Jon Hendricks, and jazz pianist Bill Charlap are treasures to hear. The film is available on Amazon Prime for screening.

You can’t talk about Latin music without embracing Afro-Cuban bandleader Machito. A Latin Jazz Legacy, a 1986 film by Carlos Ortiz, will give you a good sense of why Machito’s contribution is so critical to today’s Latin beat. His music helped launch the mambo craze at the venerated Palladium Ballroom. The documentary features footage of Machito as well as interviews with Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, and Ray Barretto. While the Evans documentary is a roller coaster of pain and tragedy, the Machito film is a celebration of joy and gratitude. I am thankful for being treated to the testimonies of music greats who are largely no longer with us. Their words speak highly as to why we must continue to celebrate these gifted musicians.

The earthy screenings at La Sala de Pepe remind us why intimate community screenings are important to celebrate. To see well-made social issue documentaries slugging it out for Oscar nominations is truly regretful. We as documentary filmmakers need to resist that travesty and aspire to a healthier approach to celebrating our accomplishments. 

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Michael Jacobsohn is an active New York independent filmmaker. He is completing a feature length documentary on the legendary Cornelia Street Cafe. And he curates a bi-monthly screening of short films by New York filmmakers at New Plaza Cinema.