A movie about art was the big winner at Friday night's 2010 IDA Documentary Awards, but it wasn't the much-talked-about "Exit Through the Gift Shop" from graffiti artist Banksy.
Instead, the International Documentary Association gave its Distinguished Feature Documentary Award to Lucy Walker's "Waste Land" (left), a three-year look at artist Vik Muniz, who created massive works of art with the help of the catadores who search the world's largest garbage dump (outside Rio de Janeiro) for recyclable materials.
The message of her experience making the film, Walker said in her acceptance speech, is that "treasure comes out of trash just when you think it's not possible."
Earlier in the week, Walker's film was also named winner of the IDA Pare Lorentz Award, which is given to a film that honors that pioneering filmmaker's legacy by featuring "one or more of Lorentz's central concerns – the appropriate use of the natural environment, justice for all and the illumination of pressing social problems."
Other films nominated for Distinguished Feature included "Exit Through the Gift Shop," "The Oath," "Steam of Life" and "Sweetgrass." "Exit" and "The Oath" were considered favorites in the category, though "Waste Land" had picked up rave reviews since screening at Sundance last January and the IDA's DocuWeeks in the summer.
"Waste Land" is among the 15 non-fiction features on the shortlist for the Oscar Documentary Feature category.
For Distinguished Short Documentary, a category in which four of the five nominees had ties to HBO, IDA voters chose "Woman Rebel," a Kiran Deol film about a woman from Nepal who fought in the heavily female rebel army and rose to become a member of the new republic's parliament.
In the IDA's television categories, the Continuing Series Award went to the ESPN series "30 for 30," while the Limited Series Award was won by Connie Field's seven-episode South Africa chronicle "Have You Heard from Johannesburg."
While the two series awards and the Distinguished Feature and Short prizes were announced live during the ceremony at the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles, other IDA honors were announced earlier in the week and handed out onstage Friday.
In those awards, "For Once in My Life" won the Music Documentary Award, "Bhutto" the ABCNews Videosource Award for the best use of archival news footage, and "Waiting for a Train: The Toshio Hirano Story" the David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award.
In the IDA Humanitas Award category, which goes to "films that strive to unify the human family," the result was a tie between Laura Poitras' "The Oath" and Roberto Hernandez's and Geoffrey Smith's "Presumed Guilty."
Honorable mentions in the Pare Lorentz category went to "Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?" and in the student category to "The Stinking Ship."
Veteran documentarian Barbara Kopple was given the Career Achievement Award. "We live in very challenging times, both politically and professionally," she said, saluting the assembled documentary community.
