Barbara Kopple Honored, Morgan Spurlock to Host Doc Awards

IDA also honors “An American Family” creators Alan and Susan Raymond, and USC professor Mark Jonathan Harris

The 26th IDA Documentary Awards will present its 2010 Career Achievement Award to veteran filmmaker Barbara Kopple (photo below) at a December 3 ceremony hosted by Morgan Spurlock, the International Documentary Association announced on Monday.

Barbara KoppleKopple’s work includes the landmark 1976 documentary “Harlan County USA,” which won an Oscar and is also included in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, along with the 1991 Oscar winner “American Dream.”

Past winners of the honor include Michael Apted, Ken Burns, Werner Herzog, Albert Maysles, Haskell Wexler, Errol Morris and HBO’s Sheila Nevins.

Other honorees at the ceremony will include Alan and Susan Raymond, the creators of the groundbreaking PBS series “An American Family” and founders of Video Verite productions; and longtime USC film professor and documentary film program chair Mark Jonathan Harris, who as a filmmaker has won three Academy Awards for his documentaries.

The show will take place at the Directors Guild in Los Angeles, and will be hosted by “Super Size Me” and “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?” director Morgan Spurlock, an Oscar nominee and one of the best-known documentary filmmakers this side of Michael Moore.

IDA nominees, which will be announced later this month, generally cover a broader stylistic range than nominees in the Academy’s documentary categories. Last year’s big winner was “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” which failed to make the Oscar shortlist.

Tickets for the IDA Awards are available at www.documentary.org/awards2010.

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