Graton filmmaker ready for Academy Awards (w/video)

For most movie fans, the Academy Awards season really gets rolling with the announcement of each year’s nominees in January. But for Robert Hillmann, it’s almost a year-round process.

Hillmann, a documentary filmmaker who lives near Graton, serves on the committees that nominate films for Oscars in the two documentary categories -- features and short films.

For him, the quest for this year’s feature-length nominees began not long after last year’s statuettes were handed out on prime-time television.

“By April, we’re already looking at movies that are hoping to get nominated for the following year,” Hillmann explained.

As more documentaries become eligible, by playing theaters in New York or Los Angeles, or winning awards at film festivals, the pace picks up.

“I just spent most of the past several months looking at a couple of hundred documentaries to help select the final contenders for the nominations,” Hillmann said. “There is a process that is largely invisible to the public. It’s not just one evening of tuxedos and low-cut gowns.”

The Oscars are presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, made up of more than 6,000 motion picture professionals. Once the nominees for the year’s Oscars have been chosen, the entire membership can vote to pick the winners. This year’s awards ceremony is Feb. 22.

Committees of academy members working in various specialties - cinematographers or sound editors, for example - choose nominees in their category. Members from all branches vote to pick the Best Picture nominees. The documentary branch has grown to more than 200 people.

“All of the members of the documentary branch of the academy are eligible to be part of the nominating committee,” Hillmann said. “Not all of us choose to be part of the committee in any given year.”

Hillmann was invited to join the academy after he was nominated for an Oscar for co-directing, with Eugene Corr, the 1990 biographical documentary, “Waldo Salt: A Screenwriter’s Journey.”

At the time, Hillmann also was directing the 70mm IMAX film “Hidden Hawaii” when he got his invitation. His 1982 documentary “Fire on the Water,” a past grand prize winner at the Sundance Film Festival, was shown at the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival several years ago.

For decades, committee members had to appear in person in Hollywood to attend screenings of films eligible for nominations, but now the judges simply screen DVDs of the contenders wherever and whenever they can. That makes it easier for film professionals like Hillmann, who live far from Los Angeles, to participate.

“Now it’s possible to be anywhere on the planet and receive a box full of DVDs” from the academy, Hillmann said. “It also makes it possible for the academy to deal with the explosive growth in the numbers of documentaries. A growing number of documentarians worldwide have new technologies and means of production.”

Watching that many movies may sound like easy duty and a lot of fun, but it can be an exhausting experience, because the documentaries cover everything from war, disease and death to true stories of heroism and charity. Documentaries also deal with the joys and sorrows of everyday life.

“It’s emotionally challenging to expose yourself to all of that,” Hillmann said. “Every year, we documentarians are putting a stethoscope to the troubled heart of the entired planent.”

Hillmann serves on two separate committees - one for feature-length nonfiction documentary films, and another for documentary shorts. For features, there is a two-step process.

“We determine what the final 15 will be, and out of the final 15, we pick the five nominees,” Hillmann explained. Releasing a preliminary “short list” of 15 allows the academy to draw public attention to films that might not make the last cut, but still deserve special attention.

This year’s nominees for feature-length documentary, chosen from some 130 entries, are: “Citizen Four,” “Finding Vivien Maier,” “Last Days in Vietnam,” “The Salt of the Earth” and “Virunga.”

Nominees for documentary short subject are: “Crisis Hotline: Veteran Press 1,” “Joanna,” “Our Curse,” “The Reaper (La Parka”) and “White Earth.”

Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol will show the Oscar-nominated documentary shorts starting Friday, Jan. 30.

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. Read his Arts blog at arts.blogs.pressdemocrat.com.