Century Film Project

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Century Awards! This year, as in years past, I’ll be posting a winner every hour up to approximately the time the “real” Academy announces the Best Picture for 2016, coinciding with the Century Award for Best Picture of 1916.

I said in my nominations announcement that this category was a “gimme,” since I only saw one documentary this year, but it’s so good I felt it deserved to be honored with a Century Award. Thus, I announce the not-at-all-surprising winner:

“The Battle of the Somme”

This movie represents the best traditions of actuality filmmaking, adapted to a new era and one of the most important human events of its period. The Battle of the Somme was a devastating attack on French soil that claimed nearly a million lives and contributed to the attrition of the German army, although it was by no means a decisive Allied victory. British people, eager to see for themselves the struggle of their friends and relatives abroad, flocked to the movie, which also had a highly successful international release at a time when the British film industry was largely stagnant. While some scenes are obviously staged, and in general the photographers restricted to “safe” areas for filming, it is nonetheless a thrilling document of the First World War.