The National Board of Review just announced its 2009 winners, The Cove was named Best Documentary.
This is enormous. The illustrious group has been recognizing film for a century, almost as long as the art form has been around. Consistent with NBR's lofty goal of getting the medium out to audiences of the world, The Cove filmmakers hope to get the film viewed in Japan, where audiences would have the most effect on policy.
From NBR's site:
Originally founded as an anti-censorship organization, protesting New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr.’s revocation of moving picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908. The mayor believed that the new medium downgraded the morals of the community. To assert their constitutional freedom of expression, theater owners led by Marcus Loew and the top film distributors of the day – Edison, Biograph, Pathe and Gaumont – joined John Collier (later the U.S. Commissioner for Indian Affairs) of the People’s Institute at Cooper Union and established a National Review committee that endorsed films of merit and championed the new “art of the people,” which was transforming America’s – and soon the world’s -- cultural life.
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