AFI Jumps Into the Annual Film Awards Derby

The American Film Institute, boldly stepping onto a stage that is certain to draw worldwide attention and plunge the venerable nonprofit organization into the superheated media frenzy leading up to the Academy Awards, today will launch a program to select an annual list of 10 outstanding feature-length films released during the calendar year.

The movies, which must contain significant creative and/or production elements from the United States and be released theatrically in order to qualify, will be chosen by an anonymous 13-member panel of filmmakers, critics, scholars and AFI directors. Called “AFI 2000,” the program’s top 10 films will be announced Jan. 9.

Also announced on that date will be up to five “AFI moments of significance”--an almanac of events that occurred during a calendar year that had a dramatic impact on the world of film. As examples of such significant moments, AFI officials offered the dramatic impact that “The Blair Witch Project” had on the film world in 1999 or the passing of director Stanley Kubrick that year.

But it is the Oscar race where the AFI’s top 10 list could have the biggest impact.

Oscar nominations will be announced Feb. 13--about a month after the AFI’s selections are made public. The Academy Awards will be handed out March 25 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

In the weeks leading up to the nominations, Hollywood is abuzz with Oscar talk, with studios hyping their candidates and members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences fanning out across town to see as many films as they can before casting their ballots.

When there are no clear front-runners, as seems to be the case this year, the AFI’s selection of 10 outstanding movies could become a harbinger of how the Academy Awards might unfold, much as the Golden Globes have become over the years.

Jean Picker Firstenberg, the AFI’s chief executive officer, said she does not foresee the top 10 list as being competitive in any way with the academy. She noted there are no plans to stage a glitzy, black-tie banquet to confer the plaques on the filmmakers, but did not rule out such an event in future years if the list becomes popular.

Firstenberg said the rationale for launching the top 10 list is based on the fact that in recent years the AFI has recognized excellence in the American cinema by listing the best films of the 20th century.

“When we started to think about it,” she said, “we asked, ‘How do you recognize excellence in the 21st century?’ It’s to have an annual almanac of the work of excellence during the year.”

Firstenberg acknowledged that the AFI list could draw attention to certain films that might otherwise be overlooked or that studios could use the AFI’s selections as marketing tools to boost a film’s ticket sales.

“People can say whatever they choose to say,” Firstenberg said. “We constructed our jury in such a way that takes us away from any sort of box-office consideration. If you look at the jury, you’ve got scholars, you’ve got critics, you’ve got filmmakers and AFI trustees. That’s a rather broad-based group of individuals.”

Tom Pollock, who chairs the AFI’s board of directors, noted that the top 10 films will be ranked alphabetically and only a film’s “creative ensemble”--not an individual director, producer or screenwriter--will receive AFI plaques.

The AFI said the 10 films to be selected must, in the jury’s opinion, “have best advanced the art of the moving image; enhanced the rich cultural heritage of America’s art form; inspired audiences and artists alike; and/or made a mark on American society in matter of style or substance.”

To qualify for the AFI list, a movie must be an English-language work of fiction in a narrative format and typically more than one hour in length. The film must have significant creative and/or production elements from the U.S. and be released theatrically during the calendar year or be screened theatrically for at least four days in Los Angeles and New York City. Names of the AFI’s jurors will be confidential, and a new selection committee will be designated each year.

Academy officials welcomed the AFI’s entry into the awards derby but were cautious when asked what would happen if the AFI were to someday expand the list into a full-blown televised awards show.

“Any organization has a perfect right to publish a list of what it thinks are the most impressive cinematic accomplishments in the year,” said Bruce Davis, the academy’s executive director. “The fact that [AFI] is a film-related organization makes it more reasonable that it will offer such a list.”

But Davis added: “I think the proliferation of televised awards shows does have the effect of making all televised film awards shows less compelling. . . . I think there probably is a limit to the number of evenings we can expect the public to be riveted by actors in tuxes and gowns doling out awards to the same movies.”

Founded in 1967, the AFI has long promoted itself as a national force in recognizing and advancing excellence in film and other forms of the moving image, whether it’s preserving and restoring historically important movies, staging an annual film festival, honoring men and women in the industry with Life Achievement Awards or, in recent years, staging prime-time TV specials. The AFI created headlines when it named “Citizen Kane” the No. 1 movie of all time in 1997 and Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn the top “screen legends” the following year.

Peter Rainer, the film critic for New York magazine and chairman of the National Society of Film Critics, said that he would like to see the institute broaden its list beyond feature-length fiction.

“It would be nice if AFI were to go out of the box a little bit and in addition to the 10-best list, name the 10 most neglected movies of the year, or the 10 best documentaries, or the 10 best short films,” Rainer said. “Films [like] that really could use some high-level recognition from an organization like that.”

Pollock said he is open to doing just that but he wants to see how this new AFI program flies before taking that leap.