Winners Of 2006 Grierson Awards Announced

The winners of the 2006 Grierson Awards were announced at a ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society, in London on Friday, 17 November 2006 hosted by Rageh Omaar.
The 2006 awards saw a record number of entries covering diverse subjects from conflict in the Middle East to conflict in the kitchen; from saucy postcards to Pol Pot; from Kenneth Williams to Robbie Williams.
Chairman of the Grierson Trust, Jenny Barraclough said: “Documentaries are increasingly in the limelight and attracting huge audiences. Once again the standard of tonight’s films is astonishingly high.”
Lenny Crooks, Head of the UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund which sponsors the Grierson award for best cinema documentary said: “Successful feature documentaries share the same ambition and scale that makes a fictional feature film work in the cinema and is by telling stories in a thrilling and compelling way. This year’s contenders for the best cinema documentary award are no exception from the fascinating unravelling of the Enron scandal, to the mystery of a man who lost his memory, and the shocking and moving story of how three young men from Tipton ended up on the road from the war in Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay. With the best Oscar documentary nomination under its belt and now the Grierson award, Darwin’s Nightmare about the effect of fishing the Nile perch on Tanzania 's Lake Victoria is documentary filmmaking at its most powerful.”

• BEST DOCUMENTARY ON A CONTEMPORARY ISSUE Asylum (Peter Gordon for BBC) BBC Four
• BEST DOCUMENTARY ON THE ARTS Take That For The Record (David Notman-Watt for talkbackTHAMES in association with Syco TV) ITV 1
• BEST HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARY How Vietnam Was Lost (Two Days In October) (Robert Kenner for Robert Kenner films) BBC One
• BEST DOCUMENTARY ON SCIENCE OR THE NATURAL WORLD The Natural World: The Queen of Trees (Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble for Flat Dog Productions) BBC Two
• FRONTIER POST MOST ENTERTAINING DOCUMENTARY Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares: Prog 3 - Momma Cherri’s (Christine Hall for Optomen Television) Channel 4
• BEST DRAMA DOCUMENTARY The Year London Blew Up (Edmund Coulthard and Mark Hayhurst for Blast Films) Channel 4
• BEST DOCUMENTARY SERIES
  Russian Godfathers (Patrick Forbes for Oxford Film & Television) BBC Two
  
• UK FILM COUNCIL BEST CINEMA DOCUMENTARY Storyville: Darwin’s Nightmare (Hubert Sauper for Mille et Une, Coop 99 & Saga Film) BBC Four
  
• BLOOMBERG BEST NEWCOMER AWARD Clare Richards for Disabled and Looking for Love

The Grierson Trust will also presented the Trustees’ Award, which recognises an outstanding contribution to the art or craft of the Documentary.
The award was presented to Mike Salisbury, producer of many landmark series for the BBC Natural History Unit, including Life of Mammals and Life in the Undergrowth.
(DS)