Announced today, January 14, the 2012 nominees for Oscars for nonfiction filmmaking, including five films contending for Best Documentary Feature and five in the running for Best Documentary Short.

Looking at the chosen titles, you'd have to say that the Academy is in a serious mood. Films in both feature length and short categories are all about social and criminal justice, the wages of war, activism and aspiring for a better life. Serious subjects, presented seriously.

Out of several features about cultural icons, only one made it to the finals. And, none of the animal documentaries graduated from the shortlist.

Note that only two of the nominated features were on my Best Documentaries of 2011 list -- but I'd be willing to wager that I see more documentaries during the course of a year than most voting members of the Academy do, including those members in the Documentaries Branch.

I'd still like to see more recognition for Garbo: The Spy, Nostalgia For The Light, The Arbor and the others on my list. What films do you think deserve greater recognition? Please leave a comment with your favorite.

And, which of the nominated features do you pick as the 2012 Oscar winner? Take a moment to take our opinion poll.

DocYard, the Boston area's bi-weekly documentaries screening series, kicks off its excellent Winter 2012 program on January 23, with a special presentation of Space Coast, the rarely screened cinema verite classic that Ross McElwee and Michel Negroponte made while they were attending MIT's graduate documentary film program. Read more...

Opening at New York's IFC Center on January 20, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a fascinating study about how St. Louis' futuristic housing project -- deemed in 1954 to be an inner city Mecca for the working poor -- could become a model of urban blight by the mid-1970s, when it was famously imploded. Read my full review.