Carlos Bosch and Josep MDomenech's account of Cuban castaways in Balseros and Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain's first-handchronicle of the 2002 Venezuelan coup in The Revolution Will Not BeTelevised have shared top featurecompetition honours in the International Documentary Association's 19th annualIDA Distinguished Documentary Achievement Awards.

Both titles were presentedby HBO/Cinemax Documentary Films, while Balseros is distributed theatrically in the US throughSeventh Art Releasing and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is distributed through Vitagraph Films. Both titlesand the remaining roster of winners will be honoured at the IDA's upcomingawards ceremony on Dec 12 in Los Angeles.

Other winners included TheRise And Fall Of Jim Crow, BillJersey and Richard Wormser's portrait of the African-American struggle that wonthe Limited Series competition for segments of a series with a specificcontinuing theme or subject, and American Experience: The Murder Of EmmettTill, Stanley Nelson's civil rightsstory that won the Continuing Series competition for documentaries that arepart of an ongoing series.

The Rise And Fall Of JimCrow was presented by Thirteen/WNETand is distributed through California Newsreel, while The Murder Of EmmettTill was presented by AmericanExperience/WGBH Boston, PBS.

Elsewhere Chavez Ravine:A Los Angeles Story took top honoursin the short category for films under 40 minutes. Jordan Mechner's documentarydepicts a community betrayed by greed and political hypocrisy.

Jose Padilha's acclaimed Bus174 won the IDA/ABCNEWS VideoSourcecompetition for documentarians who make the best use of historic news footageto tell a non-fiction story. It centres on the hijacking of a passenger bus inRio de Janeiro and was presented by HBO/Cinemax Documentary Films and isdistributed in the US theatrically through THINKFilm.

Berga: Soldiers OfAnother War won the 2003 PareLorentz Award, which is presented by the Pare Lorentz Foundation to anindividual whose work best represents the democratic sensibility, activistspirit and lyrical vision of the legendary documentarian.

Berga was directed by the late Charles Guggenheim andrecounts the story of Guggenheim's fellow infantrymen who were captured duringthe Battle of the Bulge and later died in a Nazi slave labour camp. It isdistributed by PBS Home Video and CS Associates.

"These documentaries werechosen by a jury of peers out of hundreds of films from every part of theworld," IDA president Michael Donaldson said in a statement. "Each of themtells an important story that makes a deep and indelible impression. Theproducers and everyone else involved in creating these films have earned therespect and admiration of their peers in IDA."

Alex Rivera will receive theinaugural Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award at theceremony. Rivera's award-winning short documentaries include Papapapa and Why Cybraceros' His latest project, The Sixth Section, will be broadcast nationally on the PBS series POV.

Columbia College of Chicagograduate Sue-Yeon Jung will receive the David L Wolper Student DocumentaryAchievement Award for her portrait of elderly Korean sisters in BOM-EE-O-MYUN (Waiting for Spring). The Wolper Award includes an invitation toparticipate in Kodak's Emerging Filmmakers Showcase at Cannes.

As previously reported here(Screendaily Nov 21) the distinguished zoologist and documentarian Sir DavidAttenborough will receive the 2003 IDA Career Achievement Award and Mel Stuartwill receive the IDA Pioneer Award.