Beverly Hills, CA—Documentary category rules for the 78th Annual Academy Awards® have been changed by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to exempt documentaries "with a true theatrical rollout" from the rules' television blackout provision.

The change will apply to documentaries released during the 2005 Academy Awards year.

Documentary branch executive committee chair Freida Lee Mock said the theatrical exhibition requirements of the rules for the documentary awards were instituted in 2003 at the branch's request to encourage commercial theatrical runs for documentary films.

"Our new rules had a positive impact," Mock said. "Since 2003 there have been a growing number of documentary theatrical releases, and that growth exploded this summer."

But some of the films bumped up against the television blackout provisions of the rule and were thereby prevented from having a television exhibition until a nine-month time period had expired.

The Academy isn't trying to prevent television exhibition for documentaries that have had a successful theatrical run, Mock said, "but we want documentaries to be able to exploit their theatrical release as fully as possible, so we've modified the rules to exempt those documentaries from the blackout provisions." Even for documentaries with more modest theatrical runs, the 2005 rules reduce the blackout window to six months.

To qualify for exemption a film must have had a minimum of 25 commercial exhibitions for paid admission in motion picture theaters in 15 states, each exhibition to be at least two consecutive days. (Exhibitions held at festivals, benefits, special events and the like do not qualify under this provision.)

The 2005 rules also contain a provision requiring that short documentaries "must be contractually available for theatrical release for six months after receiving a nomination" unless they have met the test for the new blackout exemption.