Academy Awards
On February 26, 2012, Oscar nominated comedian Eddie Murphy will host the Academy Awards ceremony. The ceremony will be held at the Kodak Theater which has been the site of the Academy Awards ceremony since 2002. This will be the 84th awards ceremony held by the Academy.
The Academy Awards ceremony has come a long way from its 1929 beginnings as a small, private ceremony to its present day status as the red carpet event of the year. The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held its first ceremony, which honored extraordinary film achievements of the previous season, at Hollywood's Hotel Roosevelt. Fifteen artists, directors and others involved in the film industry were given statuettes at that first event. It was a private brunch, with only about 270 people in attendance. Unlike the awards ceremonies of today, the winners already knew that they were going to win as they had been notified three months in advance. The Academy started trying to incorporate a bit of surprise by sending announcements for the newspapers to publish the night of the ceremony at 11, but the practice was discontinued in 1940 when the Los Angeles Times released the names of the award winners in the paper's evening edition and guests were able to pick it up as they arrived at the banquet. The following year, the Academy started using its sealed envelope system--a system which continues to this day.
While the Oscar (which is a nickname for the statuette formerly known as the Academy Award for Merit) is the Academy's best known award, it is not the only one given by the Academy. In fact, the Academy's Board of Governors also gives out Science and Technical Awards, Honorary Awards and Special Achievement Awards as well as various others that are not as widely publicized. However, since 1930, the Oscars have been the awards that have received the most attention.
The Academy has certain rules that govern a film's eligibility for receiving awards as well as who might be eligible to vote for the films. Voters are divided into categories according to their role in film making, and may only vote within their categories. The only exception to this rule is that all of them vote on Best Picture. In order to be eligible for the awards, the film must be feature length (meaning longer than 40 minutes) and have opened in the year prior to the ceremony (from January 1 at midnight to December 31 midnight in Los Angeles, CA).
There are several events surrounding the Academy Awards. The recurring events include seminars and lectures such as the Marvin Borowski Lecture, the Marc Davis Lecture and a lecture which showcases the research findings of the Academy Film Scholars grant. In the coming year, there will be other events and exhibitions including a screening of Judgement At Nuremberg to commemorate its 50th anniversary, Home Movies Weekend which will show Amateur Night (a compilation of amateur videos from 1915 to 2005), and an exhibition called Crew Call 2011: Celebrating the Crafts.