Academy Award for Best Film
| Academy Award for Best Picture | |
|---|---|
| Awarded for | Best Picture of the Year |
| Country | United States |
| Presented by | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) |
| First awarded | 1929 (for films released during the 1927/1928 film season) |
| Currently held by | Moonlight (2016) |
| Official website | oscars |
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards presented annually since the awards debuted in 1929, by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). The award goes to the producers of the film and is the only category in which every member is eligible to submit a nomination and vote on the final ballot.
Best Picture is considered the premier award of the Academy Awards, as it represents all the directing, acting, music composing, writing, editing, and other efforts put forth into a film production. Since 1973, it is the final award presented at the ceremony.
The Grand Staircase columns at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, where the Academy Awards ceremonies have been held since 2002, showcase every film that has won the Best Picture title since the award's inception. As of 2017, there have been 537 films nominated for Best Picture.
At the 1st Academy Awards ceremony (for 1927 and 1928), there were two categories of awards that were each considered the top award of the night: Outstanding Picture and Unique and Artistic Picture, the previous being won by the war epic Wings, and the latter by the art film Sunrise. Each award was intended to honor different and equally important aspects of superior filmmaking.
The following year, the Academy dropped the Unique and Artistic Picture award, and decided retroactively that the award won by Wings was the highest honor that could be awarded. Though the award kept the title Outstanding Picture for the next ceremony, the name underwent several changes over the years as seen below. Since 1962 it has been called the Best Picture award.
Until 1950, this award was presented to a representative of the production company. That year the protocol was changed so that the award was presented to all credited producers. This rule was modified in 1998 to apply a limit of three producers receiving the award, after the five producers of Shakespeare in Love had received the award.
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