HOW THE WINNER LOST

By RICHARD CORLISS

It could win you big money in a trivia contest some day, so save this list: Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter, D-Day Remembered, Freedom on My Mind, A Great Day in Harlem and Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision. One of these films will win this year's Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. And a host of moviewise people will mutter, "Yeah, well, it shoulda been Hoop Dreams."

Here is another list: Roger & Me, The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time, Visions of Light, 28 Up, It's All True, Paris Is Burning, The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. These are among the most acclaimed documentaries of the past decade. And none was even nominated for an Oscar.

Aside from the campaign for President, the Oscar derby is America's most contentious horse race. Last week, when the year's nominations were announced, much of the noise was about one of the losers: Hoop Dreams, the story of two high school basketball stars from Chicago's ghetto. This potent family epic touched critics and audiences. Many felt it might get a Best Picture nomination, unheard of for a documentary.

So when Hoop Dreams got stiffed, not only in the Best Picture category but also by the 47-member documentary selection committee, the snub spurred charges of corruption and artistic myopia. "It's a crime," fumes Wendy Finerman, a producer of Forrest Gump, which received 13 nominations. "This was one of the best documentaries of all time. The filmmakers were robbed." So fierce was the response that the Motion Picture Academy-a club with more secrets than the Masons-declared that it would examine the nominating procedure. "We always ask, 'Could our rules be changed?'" says Academy president Arthur Hiller. "You don't find out unless you take a close, hard look."

In four months, Hoop Dreams has earned about $4 million at the box office-less than most Hollywood flops, but excellent for a documentary. To the nominating committee, Hoop Dreams may have been too popular, in no need of the publicity a nomination can give an unknown film. Michael Moore, whose Roger & Me is the all-time top-grossing documentary, calls this affirmative-action policy "a systematic effort to deny nominations to films that are considered the best by critics and the public."

The voters have been called creaky (retired folks with time on their hands) and conservative (preferring a no-risk, pbs-style format). They are also frequently accused of cronyism. The co-producer of one of the new nominees, Maya Lin, is Freida Lee Mock, the committee's chairwoman. Though Mock stepped off the panel this year, critic Roger Ebert sees the nomination as "logrolling. It's something you expect in pie-baking contests at the county fair." Many past nominated films have been made by committee members or have been distributed by Direct Cinema, a company run by committee sachem Mitchell Block. He insists the decision process is pure: "It's not that people nominate their friends. It's that their friends are really talented."

Well, their friends got on a trivia list. But with Hoop Dreams-and another brilliant documentary, Crumb-missing, this Oscar category is like major league baseball. The heavy hitters aren't around, and replacement players have taken the field.

--Reported by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles