Kim Bartley and DonnachaO'Briain's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised shared top feature honours at the 19th InternationalDocumentary Association (IDA) awards ceremony in Los Angeles on Friday (Dec13), despite an eleventh hour request by Venezuelan protestors to withhold theaward until the facts of the film had been investigated.

Protestors handed outleaflets to attendees prior to the ceremony at the DGA headquarters, claimingthe film's account of a failed coup to oust president Hugo Chavez in April 2002contained factual errors and manipulated the chronology of events.

The claims are being led by Wolfgang Schalk and Thaelman Urguelles, who have an opposing view of the coup andplan to screen a response to the documentary in Los Angeles within the next fewweeks.

So far the group says morethan 10,000 people have signed a peition decrying the documentary. NeitherBartley nor O'Briain were present at the ceremony and IDA officers wereunavailable for comment at the time.

Carlos Bosch and Jose MariaDomenech's Balseros shared bestfeature honours with The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

In other highlights, SirDavid Attenborough received the IDA Distinguished Documentary Achievement Awardfrom Sir Ben Kingsley. "I am in debt to our cameramen and women who sit therefor ages and get the footage while I get the credit," Attenborough told theaudience.

On a more sombre note, IDApresident Michael Donaldson led a brief tribute to documentary film-makers andcameraman Bob Guenette and James Miller. Britain's Miller died earlier this year while shooting a documentary in the Gaza Strip for HBO.

Other films honouredincluded Jordan Mechner's Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story, Sue-Yeon Jung's Bom-Ee-O-Myun (Waiting For Spring), Stanley Nelson's American Experience: TheMurder Of Emmett Till, Jose Padilhaand Felipe Lacerda's Bus 174, BillJersey and Richard Wormser's The Rise And Fall Of Jim Crow, Charles Guggenheim and Grace Guggenheim's Berga:Soldiers Of Another War and JonathanKarsh's My Flesh And Blood.