Directors Guild names documentary nominees

LOS ANGELES The AIDS chronicle "How to Survive a Plague" and the military rape study "The Invisible War" are among nominees for the documentary prize at the Directors Guild of America Awards.

The contenders announced Monday all are first-time nominees for the guild honor.

Winners will be announced on Feb. 2 at a Directors Guild dinner.

• Directors Guild film nominees announced
• DGA TV nominations include "Girls," "Homeland" and "Mad Men"

The nominees are:

"Searching for Sugar Man"

The singer-songwriter known as Rodriguez was born poor in Detroit, and spent his life poor in Detroit. In the late 1960s he cut a couple of records that went nowhere. What he didn't know was that half way around the world in South Africa, his music was more popular than Elvis or the Beatles. "Searching for Sugar Man" shows what happened when Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul went in search of the legend of the supposedly dead Sugar Man.

• Rodriguez: The rock icon who didn't know it ("60 Minutes")
• "Searching for Sugar Man" (Official site)

"The Invisible War"

Kirby Dick's investigation of rape in the military won the Audience Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

• "The Invisible War" (Official site)

"How to Survive a Plague"

David France's documentary about the advocacy group ACT UP and its campaign to fight apathy in the face of the AIDS crisis won the New York Film Critics Circle's award for Best First Feature.

• "How to Survive a Plague" (Official site)

"The Queen of Versailles"

Lauren Greenfield won the Sundance Film Festival's directing ward for U.S. documentaries for her portrait of a wealthy family's downturn amid the recession.

"The Queen of Versailles" chronicles the housing-bust story of Jackie and David Siegel, owners of Westgate Resorts in Florida, who build the largest, most expensive single-family house in the United States - a 90,000-square-foot mansion - amid the economic crisis.

• "The Queen of Versailles" (Official site)

"Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry"

Director Alison Klayman's film is an intimate portrait of Ai Weiwei, the outspoken Chinese artist, blogger, dissident and critic of the Chinese government.

• "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" (Official site)