Sputnik Mania, a film by David Hoffman, has won this year??s Independent Documentary Association's ABCNEWS VideoSource-sponsored Award for Best Use of News Footage in a Documentary. Sputnik Mania tells the story of the Soviet Union??s launch of the world's first satellite and what happened to America in the following year. An ABC press release says Hoffman pored through thousands of hours of archival footage to create the film. Because of the "sometimes-superficial nature of newsreel coverage" from that period, he was initially skeptical that the footage itself would be a central component of his film. Employing "bulldog-like instincts," Hoffman and his three-person team, including producer Eric Reid and editor John Vincent Barrett, cast a wide net in their archival research, relying on YouTube, Ebay and other innovative channels to locate and obtain previously lost and never-before-seen footage from the 1950s. As the research process evolved, Hoffman realized that not only could he "tell the story largely using footage from the time," but also that what he was seeing in the footage itself would take the film in new directions. ABCNEWS VideoSource, in partnership with the IDA, has presented this award annually since 1997 to a film or video that best uses news footage as an integral component of the work. Sputnik Mania will be honored at the IDA Awards Gala, which will take place on December 7, 2007 in Los Angeles.Web sites: www.documentary.org and www.abcnewsvsource.comStory: FOOTAGE.info NEWS SERVICE