Two Oscars in the family, the world at his feet, but Scots director

The Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald has criticised one of his fellow contenders for the best documentary feature at the Academy Awards ceremony last week, describing his rival's film as "patronising".

Buena Vista Social Club, directed by German Wim Wenders, was widely tipped as the favourite to win the prestigious award in Los Angeles last Sunday but instead Glasgow-born Macdonald upset the odds when he walked off with the prize.

In an interview with the Sunday Herald, Macdonald shared his critical opinions on the film, which has become one of the most commercially successful documentaries, taking in more than #15 million in the US alone.

He said: "Buena Vista was more of a performance film than a documentary. The most interesting bits of it - the interviews with the old musicians - were really short. You wanted to hear more of what they had to say. I also felt it had this very American, very patronising tone: 'Oh these poor old men with their beautiful music, trapped within Castro's dictatorship, unable to get to America, and here we are, liberating them to be heard by American audiences.'"

Wenders was clearly upset by his loss at the ceremony after the result and walked out after the announcement. He had reportedly already written his acceptance speech and forwarded it to several German Sunday newspapers for publication.

Macdonald added: "I've been to the Cuban film festival a few times, met a lot of older Cubans. And if Wenders had allowed them to speak in his documentary, he might have found out that these old guys adore Castro, for bringing them a health service, an education, a reasonable standard of living. Wenders could have included that, but didn't. That would have made it much more of a documentary for me."

The Oscar was awarded to Macdonald's One Day In September, a documentary about the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic games. Narrated by Hollywood actor Michael Douglas, the film uses dramatic devices to reconstruct the event and also includes an interview with the last surviving Palestinian terrorist, Jamal Al-Gashey.

Researchers spent many hours gathering as much information as possible on the incident and the consequences for those involved. Two of the terrorists involved in the shootings were later killed on instruction as punishment for their involvement in the massacre.

After interviewing Al-Gashey, Macdonald visited the refugee camp where he grew up and learned what he endured. In the film the subject explains how he only felt like a real human being after he was given a gun and joined the freedom fighting movement. "It gave him a sense of purpose in life. I can understand that absolutely." said Macdonald.

Macdonald believes cinema, rather than television, is the best medium for the documentary, a belief which partly inspired the dramatic narrative throughout his award-winning film. He explained: "If you want to do something for the cinema, you have to make decisions. Why would people want to go to see it? I needed to make the story really exciting, pump up the thrills. I needed to have some good music, make it visually interesting."

Macdonald said he had been as astonished as everyone else when the winner was announced. "We felt very surprised because we felt certain Buena Vista would win as they had been tipped as the hot favourites. A couple of the Academy members had come up to us in the couple of days beforehand saying how much they liked it but until the night we had no idea."

Other contenders for the academy award included two more music documentaries, Speaking with Strings and Genghis Blues, and On the Ropes, a feature on boxing.

The 32-year-old Scottish director comes from a strong film-making tradition and is not the first member of his family to win an Oscar. His brother, Andrew, is the producer behind Trainspotting and The Beach and both are grandsons of the late great film-maker Emeric Pressburger, famous for films such as A Matter of Life and Death. He won an academy award in 1942 for best original story in the classic wartime film 49th Parallel, directed by Michael Powell.

Macdonald remains pessimistic about the reality of life as a documentary maker in Britain. "Channel 4 and the BBC have become very conservative in what they commission and that seems to be a shame, especially for C4 because they used to pride themselves on commissioning new cutting edge films by young directors," he said.

He had approached C4 with the idea for the Oscar-winning film but said he had been unable to work under their conditions. "They liked the subject but suggested we did it with a director who used to do Panorama - that it had to be done in a very straight way. I found that attitude amazing. I'm not exactly a novice. What I'm about is finding new ways to do documentaries, explore the form, tell a strong story from beginning to end."

Scotland has a strong tradition of documentary film-makers, such as John Grierson, who is perhaps best known for his involvement with Scotland's first Oscar-winning film, the documentary Seawards the Great Ships, which won the award for best live action short in 1961 for its provocative portrayal of the last days of shipbuilding on the Clyde.

Macdonald said he believed that tradition was being eroded by lack of support and was keen to dispel the image of documentaries as worthy but dull. He said: "There's a great opportunity to make world class, cinema standard documentaries in Scotland. I just don't think the funding structures are available, or that people in power are as interested as they should be."

One Day In September is unlikely to suffer the same fate as his last film, Donald Cammell - The Ultimate Performance, which had a brief screening in the cinemas and was ultimately consigned to TV. Cammell was an artist born in Edinburgh who went on to mix with 1960s bohemians such as Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull. He later committed suicide in Hollywood.

With funding from the BBC, the broadcaster insisted it be shown on TV first with the other main backer, Scottish Screen, insisting it had to be given a theatrical release. Eventually the film was shown for a few days at the Glasgow Film Theatre and at London's ICA before being shown on TV a fortnight later. Macdonald was disappointed with the end result and believes there should be a place for documentaries on the large screen. "It may be arrogance but I'd rather have 1000 people watching my film in a cinema, concentrating on it and then being able to talk about what they felt, rather than have it go out on TV," he said.

"There's something unsatisfying about making a film for television that goes out once, twice if you're lucky. People are not exactly paying attention when it's on. You've spent all this time working on something, put your heart and soul into it, and it's just background noise."

Macdonald refuses to reveal what new projects may lie in the pipeline but did admit he had been offered an opportunity to direct a history of the Bond girls, something he conceded he was not that keen to do. He admitted: "I'm still really stumbling under the weight of last week's win."

One Day In September is released in London on May 19 and will be shown at the Glasgow Film Theatre and the Edinburgh Filmhouse in June.

l Kevin Macdonald on making the award-winning One Day In September: Seven Days Kevin Macdonald has been making films since 1994, working mainly in television.

In 1997 he directed the documentary Howard Hawks: American Artist for the BBC and the British Film Institute. He also completed a documentary on the making of Shallow Grave, the black comedy produced by his brother Andrew which starred Ewan McGregor.

He has also written a biography of his late grandfather, screenwriter Emeric Pressburger and two years ago co-authored the Faber book, On Documentary, with Mark Cousins

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