Valentino on Oscar doc longlist

Valentino: The Last Emperor was shot between 2005 and 2007

A film about Italian designer Valentino is one of 15 titles eligible for next year's best documentary feature Oscar.

Valentino: The Last Emperor charts the 77-year-old's final days as head of the fashion house that bears his name.

Others films longlisted by the Academy include The Cove, about the clandestine slaughter of dolphins in Japan.

But Michael Moore's latest, Capitalism: A Love Story, has been omitted from the list, to be whittled down to five ahead of the 2010 Oscars on 7 March.

The September Issue, about Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and James Toback's documentary about the boxer Mike Tyson are among other high-profile documentaries left off the longlist.

Some 89 titles had originally qualified for the category, according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

British win

Features that did make the cut include Burma VJ, a docu-drama about protests in Burma made up of "video journalist" footage smuggled out of the country.

Others include a film about Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN special envoy who was killed in Iraq in 2003.

Mugabe and the White African, a British documentary about farmers fighting to hold onto their property in Zimbabwe in the face of President Robert Mugabe's land reform programme, is also included.

The five-strong shortlist will be revealed when the Academy Award nominations are announced on 2 February.

This year's best documentary Oscar went to Man on Wire, a British film about Frenchman Philippe Petit's high-wire walk between New York's Twin Towers in 1974.