It is, perhaps, the most neglected genre of cinema.
The sponsored promotional film never gets its proper respect, any more than your average TV commercial. To be fair, it is hard to analyze films that often lack story-lines or feature major stars, although some of the animated cartoons get modest attention in small circles. Not surprisingly, they were ignored at Oscar time (with one exception listed far below) because Hollywood's bigwigs didn't view them as particularly “worthy”. Nonetheless they existed and some of those spared from the death of nitrate decomposition are quite cinematic