Oscar Shorts to play at Magic Lantern
BY DANA DUGAN
Each year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, known as the Academy, doles out awards to feature films with recognizable cast and crew names that have been widely released. Like the Documentary category, the once lowly Shorts category is finally receiving its due.
Many feature directors start in the shorts field. It’s an artform all its own. The quality and excitement of the competition is difficult to refute.
Five films in each category have been chosen out of more than 150 qualifying films. In order to qualify for Oscar contention, shorts have to win an award at an eligible film festival. That’s a lot of film festivals, but that’s what these festivals do. They anoint independently produced films, documentaries and short films with some sheen, and away the producers go. It’s what makes this such an intriguing and competitive category in the Oscars each year.
For the past decade, these films have been screened all over the world by ShortsTV, a cable and satellite television channel dedicated to short film. The franchise is owned by Shorts International and AMC Networks International.
Sun Valley Museum of Art and Magic Lantern Cinemas have been on trend with the Oscar Shorts screenings for the past six years. The shows will begin Wednesday and Thursday afternoon this week, and will continue next week on the same nights.
“Our presentation of the Oscar-Nominated Shorts is a unique opportunity for local film buffs to see each and every short film that’s up for an Oscar this year,” said Kristine Bretall, director of Performing Arts at Sun Valley Museum of Art.
Films hail from such disparate places as France, Sweden and South Korea, to the Czech Republic, Brooklyn and Belgium, to Tunisia and China. The subjects are serious, emotional, diverse and gut wrenching. The notable exception is “NEFTA Football Club,” which finds two Tunisian kids goofing around in the desert when they discover an actual drug mule.
The short documentary, “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl),” directed by Carol Dysinger, tells of a school in Kabul, Afganistan, where kids study the three R’s and pick up a little skateboarding.
“Brotherhood” may be the most somber and meditative of this year’s live action shorts. It follows a rural Tunisian family whose life becomes upended when a son returns with a Syrian wife in tow. Tensions are high as the family’s patriarch continues to be irate that his son went to fight for ISIS rather than stay home and support their family.
While the Animated features skew toward Disney and Pixar—look for “Kitbull,” for instance—there are some lovely indies in this category worth paying attention to for the broad range of issues.
“Memorable” vividly uses a display of animation techniques—stop-motion with a surprising digital component— to tell its story. A painter, as Louis’s mind deteriorates, his surroundings grow more fantastical, and though his words make sense, his family fails to notice his growing dementia.
In “Sister,” a Chinese man recounts his childhood growing up with his little sister, all told through the stop-motion animation of a wool-felt family. A little surreal, “Sister” starts out as director Siqi Song’s memories of an annoying kid sibling, but changes in ways totally unexpected.
“Hair Love” is a small but moving film about a man trying to cope with styling his daughter’s wild Afro locks for the first time. It features the voice of Issa Rae, the actor, writer and producer.
The film was created by Matthew A. Cherry, a former NFL wide receiver who also served as the executive producer for the 2019 Oscar-nominated “BlackKklansman.”
For more information and tickets to the shows, visit svmoa.org.
Sun Valley Museum of Art presents:
Wednesday, Feb. 5, 4:30 and 7 p.m. – Live Action Shorts
Thursday, Feb. 6, 4:30 and 7 p.m. – Animated Shorts
Wednesday, Feb. 12, 4:30 and 7 p.m. – Documentary Shorts Program A
Thursday, Feb. 13, 4:30 and 7 p.m. – Documentary Shorts Program B
Magic Lantern Cinemas, Ketchum