You Will Be Rewarded
Have you
rushed to your nearest theater to see Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013?
Of course not. It’s a given for all of us that a flawed distribution system
denies us the pleasure of seeing the fine work of filmmakers whose goal is to
trigger emotion in twenty minutes. You have to be good to do that, and the ones
nominated for Oscars are the best of the year. They are grouped this year in
three separate feature films as Live Action, Animated, and Documentary. You can
find them at On Demand, iTunes, and in scattered theaters. Here are the five
nominated Live Action Shorts. If you make the effort, you will be rewarded.
Death of a
Shadow (Tom Van Avermaet, Belgium) - Beautifully filmed in dark golds and
shadow, this story unfolds in the private horror museum of a twisted collector
who bargains with a dead WWI soldier. If he captures, with his camera, the
moment of death (via time machine) of the collector’s chosen subjects, he will
have a second chance at life. Surreal and twisted.
Henry
( Yan England, Canada) – Have we ever watched the progress of dementia from
within as the victim is experiencing his own decline? What happens in there?
Henry leads us from an ordinary morning routine through flashbacks of his life
with his wife, a fellow musician. When he has finished, the
heartbreak of loss is palpable, the process of disorientation, newly terrible.
Curfew
(Sean Christensen, America) – Between beginning and ending scenes of attempted
suicide, we meet a brother and sister, graduates of an abused background. Now a
single mother, the sister asks her brother to babysit for her daughter. Uncle
and niece offer a beautiful tale of an exceptional child who reaches an adult on
a deep level. Curfew won an Academy Award just last week.
Buzkashi
Boys – (Sam French, Afghanistan/America) – This grand story tells us much of
the way preteen boys in war torn landscapes are free to pursue ordinary pleasure
while their parents’ generation is preoccupied with survival. One boy dreams of
becoming a player in the iconic sport of Buzkashi, a form of polo where a dead
goat is the ball. Though he lures his best friend along in his dream, the other
boy is pulled by his own sense of duty to join his father in his blacksmith
shop.
Asad –
(Bryan Buckley, South Africa/America) – A young boy named Asad decides he must
prove himself in the chaotic culture of his wartime fishing village in Somalia.
Here too, children, on their own always, devise lives of the imagination. You
will soar with Asad in his drive to be taken seriously.
The challenge
of invoking tears, or fright, or laughter in twenty minutes – or even less, as
some fine filmmakers are doing – was predictable in our age of instant
communication. With everything in our lives on fast forward, these five shorts
reflect the new need to convey emotion short, powerful bursts.
Copyright (c) Illusion