2017 Oscar-nominated Documentary Shorts

The documentary short subject category is typically filled by films that take a laser focus on either small profiles of interesting people or subjects or profiles that bring to the fore a microcosm of a much broader issue.

Under the first heading you’d find Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 and Knife Skills. The former is a profile of a middle-aged woman who has suffered most of her life from mental illness and depression, but through her art (painting and sculpture) she finds an outlet for her anxieties. The film is structured in a way that the circumstances of her life are pieced together over the course of 40 minutes so at first we wonder, given her unusual speaking style, if perhaps she suffered something physical. Eventually we learn about her childhood with a father who loved her but had trouble verbalizing his love and a mother who loved her but may have caused serious psychological harm without realizing it. Childhood OCD gave way to a nervous breakdown and eventually electro-shock therapy, which I was flabbergasted to learn is still administered. There are aspects to her personality that seem so child-like and innocent, but beneath the surface she has a firm understanding of everything and of how to work through it to have something like a “normal” life. It’s both inspiring and heartbreaking.

2017 Oscar-nominated Live Action Shorts

As usual, the Live Action Short category in this year’s Academy Awards is a collection of some of the finest filmmaking you’ll likely never see. It’s such a shame that there’s so little commercial market for these movies. Like most previous years, the five nominees include one comedy to brighten the mood if you choose to watch all five as a single program.

Dekalb Elementary is inspired by a real 911 call. A disturbed young man walks into a school with a rifle wanting to die. He threatens the receptionist and a few other employees as the school goes into lockdown and the police arrive. He feeds instructions to the receptionist to give the dispatcher over the phone to then pass on to the police on scene. Through about ten harrowing minutes the receptionist uses compassion to talk the perpetrator down as he begins to regret his decision. Director Reed van Dyk maintains the tension across the film’s running time and the unfortunate reality is that the subject matter would play s timely in any month of the last few years.