IN DEPTH: Oscar Vets & HBO Films Highlight the Short List for Short Docs

Greetings from Moscow, Russia and the American Film Festival, where my comrade Irene Taylor Brodsky was awakened at 5 AM local time yesterday with the news that her new, soon-to-be-unveiled short film about the eradication of polio, was shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Film.  Her film, THE FINAL INCH, was one of eight to make the Academy's shortlist from a reported 32 that had qualified.  (Taylor Brodsky is in Moscow screening her excellent feature HEAR AND NOW - more on AmFest in a later post.)

THE FINAL INCH is one of several films on the shortlist with a connection to HBO, which has cornered the market on the doc short category in recent years.  It garnered laughs at last year's IDA reception for Oscar nominees when each successive honoree in the shorts category thanked Sheila Nevins and Sara Bernstein and the entire HBO documentary unit.  Brodsky Taylor brought HBO on board the project, which is a partnership with Google's philanthropic division.  She wrote on the Google blog about filming for the project in India:

"That day in Meerut, my camera man and sound man were in the neighborhood mosque while I waited outside, intently listening to what our camera was recording inside. A crowd started to gather around the mosque, not because of the prayers, but because of our jeep — and the two women left alone in it. We were a curiosity. A diminutive man with a wide smile ambled up to our car, "May I kindly know, Madam, what you are doing here in our neighborhood today?" He was paraplegic, with a steel walker around the front of his five-foot-tall body — like a miniature Colosseum. His walker was very worn out, and was at least three or four inches too short for him — in a way that made his back lean over and his smile look up. I explained our film. He keenly listened to every word and replied simply, "My name is Muhammad Gulzar, and I am a polio survivor. Madam, may I help you?'"

THE FINAL INCH was recently completed and then quickly qualified for Oscar consideration.  Look for it to premere on the festival circuit in early 2009.

Other HBO films in the running include Steven Okazaki's THE CONSCIENCE OF NHEM EN, a look at Cambodia three decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge.  In an article in POST Magazine, Okazaki, who won the short documentary Oscar in 1991 for DAYS OF WAITING (and has been nominated three times, most recently for THE MUSHROOM CLUB), talked about making the film:

"Of the 17,000 who entered the S-21 (prison) facility, only eight are known to have survived. In this documentary, three tell their stories, as does Nhem En, a 16-year-old at the time, who photographed thousands of prisoners before they were executed. His testimony lacks regret or sympathy.   

"The interesting thing for me was the photographer," says Okazaki of Nhem En. "He was a Khmer Rouge soldier, who was trained in lighting and photography, but he is not a traditional sort of character to build a movie around. He was 16 years old and he is kind of a cold, cold person. It became sort of the challenge of this film: to build it around someone who actually is not admirable."

Also from HBO, Mark Herzog's DAVID McCULLOUGH: PAINTING WITH WORDS, a portrait of the historian that was produced by Tom Hanks.  From the synopsis on HBO's website:

"Director Mark Herzog travels with the celebrated writer as he delivers a speech to rapt legislators; climbs the same Philadelphia church's steeple tower as did John Adams two centuries earlier; returns to the Massachusetts Historical Society to again study an original Adams letter written to his wife Abigail a day before July 4, 1776; visits his old Brooklyn neighborhood and makes his annual trek across the Brooklyn Bridge; sings songs, paints pictures, and reflects on his undiminished enthusiasm for writing while sitting in his tiny "world headquarters" (shed-like though not a shed, he insists) on the grounds of his home.  Accompanied in most of these journeys by wife Rosalee (whom he met the summer before college), McCullough provides an insightful, anecdotal look into his life and career, while displaying a refreshing approachability and genuine interest in people he meets along the way."

Herzog previously worked with Hanks on the Emmy-nominated WE STAND ALONE TOGETHER, a companion documentary to HBO's Band of Brothers.

Okazaki isn't the only Oscar veteran on the shortlist.  Ruby Yang, Oscar winner in 2006 for THE BLOOD OF THE YINGZHOU DISTRICT, returns with TONGZHI IN LOVE and Leslie Iwerks, nominated in 2006 for RECYCLED LIFE, makes the shortlist with DOWNSTREAM.

TONGZHI IN LOVE, one of the few films on the shortlist to have an extensive festival life, examines gay men in China.  From the film's website:

"Frog Cui and his gay friends are torn between the lures of city life and the stern demands of Chinese tradition. They live in cosmopolitan Beijing, reveling in the freedom that it affords them. But traditionally, a Chinese son’s solemn duty is to produce a child and carry forward the family line. That China’s laws limit most families to a single child only compounds the pressures on gay men. Many resort to sham marriages."

DOWNSTREAM, which focuses on an epidemic of cancers in Alberta, was profiled Thursday on CBC News in Canada:

"DOWNSTREAM tells the story of Dr. John O'Connor, who pointed in 2006 to what he believed was a disproportionately high incidence of colon, liver, blood and bile-duct cancers in patients who live in Fort Chipewyan, a small community downstream from major petroleum refineries.

In February 2007, Health Canada officials filed a complaint against O'Connor for speaking publicly about ill health in the community on Lake Athabasca.

The documentary refers to the multibillion-dollar oilsands industry in Alberta as one of the most toxic oil developments in the world, polluting the Athabasca River and other water resources."

Also shortlisted were Megan Mylan's SMILE PINKI, Bill Brummel and Alfonso Filomeno Maya's VIVA LA CAUSA and Adam Pertofsky's THE WITNESS FROM THE BALCONY OF ROOM 306.

SMILE PINKI, which details the same topic as this year's great feature FLYING ON ONE ENGINE - the work of doctors in India to perform surgeries for children with cleft palates, screened earlier this year at Silverdocs and was part of the IDA's Docuweek program.  For Docuweek, Mylan discussed the making of the film:

"As a filmmaker who focuses on social issue documentaries, it's rare that I get into a film knowing we're likely to have a happy ending. I was excited to tell the story of this beautiful hospital and a team of doctors and social workers treating their patients with such compassion and quality care and making a positive impact. I continue to be inspired by the simple idea that the better we know each other, the better this world is, and I hope people come away from my documentaries feeling like they better understand the life of someone living a very different reality."

VIVA LA CAUSA - not to be confused with the short film by the 1974 Kartemquin Films short of the same name - is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.  WSJ's Marketwatch ran a press release about the film last month (h/t The Rabbi at iW's Docsider):

"VIVA LA CAUSA documents the victorious California grape strike and boycott led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta in the 1960s. The 40-minute documentary will be distributed with teaching resources to an estimated 50,000 educators, free of charge, over the next two years. Millions of students will see the film.

"The story told by VIVA LA CAUSA couldn't be timelier," said SPLC Founder Morris Dees. "Latinos and immigrant workers of color are on the front lines of our country's most burning human rights struggle. We're seeing a rising tide of xenophobia and immigrant-bashing that's being fueled by opportunistic politicians and demagogues in the media.'"

Finally, the Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles is THE WITNESS FROM THE BALCONY OF ROOM 306, one of the few who witnessed the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.  From an allmovie profile:

"That evening, Kyles stood beside King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, as a bullet rang out and ended the life of the godfather of American Civil Rights. In this film, Kyles reflects at length on the events that led up to King's brutal assassination, including King's reasons for visiting Memphis and the terrible events of that final hour."

According to this blog post, the film was produced in conjunction with the National Civil Rights Museum.

The Academy will select 3-5 films from the list of eight for Oscar night.  Nominations will be announced in January.