In its ongoing commitment to keep audiences in the know when it come to Oscar’s hardest-to-see nominees, the Starz FilmCenter begins a one-week engagement of the shorts nominated for this year’s Academy Awards. Here’s a look:
Shorts, live action
“Binta & the Great Idea”: Seven-year-old Binta lives with her parents in a Senegalese village. While she enthusiastically attends school, her older cousin can’t. Soda’s father doesn’t approve. As schoolmates create a play about Soda’s situation, Binta’s fisherman dad begins his quest to share with officials an innovative idea. Javier Fesser’s short has a light, loving touch. And the great idea is delicious indeed.
“The Saviour”: Last year, the Boulder International Film Festival (running through Sunday) awarded Peter Templeman and Stuart Parkyn’s Aussie pleasure its best-student-film prize. A young, mild Mormon winds up doing more than evangelizing on one tree-lined street. His tryst with a married woman tempts him to confess, with intriguing results.
“Éramos Pocos (One to Many)”: In Spaniard Borja Cobeaga’s tale, Joaquin and his grown son awake one Sunday morning to find their caretaker has split. It doesn’t take long to see why the wife-and-mother of the house left. Still, the guys’ slovenly ways don’t prevent them from some enterprising problem- solving: They travel to a senior facility to bring Joaquin’s mother-in- law back to their abode.
“West Bank Story”: In a clever riff on Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s great street-gang musical, Ari Sandel recasts the Jets and the Sharks as Palestinian and Jewish Israelis. Star-crossed David (an Israeli soldier) and Fatima (a fastfood cashier at her family’s Hummus Hut) provide the skittering heartbeat to this musical comedy about love and madness (as in mutual assured destruction). The short first played in town during the 2005 Starz First Look Student Film Festival.
Helmer & Son: A harried son is summoned to an assisted-living residence because his father has locked himself in an armoire. Also called on to coax Dad out of the closet is his self-involved daughter and her sullen teenage kid. Danish directors Soren Pilmark and Kim Magnusson cram a great deal of family angst into a tight time frame with generous results. There’s humor, reckoning and, this being Scandinavian, nudity.
Documentary
“The Blood of Yingzhou District”: Ruby Yang’s doc may have you thinking “thank goodness it’s short.”
Not that this 30-minute doc about three sets of children orphaned by AIDS and ostracized in rural communities isn’t compelling. It’s remarkable. But the stunning poverty and an even more spectacular failure of family traditions to protect these kids is beyond grim.
When we see wee, HIV-infected Gao Jun after his grandma dies and his uncle relinquishes him to foster care, the transformation is like sunlight breaking through a relentless winter.
“Recycled Life”: Leslie Iwerks and Mike Glad’s startling film about the generations of adults and children who have made Guatemala City’s dump their workplace and home is marred by only one gesture: Edward James Olmos’ didactic narration. Vultures loitering next to toddlers and adults scrambling up a mountain of trash for meals doesn’t require the added severity.
“Two Hands: The Leon Fleisher Story”: Nathaniel Kahn delivers a terse, telling profile of Leon Fleisher. In 1964, the concert pianist lost the use of his right hand. An operation 18 years later seemed to cure him. The director of “My Architect” proves his debut documentary wasn’t a fluke but a promise of things to come.
“Rehearsing the Dream”: Maybe it’s the urgency of two of this category’s nominees or the artistry of Kahn’s portrait, but Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon’s doc seems overly familiar. Yes, the gifted high schoolers sent to Miami for a one-week intensive arts camp are impressive. But the movie feels like outtakes from a lost episode of “Fame.”
Finally, a few words about the films vying for the Oscar in the shorts animated category: Pixar, 20th Century Fox, Buena Vista. Each of these well-heeled studios has a horse in this race. Which means “Lifted,” “The Little Matchgirl” and “No Time for Nuts,” respectively, are all executed with satisfying skill.
So turn to Torill Kove’s charmer “The Danish Poet” (about a morose poet’s adventure in love) and Hungarian filmmaker Geza M. Toth’s “Maestro” (in which a strange bird readies for his star turn) for fresh storytelling.
Go to starzfilmcenter.com or call 303-820-FILM for times and programs.
