{"id":5328,"date":"2016-02-26T07:28:25","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T12:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5328"},"modified":"2016-03-03T07:07:00","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T12:07:00","slug":"run-up-to-the-oscars-documentary-short-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5328","title":{"rendered":"Run-up to the Oscars: Documentary Short Films"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5329\" style=\"width: 291px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5329\" class=\" wp-image-5329\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/WHO_in_PPE_converted.jpg?resize=281%2C354\" alt=\"Ebola workers, Liberia\" width=\"281\" height=\"354\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5329\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ebola Workers in Liberia (photo: WHO in PPE, wikimedia)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Again this year, the Trenton Film Society is presenting the three categories of short films nominated for Academy Awards. Thursday night, I saw the documentary shorts, five films culled from 74 entries. Tomorrow I\u2019ll see the animated shorts and live action (fiction) nominees. Many of the documentary shorts have been well received at film festivals in the United States and worldwide. Here\u2019s a quick rundown (the links include trailers):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/ryot.org\/bodyteam12\/\">Body Team 12<\/a> \u2013 this entry from Liberia, directed by David Darg, shows the work of people whose job was to collect the bodies of Ebola victims at the height of the 2014 outbreak in West Africa. Their work, described by Garmai Sumo, the team\u2019s only female member, was heartbreaking, but essential in attempts to protect the health of family members and the community. (13 minutes)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.beyondthelinesfilm.com\/\">Chau, Beyond the Lines<\/a> \u2013 a joint U.S. and Vietnam production, directed by Courtney Marsh, about a teen growing up in a Vietnamese center that cares for children affected by Agent Orange who wants to become an artist and clothing designer. Marsh follows the profoundly disabled Chau into his 20s, when he receives vocational school certificates, gets a job painting pictures for a design firm and supports himself in his own apartment. Uplifting, but he is undoubtedly an outlier in spirit and success. (34 minutes)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/oscar.go.com\/nominees\/documentary-short\/a-girl-in-the-river-the-price-of-forgiveness\">A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness<\/a> \u2013 directed by Sharmen Obaid-Chonoy, this film explores the \u201chonor\u201d killings of Pakistani women, which occur at a rate of more than a thousand per year. 18-year-old Saba fell in love and eloped, but her uncle and father found and shot her and threw her body into a river. Miraculously, Saba survived, scarred, and her father and uncle were jailed. Now, if she only \u201cforgives\u201d them, the court will pardon them. Her lawyer and the police don\u2019t want her to do it, but community pressure and the society\u2019s intransigent views about \u201crespect\u201d are powerful. (40 minutes)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/oscar.go.com\/nominees\/documentary-short\/claude-lanzmann-spectres-of-the-shoah\">Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah<\/a> \u2013this biopic from British filmmaker and journalist Adam Benzine describes French director Lanzmann\u2019s challenges in creating his massive, nine-and-a-half hour 1985 documentary <em>Shoah<\/em>. This film includes some footage never seen before, as Lanzmann talks about how he went about trying to describe the Holocaust from the inside. That took a toll. (40 minutes)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lastdayoffreedom.net\/\">Last Day of Freedom<\/a> \u2013 a remarkable animated documentary from U.S. directors Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman: the story of a man\u2019s agonizing experience when he reports suspicion that his younger brother\u2014who has serious PTSD and bouts of homelessness\u2014has committed a terrible crime. Since there is no film of Manny, the accused brother, animation lets him be represented, as a soldier, walking down the street, and was an interesting and effective choice. (32 minutes)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Again this year, the Trenton Film Society is presenting the three categories of short films nominated for Academy Awards. Thursday night, I saw the documentary shorts, five films culled from 74 entries. Tomorrow I\u2019ll see the animated shorts and live &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5328\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Run-up to the Oscars: Documentary Short Films","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59,58,56,104],"tags":[416,124],"class_list":["post-5328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academy-awards","category-documentaries","category-film","category-the-morgue","tag-real-life","tag-short-film"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1nW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5328"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5331,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5328\/revisions\/5331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}