{"id":7090,"date":"2018-02-22T09:14:47","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T14:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7090"},"modified":"2018-03-26T07:13:55","modified_gmt":"2018-03-26T11:13:55","slug":"the-oscar-nominated-documentary-shorts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7090","title":{"rendered":"The Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Academy

(photo: David Torcivia, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

Do whatever it takes to see the short documentary films nominated for Academy Awards this year! All five involve thought-provoking situations and introduce you to some remarkable Americans.<\/p>\n

Traffic Stop<\/strong><\/span> (Kate Davis & David Heilbroner for HBO, 30 minutes)
\nThe filmmakers gain access to police dashboard camera footage showing a white Austin, Texas, policeman aggressively subduing a black woman stopped for speeding. He loses it. She loses it. The woman, Breaion King, is an elementary schoolteacher, and we see her in the classroom and in her dance class, and learn what kind of person she is. I wish we had the same 360\u00b0 picture of the officer. Even so, it\u2019s complicated, with tons of subtext. (See it here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Edith + Eddie <\/strong><\/span>(Laura Checkoway and Thomas Lee Wrights, 29 minutes)
\nThis film should be marketed as a cure for low blood pressure (trailer<\/a>). The filmmakers were recording a charming pair of 95-year-old Alexandria, Virginia, newlyweds just as their lives fell apart. A daughter living in Florida finagled a court-appointed guardianship for her mother, and the guardian\u2014paid out of Edith\u2019s estate\u2014demanded that the elderly woman be flown to Florida against her will \u201cfor evaluation.\u201d The guardian concluded without seeing Edith that she was not safe living in her own home with her husband. (More about this hair-raising issue here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405 <\/strong><\/span>(Frank Stiefel, 40 minutes)
\nIn this extraordinary film portrait, artist Mindy Alper<\/a> describes her struggles with mental illness and her commitment to pursue her art. Both through her art and in fascinating, surprisingly upbeat interviews, she communicates in a unique way. She has had a succession of gifted teachers to support her artistic development, and the film shows preparations for a gallery show of her work. One piece, a large papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 portrait of her therapist, brought tears to my eyes for the compassion and love it shows. (See the documentary here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Heroin(e)<\/span><\/strong> (Elaine McMillion Sheldon and Kerrin Sheldon for Neflix and the Center for Investigative Reporting, 39 minutes)
\nHuntington, West Virginia, is the epicenter of U.S. heroin drug deaths, and this film (find the trailer here<\/a>; view the film on Netflix) shows three heroic women fighting for the community. Jan Rader, a nurse and EMT, attends five or six overdose cases almost daily. Thanks to Narcan, not all are fatal. The city\u2019s drug court is presided over by judge Patricia Keller, both compassionate and no-nonsense. Her goal is to get people back on track, whatever way she can. Necia Freeman started her \u201cbrown bag ministry\u201d to help women selling their bodies for drugs. All three are amazing rays of hope in a devastating situation. (More about West Virginia\u2019s epidemic here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\"Edwin's,Knife Skills <\/strong><\/span>(Thomas Lennon, 40 minutes)
\nThe Cleveland restaurant, Edwin\u2019s, and its culinary training school were started by Brandon Chrostowski (see the documentary here<\/a>). He had early brushes with the law and used a judge\u2019s second chance to turn his life around. Edwin\u2019s hires former prison inmates and trains them for jobs in the kitchen and front-of-house. It trains about 100 ex-prisoners a year, who are taught the fine points of haut cuisine and learn about wines and cheeses. This kitchen is not three guys with a microwave, it\u2019s chopping \u00a0and deboning and saucing and plating, and the workers mostly love it. So do Cleveland diners<\/a>. Oh, and recidivism rates among Edwin\u2019s trainees? Extremely low.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do whatever it takes to see the short documentary films nominated for Academy Awards this year! All five involve thought-provoking situations and introduce you to some remarkable Americans. Traffic Stop (Kate Davis & David Heilbroner for HBO, 30 minutes) The … Continue reading →<\/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":"The Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts - meet remarkable Americans in challenging situations, expertly portrayed","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":[166,416,124,99],"class_list":["post-7090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academy-awards","category-documentaries","category-film","category-the-morgue","tag-creativity","tag-real-life","tag-short-film","tag-urban-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Qm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7090","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=7090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7092,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7090\/revisions\/7092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}