Oscar Nominated Shorts (Documentary)

Cavedigger

In many shorts, we are introduced to an interesting character that it is a privilege to get to know. Ra Paulette is one of those characters. We get to know an artist who creates beautiful caves, but also a stubborn artist who struggles for funding. Its only weakness is the feeling that the short is not as Important as other shorts. Grade: A

Facing Fear

A look like at a hate crime, where a group nearly beat a man to death for being gay. What is remarkable is that the story has changed where 20 years later one of the primary perpetrators has come to meet and get to know the victim, and how forgiveness has allowed both men to grow. Grade: A+

The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life

Alice Herz Sommer was 109 years old when this short was made (she died last week). A forse of nature, she shows how a positive outlook and love of music helped her survive the Holocaust. She's an amazing person, and I'm glad I got a sense of her in this short. However. There is a hole in the documentary. Nothing is told of her life after surviving the horrors up to living in Britain, other than her son being a successful musician and that he has died. What else happened? What is in the documentary is great, but part of story remains untold. Grade: A-

Karama Has No Walls

Actual footage of Change Square in 2011, and the peaceful uprising in Yemen during the Arab Spring of 2011, has a you are there feel that is hard shake. The film helps place a context by interviewing the two Yemeni cameramen of what they witnessed and experienced, and with the fathers of two victims. This is essential viewing for an understanding of Yemen, and a puts a human face on the situation that the news coverage simply could not. Grade: A+

Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall

The basic subject, a hospice in the Iowa state prison system, is interesting. I found myself more interested not in the title subject, a convicted murderer dying of natural causes, than in the convicted felons who work in the hospice. How did convicted murderers become caretakers, helping fellow inmates die with dignity? That's a question that remains answered. Grade: B+

I loved two of these shorts. Facing Fear and Karama Has No Walls put a human face on two stories in a unique and powerful way. The footage of the uprising in Karama Has No Walls is for me the tiebreaker of a close call for me.

This is going to sound cynical, but say Holocaust and here come the Oscars. I believe the voters will mistake voting for a film as voting for a film's subject. They will see the most worthy subject as The Lady in Number 6 and vote for her, missing the fact that the filmmaking is not as good as in three of the other nominees.