Every year, Out There sees all three Oscar Nominated Shorts programs that arrive in movie theaters in the weeks before the big award show: Animated, live-action and documentary. Entries in the first two categories were reviewed in an earlier issue; we saw the shorts in the documentary category, originally announced for two separate programs, last week.
Presented in one screening, the doc shorts program lasts a full three hours and 15 minutes, a long sit made less daunting by a 10-minute intermission. But of course the great thing about shorts programs is that if one offering doesn't appeal, the next one will be coming right along.
"The Lady In Number 6: Music Saved My Life" (directors Malcolm Clarke and Nicholas Reed) profiles Alice Herz-Sommer, the oldest living Holocaust survivor at age 110, still playing the piano every morning in her London apartment. Her Bach and Beethoven are concert-caliber.
"Karama Has No Walls" (director Sara Ishaq) offers on-the-ground footage from the protest that sparked the Yemeni Revolution. Violence and brutality rear their ugly heads, but hope does spring eternal.
"Facing Fear" (director Jason Cohen) tells the story of Matthew Boger, who at 13 was gay-bashed and nearly killed by a gang of neo-Nazi skinhead punks. Years later, he meets his attacker, now reformed and contrite. (Reviewed last issue.)
"Prison Terminal: The Last Days Of Private Jack Hall" (director Edgar Barens ) follows Hall, a lifer in a maximum security prison and a WWII veteran, into hospice care. Prisoners volunteer to care for the terminally ill, and thereby find their own humanity.
All pretty heavy, no? Therefore our favorite short documentary, the one we hope wins the golden guy, is "CaveDigger" (director Jeffrey Karoff), which showcases earth artist Ra Paulette, who creates large, intricately decorated caves entirely by hand in the New Mexican desert. It's hard, back-breaking work, but clearly it's his heart project.
Out There couldn't help but notice that Nazi imagery figures in three out of five doc short nominees ("Lady," "Fear" and "Prison"). As someone with whom this era of history does resonate - our grandparents lost most of their families and their entire villages in the Holocaust - can we just say to the Academy, "Enough already with the Nazis!" Our German friends are now several generations past the worst period in their (and our) history. Never again, by all means, but also let's move on.
For the record, OT's favorite entry in the nominated live action shorts is the hilarious "Do I Have To Take Care of Everything?" (directors Selma Vilhunen and Kirsikka Saari), and our pick for animated short is "Room on the Broom" (directors Max Lang and Jan Lachauer), based on the children's book of the same name. It's fun to have skin in the game for some of the more obscure Oscar categories. Bring on the gilded eunuchs.
In Vogue
Last Thursday night found Out There with plucky pal Pepi in tow at the opening-night screening and party for this year's Mostly British Film Festival, the sixth iteration of this low-profile fest. San Francisco Chronicle film scribe Ruthe Stein programs the proceedings, which is presented by the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation and the California Film Institute. Before the sold-out crowd in the vintage Vogue Theater, including British Consul General in San Francisco Priya Guha, Stein welcomed us to "the only foreign-language film festival presented in English!"
The opening-night film, "Le Week-End," is a comedy about a long-married British couple celebrating their anniversary with a romantic weekend in Paris. Directed by Roger Michel (Noting Hill) and written by Hanif Kureishi, the movie stars Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan and, in a return to form, Jeff Goldblum. It's great to see a romantic comedy that for once is not fixated on young lovers meeting cute, but is about the all-too-human struggle to keep a romantic spark alive far into middle age. Of course, as with all long-time couples, Meg and Nick know how to push each other's buttons only too well, and they're also quite capable of devising entirely new ways to drive each other crazy. We laughed, we cried, we related in a homosexual way. The film will have a commercial release in the Bay Area soon.
Hero's Legacy
In the 21st century, the ultimate artistic accolade is to get an endorsement from a major Fortune 500 company. This has finally happened to the internationally legendary Queen of San Francisco, Sylvester. His theme song "(You Make Me Feel) Mighty Real" is now the soundtrack to the Peter Pilotto collection's commercial for Target. As you probably already know, Sylvester willed all of his royalties to help local San Francisco AIDS charities, one of the first ever to do so. So this commodification of the heart and soul of disco seems like plenty good karma to us. As ever, Sylvester makes us feel mighty real.