BUTTER LAMP (Hu Wei, France/China) LIVE ACTION
A photographer and his assistant take pictures of groups of Tibetan nomadic villagers in front of photographic backdrops, most of which are of Mainland Chinese scenes – Tiananmen Square, the Beijing Olympics, the Great Wall. There are also bland, generic backdrops of houses and beaches, as well as a Disney scene. Butter Lamp is a beguiling blend of scripted action, documentary, and experimental film. Embedded in the gentle humor of the piece is barbed commentary on the steady eradication of traditional Tibetan culture and the hegemonic influence of China over Tibetans. The film's last shot, revealing what has literally been covered up throughout, is the final, startling kicker.
THE PHONE CALL (Matt Kirkby, UK) LIVE ACTION
This film features two actors who are no strangers to the Oscars: nominee Sally Hawkins as a worker at a crisis hotline, and winner Jim Broadbent - whom we never see, but only hear - as a widower on the line contemplating suicide. This is a beautifully crafted film, which creates visual elegance and wrenching drama out of a scenario that essentially consists of two people talking. As such, it rises and falls on its performances; Hawkins and Broadbent step up to the plate with enormously impressive grace.
AYA (Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun, Israel/France) LIVE ACTION
Aya (Sarah Adler, Jellyfish) is waiting for someone at the airport, when a driver who's there to meet a client gives her his sign to hold while he moves his car. But the driver never returns, and Aya ends up chauffeuring the client, Thomas Overby (Ulrich Thomsen, The Celebration), a Danish man visiting Israel to judge a piano competition. Aya impulsively decides to go along with the charade of pretending to be his hired driver, and as the two drive to his hotel in Jerusalem, the simmering possibilities of potential romance hover just below the surface of their interactions. This is a well-acted piece that's marred by the blatantly contrived and manipulated nature of its storyline.
PARVANEH (Talkhon Hamzavi, Switzerland) LIVE ACTION
Parvaneh (Nissa Kashani) is an Afghan immigrant to Switzerland who's staying at a transit center for asylum seekers located near the Swiss Alps. She's trying to send money back home for her ill father, and has to travel to Zurich to do it. But without a valid passport, the money exchange centers won't let her. She comes across Emily (Cheryl Graf), a punk girl who agrees to help Parveneh for a fee. The two end up bonding over the course of that day and night. The film touches on certain subjects - the plight of asylum seekers, the victimization of women, regardless of their background, by male predators - with a light touch, without beating the viewer over the head. And though we're left with little more profound than a vague "we're all in this together" message, it's still a pleasant watch.
BOOGALOO AND GRAHAM (Michael Lennox, UK) LIVE ACTION
In 1978 Belfast, right in the midst of the Northern Ireland-Great Britain conflict raging around them, two young boys are given the gift of a pair of chicks by their father, to which they give the names that double as the title of this piece. Their care of these chicks, as well as their personal interaction with the conflict, become the vessel for life lessons learned by these young boys. It's a breezy, pleasant enough film, but whimsy and sentimentality eventually take over, diminishing its overall effectiveness.
CRISIS HOTLINE: VETERANS PRESS 1 (Ellen Goosenberg Kent, US) DOCUMENTARY
Some very disturbing statistics are imparted in this film, such as the fact that more U.S. combat veterans have died from suicide than on the field in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, in the U.S., 22 veterans commit suicide each day, roughly one every eight minutes. These sobering fact form the backdrop to this documentary, which observes the activity at the upstate New York crisis center that field calls from veterans who are contemplating suicide and struggling with mental health issues.
We witness the workers' interactions with these callers - whose voices we never hear - as they attempt to talk them down from killing themselves, and urge them to reach out for help from Veterans Affairs resources, or from family and friends. The film's observational approach yields great dividends in imparting the emotions involved, and we feel the tension as they often race against time to save the callers' lives. One comes away with admiration of the workers' valiant efforts, and their care for strangers who only exist to them as voices on the phone. This spare and vivid film also also leaves us with a greater awareness of the great costs of war on those who manage to survive combat, but who are left with lingering, life-threatening conditions.
Note: This film, in addition to screening as part of the theatrical Oscar shorts release, is also available for home viewing on HBOGo and on-demand through March 9.
JOANNA (Aneta Kopacz, Poland) DOCUMENTARY
The late Joanna Salyga, the subject of this lyrical, poignant portrait, when she learned she would die in a short time form terminal cancer, wrote a memoir (published posthumously) and a blog in which she imparted the life observations and lessons she wanted to leave behind for her young son. Joanna delicately observes her final days, focusing on seemingly ordinary, even mundane moments that are colored with Joanna's awareness pf the very short time she has left. With haunting, ethereal cinematography by Lukasz Zal (nominated for his work on Ida), this film creates an impression that will linger long after the final frame.
OUR CURSE (Tomasz Sliwinski, Poland) DOCUMENTARY
Tomasz Sliwinski and his wife Magda are a couple with a young child named Leo. Even under normal circumstances, caring for a newborn can be a time-consuming and challenging task. But the circumstances here are far from normal; Leo was born with a rare and incurable disease, known as congenital central hypoventilation syndrome, or CCHS, otherwise known as Ondine's Curse. Sufferers from this disease are prone to stop breathing when asleep and require constant monitoring and attachment to a mechanical ventilator.
Our Curse documents the difficult first six months of Leo's life, as Tomasz and Magda struggle to care for their delicate charge, through raw and intimate video diaries that focus on the laborious tasks involved in keeping their son alive. They deal with the heavy equipment and monitors; listen to their son's wheezing, labored breathing; change and clean the tubing that connects their son to the ventilators through a permanent tracheotomy hole in their son's throat; argue with medical insurance people over the phone; commiserate nightly on their difficult existence over wine on the couch. Much of this can be difficult to watch, especially one long, sustained shot of their baby's distress and struggle to breathe while in his crib. But the intense, unflinching self-portraiture on display lends the film a power which is undeniable.
THE REAPER (Gabriel Serra Arguello, Mexico) DOCUMENTARY
This film focuses closely on Efrain, known as "The Reaper," who works at a slaughterhouse, and has worked at this job for 25 years. Efrain intermittently narrates his own story, telling of how he got in the business, how constantly being around death has begun to wear on him, and the nightmares he has about the tables being turned, of the animals taking revenge on him for killing so many of their brethren. It's a compelling portrait, one that ends on images of him being around his family, his haunted visage resembling a death mask of its own.
WHITE EARTH (J. Christian Jensen, US) DOCUMENTARY
With haunting, lyrical imagery, White Earth looks at life in the oil fields of North Dakota through the experiences of three children and an immigrant single mother, who provide the voiceover. The influence of Terrence Malick is unmistakable, as these multiple voices accompany images of oil rigs set against cold sunsets, and stretches of wintry plains. The voices are at turns playful, pensive, and philosophical about their existence in the midst of this harsh, forbidding terrain that nevertheless possesses a strange beauty as filtered through Jensen's camera.
THE DAM KEEPER (Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi, US) ANIMATION
Two former Pixar art directors collaborate to create this intensely beautiful film, inspired by a Dutch folk tale. It's set in a small village whose windmill acts as a dam against poisonous clouds of ash and soot. Pig, the windmill operator, is charged with the operation of this life-saving mechanism. For his efforts, he's bullied at school and shunned by the rest of the village's residents. One day, Fox, joins Pig's class as a new student. Fox soon befriends Pig, offering the companionship this lonely soul craves. However, a misunderstanding between them leads to disaster in the village.
The Dam Keeper is truly a joy to behold, like an Impressionist painting or a children;s book come to life. The direction, writing, and visual effects are some of the best I've seen. As the debut animaton film from Kondo and Tsutsumi's independent studio, they've set a really high bar for themselves, and an auspicious start to what hopefully will be a very long career.
FEAST (Patrick Osborne, US) ANIMATION
First-time director Osborne - who previously served as head of animation for previous Disney films such as the Oscar winning short "Paperman" and the recent feature Big Hero 6 - helms this Disney nominee, which tells the story of a cute dog, his owner, and his girlfriend through the food the dog eats. Told strictly from the dog's POV, the film charts the vicissitudes of the relationship between the dog and his owner, and the owner and his girlfriend, by the changes in the food. The owner's wild bachelor days, with the riotous colors of junk food, gives way to the staid greens of the girlfriend's vegan diet. The colors and shadings that cinvey the tale are rendered with Disney's typically high technical standards. The dog at first may be a lowly accessory in his story, but he soon transforms into its main driving force.
A SINGLE LIFE (Marieke Blaauw, Joris Oprins and Job Roggeveen, The Netherlands) ANIMATION
This very charming and fanciful film gives its title a double meaning: the young woman at its center is single and lives alone, and she gets the mysterious gift at her door of a vinyl single that, based on where the needle is on the record, takes the woman backward and forwards through her life. Like the record – and life itself, for that matter – this film is very brief, just a little more than two minutes. But it is quite witty and accomplished.
THE BIGGER PICTURE (Daisy Jacobs, UK) ANIMATION
This stop-motion animation details the conflict between two brothers when their mother becomes more infirm and requires round-the-clock care. The animation depicts the characters as living paintings that move along the walls of the settings. Jacobs employs a unique blend of life-size 2D paintings and 3D stop-motion to tell a story that is at turns funny and quite poignant, all with an acute awareness of mortality and the fragility of existence.
ME AND MY MOULTON (Torill Kove, Canada/Norway) ANIMATION
This film is set in 1965 Norway, the story of a family of three sisters – told by the middle sister – with parents who are modernist architects, and their father's gift of the titular “moulton," a bicycle shipped from England. The little girl longs to be like all her "normal" friends, but her parents' non-conformist ways - such as her father's having the only mustache in town - confounds and embarrasses her. With a brightly colored palette and a jaunty air, this is a witty delight.