Oscars Short Doc Nominees Talk About Their Films

When the Oscars take place on March 27, one of the directors in this year’s crop of nominees for Best Documentary Short will receive their Academy Award in a pretaped ceremony, with their acceptance speech edited into a telecast in a move to trim the telecast to under three hours.

The filmmakers admitted that they were disappointed by the decision at the Academy’s annual Oscar doc showcase at Landmark Los Angeles, but they are optimistic about the future for documentary short films as more projects become available.

“The short doc has the lowest barrier of entry to all forms of cinema,”Ben Proudfoot is the director of “The Queen of Basketball.”

“As we think about making the film industry more diverse, more viable, more international… I think the short doc is the most exciting corner of cinema. Frankly, regardless of how the telecast is produced, the growth of this part of the industry is going to happen anyway,”Proudfoot added.

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Proudfoot was one of six nominated filmmakers who spoke with ’s Steve Pond on Tuesday about their work. For Proudfoot, it is his second straight year as part of ’s Oscar showcase, as he was also nominated last year for his profile of “Green Book”Kris Bowers, composer in the short documentary “A Concerto Is a Conversation.”

Proudfoot was a proudfoot in one sense. “The Queen of Basketball”Lusia, a basketball hall-of-fame, was more than happy to share her story with Proudfoot about how she became a three time national champion, the first woman in the Olympic basketball tournament and the first professional basketball draftee. And though archival footage was hard to find at first, Harris’ alma mater, Delta State University, pulled out hundreds of pictures and film reels of the athlete’s career for Proudfoot to digitize for his film.

The challenge came instead from within, as the filmmaker focused on making a movie worthy of Harris’ legacy.

“It’s this incredible story and she tells it so well, and I got this treasure trove of archival footage and I thought, ‘Oh man, now I have to put this story together,’”He stated.

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While “The Queen of Basketball”He filmed the documentary quickly during the pandemic in 2020. Matt Ogens directed it. “Audible,”COVID-19 was first widely spread in the world just before it became widespread.

Shot in his hometown of Frederick, Maryland, Ogens followed students at the Maryland School for the Deaf just before homecoming weekend, with a particular focus on football star Amaree McKenstry as he gets his teammates to rebound after their team’s first loss to another deaf team in 16 years, while reconciling with his estranged father and coping with the suicide of his close friend Teddy.

“Audible” was the result of 12 years of filming at the school, where Ogens’ mother worked as an ASL interpreter. While Ogens met many inspiring students, it wasn’t until he encountered Amaree and classmate Jalen Whitehurst that he realized he’d found the story he wanted to tell.

“I knew that I wanted to make a film that was more than a sports doc,” Ogens said. “I had been interviewing football players and cheerleaders and coaches and all of a sudden, Amaree started talking about Teddy and then Jalen talked about Teddy. I knew that was the core of the story because it was something they and their classmates were still dealing with. At the end of the film, when Amaree and his friends are at the cemetery, it was two years to the day of Teddy’s suicide.”

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“Three Songs for Benzair”This film had been in production for many years. Elizabeth and Gulistan Mirazei, married filmmakers, had been living in Afghanistan for eight years and were making docs. In 2017, they met Shaista Benzair, a young couple who fell in love in a camp where they had lost their homes to the Taliban. The Mirazeis over several months filmed the couple’s affectionate moments as Shaista was forced to choose between his wife and family and his desire to join the Afghan National Army.

“We wanted to make a story about Afghanistan that isn’t seen enough,” Elizabeth Mirazei said. “We see so many stories about war and oppression and we were so taken by the story of this couple that had nothing but the hope in their hearts. Just seeing them together drowned out the war outside and we were just completely in the moment with them.”

From poverty in the Middle East, to poverty on West Coast “Lead Me Home” was Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk’s attempt to examine the escalating homelessness crisis in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle from a ground level. The documentary gives a glimpse into the meetings of the task force and heated debates at the city council meetings. However, the majority of the film is spent with people living on the streets in cars and tents. It shows their struggles to survive as well as their experiences with overwhelmed and underfunded social services.

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“We wanted to break down the walls and talk with these people who are our neighbors and tell their stories,” Kos said.

“We all go about our lives with a strange contradiction that this crisis is around us…yet we ignore it because we have to in order to move on with our lives,”Shenk was also added. “We’ve been forced into this corner where we almost have to create this wall and dehumanize people sleeping on the streets, so Pedro and I decided that we have to do the opposite of what we do every day and turn towards these people and talk to them.”

“Audible,” “Lead Me Home” “Three Songs for Benzair”These are all available to stream via Netflix “The Queen of Basketball”It is now available for viewing The New York Times YouTube channel.

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