This weekend, we're thrilled to be hosting an exclusive UK screening of this year’s Oscar® Nominated Short Films in partnership with Brain Wash.
This is the only chance for Londoners to catch this year’s short film nominees on the big screen prior the Academy Awards® with two special screenings taking place at Curzon Soho on the 26th (Best Animated Short Films) and 27th (Best Live Action Short Films) of February at Midday (12pm).
To book tickets for the Animation programme, click here. To book tickets for the Live Action programme, click here.
Don't fret if you're unable to make it down, most of the nominated shorts (minus the documentaries and The Gruffalo) are now available todownload from iTunes.
The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2011 hit US Theaters today and critics nationwide are raving about the films. Check out some of our favourite quotes below:
In the lead up to the 83rd Academy Awards on February 27th, we are taking a closer look at this year's short film nominees. Today, one of this year's Best Live Action Short Film contenders, The Crush.
Best Live Action Short Film nominee, The Crush
THE CRUSH Ireland/15 MIN
Director/Writer: Michael Creagh
Producer: Damon Quinn
Cast: Charlie Bonner, Neilí Conroy, Oran Creagh, Rory Keenan, Olga Wehrly
Ardal Travis is in love. There's just one problem. He's an 8 year old schoolboy and the object of his affection is his Second Class teacher, Miss Purdy. But when her boyfriend arrives on the scene Ardal is heartbroken. His reaction, though, is a little unexpected. He challenges Miss Purdy's boyfriend to a duel. To the death.
Michael Creagh was born in Belfast. He received a degree in design at Belfast College before moving to Dublin to follow a career in advertising. After 12 years as an art director he has been trying to break into both films and commercials. The Crush is his debut short film.
The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2011 are in theaters across the US from tomorrow, 11 February.
A list of cinemas is available on our official website. We've also reproduced this data as a spreadsheet which provides an at-a-glance look at participating venues.
In the lead up to the 83rd Academy Awards on February 27th, we are taking a closer look at this year's nominees. Today, one of this year's Best Documentary Short Subject contenders, Strangers No More.
Best Documentary Short Subject nominee, Strangers No More
STRANGERS NO MORE USA/40 MIN
Directors/Producers: Karen Goodman, Kirk Simon
In the heart of Tel Aviv, there is an exceptional school where children from 48 different countries and diverse backgrounds come together to learn. Many of the students arrive at Bialik-Rogozin in the wake of poverty, political adversity and even genocide. Here, no child is a stranger.
Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman have made over twenty documentaries and in the process have garnered four Academy Award nominations, three Emmys and the DuPont-Columbia Award for Independent Programming. They have received filmmaking grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, and the American Film Institute.
Their documentaries have been broadcast nationally on PBS, HBO, and MTV, and screened at festivals around the world including the New York Film Festival, Sundance, New Directors / New Films, London, Berlin, Montreal and St. Petersburg. In addition, they have overseen and filmed dance preservation projects for the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Lincoln Center's Library and Museum of the Performing Arts.
Both Mr. Simon and Ms. Goodman are active voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They have served as consultants to the National Endowment for the Humanities Media Program, on the Documentary Screening Committee for the Academy Awards and as judges for the Emmy Awards and the DuPont-Columbia Broadcast Journalism Award.
View an exclusive clip from Strangers No More below.
In the lead up to the 83rd Academy Awards on February 27th, we are taking a closer look at this year's nominees. Today, one of this year's Best Animated Short Film contenders, Let's Pollute.
Best Animated Short Film nominee, Let's Pollute
LET’S POLLUTE USA/6 MIN
Director/Writer/Producer: Geefwee Boedoe
Cast: Jim Thornton
In the spirit of 50's & 60's educational films, Let's Pollute is a modern satire on how pollution is our heritage and keeps our economy growing strong, while instructing us how to be better polluters for a better blighted tomorrow.
Upon graduation from CalArts in 1988 Geefwee Boedoe has worked as an animator, and in story and visual development for Pixar, Disney Feature Animation, ILM, DreamWorks, and others.
The Opening Title Sequence to Monsters, Inc. which received high critical acclaim was conceived, storyboarded, and designed by Mr. Boedoe, who also directed the animation.
Since 2002 Geefwee Boedoe has been pursuing an independent career as a film maker, designer and writer/illustrator of children's books. In 2004 his first children's book, Arrowville, won a Ruben Award from the National Cartoonists Society and was voted a 10 best Illustrated Children's Book by the New York Times.
In 2006 he began work on his first independent film. Over three years in the making, Let's Pollute was completed late in 2009, and has been slowly picking up positive attention and momentum in film festival worldwide.
In the lead up to the 83rd Academy Awards on February 27th, we are taking a closer look at this year's nominees. Today, one of this year's Best Live Action Short Film contenders, God of Love.
Best Live Action Short Film nominee, God of Love
GOD OF LOVE USA/18 MIN
Director/Writer: Luke Matheny
Producers: Gigi Demant, Ryan Silbert, Stefanie Walmsley
Cast: Luke Matheny, Marian Brock, Christopher Hirsh, Emily Young, Miguel Rosales
Lounge-singing darts champion Raymond Goodfellow finds his prayers are answered -- literally -- when he receives a mysterious package of passion-inducing darts. The catch is that the one woman he loves -- Kelly, a drummer in his band -- is already in love with Ray's best friend Fozzie, the guitarist in the band. But when Ray uses the darts in a loony scheme to resolve this strange romantic triangle, he learns a surprising lesson about unrequited love and discovers his own place in the universe. Romance is in the air in this bohemian charmer.
Luke Matheny is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based director, writer, actor and professor.
His short film God of Love – a comedy about a lounge-singing darts champion who receives a package of love-inducing darts – was winner of the Student Academy Award; special jury recognition at Aspen ShortsFest; as well as first prize and the King Award for Screenwriting at the NYU First Run Film Festival. The film has screened and won awards at dozens of festivals around the world. God of Love was Matheny’s thesis at NYU’s graduate film program.
Matheny has also co-written a feature-length coming-of-age comedy, A Birder’s Guide to Everything, with Sundance-award-winning director Rob Meyer. The project is currently in pre-production at Crossroads Films in New York.
His previous short film Earano -- a loose, comic retelling of the Cyrano de Bergerac tale – won the King Award for Screenwriting at the NYU First Run Festival, an honorable mention for the Fujifilm Audience Impact Award at the Angelus Student Film Festival, and Best Student Short at the Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City, Nevada.
Earano was also called "charming and hilarious [and] quite romantic" by New York Magazine's website.
Matheny grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. He has a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University's prestigious Medill School of Journalism and has worked as a reporter and copy editor in a variety of newspapers, magazines and web sites. He has also worked as a synopsis writer for Netflix, a story editor for the MTV series MADE, and as a filmmaking teacher at the School of Cinema and Performing Arts (SOCAPA) in Brooklyn.
He is currently writing a feature comedy script called Ron Quixote. He enjoys jazz, Scrabble and cleaning his desk.
In the lead up to the 83rd Academy Awards on February 27th, we are taking a closer look at this year's nominees. Today, one of this year's Best Documentary Short Subject contenders, Sun Come Up.
Best Documentary Short Subject nominee, Sun Come Up
SUN COME UP USA, Papua New Guinea/38 MIN
Director/Producer: Jennifer Redfearn
Producer/Cinematographer: Tim Metzger
Sun Come Up follows the relocation of some of the world’s first environmental refugees, the Carteret Islanders – a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. When rising seas threaten their survival, the islanders face a painful decision: they must leave their beloved land in search of a new place to call home.
Jennifer Redfearn is a New York-based director, producer, and editor. She has worked on programming for PBS, Discovery, TLC, and independent and educational distribution. She is currently producing and editing multimedia for MediaStorm where she recently completed When the Water Ends about climate change in East Africa. In 2008, she co-produced a two-hour special, Doctors’ Diaries for WGBH/NOVA, and she produced a medical series for the Discovery channel. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from Wellesley College and a Master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. Sun Come Up is her first independent documentary. She teaches storytelling and media skills at MediaStorm, NBC, and DCTV. Her work has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, NYSCA, Chicken & Egg Pictures, and the Jerome Foundation, among others.
In the lead up to the 83rd Academy Awards on February 27th, we are taking a closer look at this year's nominees, all of which will be available to download from iTunes on February 22nd. Today, one of this year's Best Animated Short Film nominees, The Gruffalo.
Best Animated Short Film nominee, The Gruffalo
THE GRUFFALO UK/27 MIN
Directors: Jakob Schuh, Max Lange
Writers: Julia Donaldson, Max Lang, Jakob Schuh
Producers: Michael Rose, Martin Pope
Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Rob Brydon, Robbie Coltrane, James Corden, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson
Based on the best-selling children’s book by Julia Donaldson and Alex Scheffler, the magical tale of a mouse who takes a walk through the woods in search of a nut. Encountering three predators who all wish to eat him -- a fox, an owl and a snake -- the plucky mouse has to use his wits to survive, creating an imaginary monster who then turns out to be only too real.
Jakob Schuh was born in Munich in 1976, and after his school graduation in 1995, he first studied in the department of dramaturgy at the LMU in Munich. From 1996 to 2003, Jakob Schuh was a student in the department of direction/animation at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg; parallel to this, in 1996 he studied illustration as a fellowship-holder at the Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, and in 1997 he attended the master’s class of painting and experimental animation at the College of Applied Arts in Vienna. Jakob Schuh has been involved in various animation film productions since 1995, and has worked as a caricaturist and illustrator for the Süddeutsche Zeitung; he has been a shareholder in Studio Soi GmbH & Co. KG since 2003.
Max Lang studied animation at the prestigious Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg in Germany. Whilst there he worked on numerous productions as director, character designer, animator and storyboard artist. He was co-director of the animated trailer which launched the 2008 Cartoon Forum held in Ludwigsburg, Germany and has worked on several productions with Studio Soi. The Gruffalo is his first commercial film as director.
Watch the official trailer for The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2011. In theaters across the US and Canada from February 11th and available on iTunes and cable's Movies On Demand from February 22nd.
In the lead up to the 83rd Academy Awards on February 27th, we are taking a closer look at this year's nominees, all of which will be available to download from iTunes on February 22nd. Today, one of this year's Best Live Action Short Film nominees, Wish 143.
Best Live Action Short Film nominee, Wish 143
WISH 143 UK/24 MIN
Director: Ian Barnes
Writer: Tom Bidwell
Producer: Samantha Waite
Cast: Jim Carter, Jodie Whittaker, Dean Andrews
A fifteen-year-old boy with only months to live is granted one wish from the Dreamscape Charity. But David doesn't want to go to Disneyland or meet Gary Neville; what he really wants is an hour alone with a naked woman.
Wish 143 is the second short film from Ian Barnes following on from Swing, which graphically showed how adultery can seriously damage your health. In between making shorts Ian directs comedy and drama for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Projects include Hope Springs starring Alex Kingston, Wild At Heart starring Stephen Tompkinson and The Afternoon Plays.
In 2009 and 2010 Ian was part of the team nominated for a BAFTA for episodes of the medical drama Casualty. One of the episodes revolved around the attempted suicide of a junior doctor. Ian started life as a journalist and gradually moved into directing drama via radio and television.
He is currently working on a feature script Plain Jane which he will be taking to the Sundance Lab in 2010.
In the lead up to the 83rd Academy Awards on February 27th, we are taking a closer look at this year's nominees, all of which will be available to download from iTunes on February 22nd. Today, one of this year's Best Documentary Short Subject nominees, Poster Girl.
Best Documentary Short Subject nominee, Poster Girl
POSTER GIRL USA/38 MIN
Director: Sara Nesson
Producer: Mitchell Block, Sara Nesson
Apple pie cheerleader turned tough-as-nails machine gunner in the Iraq War, Sgt. Robynn Murray comes home to face a new kind of battle she never anticipated.
Director/DP/Editor Sara Nesson is in the post-production stage of two films – Poster Girl and Iraq Paper Scissors. Both follow Iraq War Veterans over 2 1/2 years as they cope with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the emotional ups and downs as they embark on an unusual healing journey. Poster Girl was recently acquired by HBO to be part of their focus on PTSD series.
Sara has worked as the principle editor for Stolen Childhoods, directed by Len Morris, Galen Films, PBS and 2nd editor on Plastic Disasters, directed by Kate Davis, HBO. PG and IPS are Sara’s first independent documentary features.
Sara runs Sara Nesson Productions from her fabulous editing studio in Dumbo, NY, which she shares with her advisor and friend, Academy Award Winner for Born into Brothels, Ross Kauffman.
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