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Jack’s Award Focus: Live-Action Shorts’ Ten Pre-Selections

By Jack Gattanella on Tue 26 Nov, 2013

As with the Animated Short Films Short-List (which we previously reported in Jack’s Award Focus), the Live-Action Shorts have been announced by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) this past week.  This is the same number as the Animated list, which had 19 pre-nominees, and documentary selections are forthcoming.

It’s list of films that come from all over the world, practically all by independent companies, and almost all from festival circuits (fests like the AFI Film Festival and Telluride provide some status to get on as a pre-official selection, if that makes sense).

All shorts as well as Feature Animated films are screened by a committee – and 120 selections were screened to pare down to this ten in Los Angeles – and now from these ten three-to-five official nominees will be selected.  Furthermore, as with the animated and documentary entries, the public (at least in the US) can see the nominees in special block screenings in major cities such as New York and LA.

Here’s the short-list of shorts – note how many come from foreign territories (the exceptions are Record/Play, which premiered at Sundance, and The Voorman Problem starring Martin Freeman and Tom Hollander):

“Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn’t Me),” Esteban Crespo, director (Producciones Africanauan)

“Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just before Losing Everything),” Xavier Legrand, director, and Alexandre Gavras, producer (KG Productions)

“Dva (Two),” Mickey Nedimovic, director, and Henner Besuch, director of photography (Filoufilm Dani Barsch)

“Helium,” Anders Walter, director, and Kim Magnusson, producer (M & M Productions)

“Kush,” Shubhashish Bhutiani, director (Red Carpet Moving Pictures)

“Pitääkö Mun Kaikki Hoitaa? (Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?),” Selma Vilhunen, director, and Kirsikka Saari, screenwriter (Tuffi Films)

record play

“Record/Play,” Jesse Atlas, director, and Thom Fennessey, executive producer (Collaboration Factory)

“Throat Song,” Miranda de Pencier, director (Northwood Productions)

“Tiger Boy,” Gabriele Mainetti, director (Goon Films)

“The Voorman Problem,” Mark Gill, director, and Baldwin Li, producer (Honlodge Productions)

Nominees will be announced January 16th in Hollywood, Oscars take place March 2nd.

Jack is a graduate of film studies from William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ, and is currently seeking his MFA in Screenwriting at the Academy of Art. He is a screen-writer, film critic, director, and editor, and has also done camera-work for web-series, doccumentaries and shorts. Currently Jack is seeking distribution for his feature film drama, “Green Eyes“, co-produced a sci-fi feature, Audrey Lorea‘s ‘Heaven is Now.‘, as well as a comedy pilot called ‘Losers’ which is being shopped around to networks. He is also a contributing writer for the sites FocusFilm.co.uk, Film Forward, and some of his other reviews can be found on his blogcinetarium.blogspot.com. Jack is a vociferous fan of films and will watch anything interesting, foreign and domestic. He survives by his wife, a political science professor, and currently resides in Little Ferry, New Jersey, USA.
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