Oscar's short films are long on artistry

05:00 AM, Feb 21, 2013

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Written By by Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

This year’s Oscar-nominated film shorts are diverse and fascinating — little films that make a bigger impact than their length would imply. The medium is used to explore complex ideas within economical time constraints, and these films span the globe and encompass a variety of styles and genres. USA TODAY’s Claudia Puig explores the standouts in the various fields.

Documentary shorts

Open Heart

* * * * out of four

Directors: Kief Davidson and Cori Shepherd Stern

Story: A beautifully shot and poignant look at a Sudanese hospital that offers free cardiac surgery to African children afflicted with rheumatic heart disease. Some 13 million people in Africa suffer from the disease but there is only one hospital that performs this life-saving surgery. The film follows a small group of Rwandan children chosen for cardiac bypass surgery. Their faces are deeply moving, as are the comments of an African pediatric cardiologist who selects the lucky children, ranging in age from 5 to 17.

Mondays at Racine

* * * ½

Directors: Cynthia Wade and Robin Honan

Story: An honest and tender look at how women cope with breast cancer — from a very specific angle. Two women, daughters of a woman who fought depression after her breast cancer diagnosis, open their Long Island beauty salon once a month to women with breast cancer who are undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. They call their salon “The Pavilion for Holistic Health Care,” and the goal is to give women back a sense of themselves. After losing her hair, one woman comments: “I don’t feel like a woman. I feel like an alien.” Some moments are uplifting, others quite sad.

Kings Point

* * * ½

Director: Sari Gilman

Story: Residents of the Kings Point Retirement Center share their thoughts on friendship, family, romance, loneliness and life in Florida in this touching portrait of the vagaries of old age. “Self-preservation is No. 1 always — no matter what age,” says one of the retirees.

Redemption

* * ½

Directors: Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill

Story: A look at “canning” in New York City. The focus is on jobless people of all ages who collect cans and bottles for redemption in order to make ends meet. They include Vietnam vets, former short-order cooks, retirees and a one-time computer technician who hopes no one she knows sees her collecting these discards. “Everybody used to have a job,” says one man. “Now, getting a job is like hitting the lotto.”

Inocente

* * *

Director: Sean and Andrea Nix Fine

Story: A young artist who is homeless and an undocumented immigrant won’t let her circumstances deter her from her goals.

Animated shorts

Paperman

* * * *

Director: John Kahrs

Story: A sweetly moving and wordless romance in black-and-white where sparks (and papers) fly when a man and woman meet on a train platform en route to their office jobs.

Head Over Heels

* * * *

Directors: Timothy Reckart and Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly

Story: The life of a long-married but now-disconnected couple is cleverly depicted through gravity-defying stop-motion animation.

Adam and Dog

* * *

Director: Minkyu Lee

Story: A lovely parable in a lush setting positing how a dog became man’s best friend.

Maggie Simpson in ‘The Longest Daycare’

* * *

Director: David Silverman

Story: Marge Simpson drops off her youngest child, Maggie, at the Ayn Rand School for Tots. After going through an elaborate security system, she is carried by a guard past the “Room for Gifted Babies” to one marked “Nothing Special.” Despite a dispiriting and comical series of events, Maggie’s sense of wonder is not squelched.

Fresh Guacamole

* *

Director: PES (Adam Pesapane)

Story: A bowl of guacamole is prepared with unlikely ingredients — including baseballs, light bulbs and hand grenades — and scooped onto poker chips.

Live-action shorts

Asad

***

Directors: Bryan Buckley and Mino Jarjoura

Story: A coming-of-age tale of a Somali boy choosing between becoming a fisherman or falling into the dangerous life of a pirate, as so many others have in his war-torn village.

Buzkashi Boys

***

Directors: Sam French and Ariel Nasr

Story: A pair of young best friends in Afghanistan — a charming street urchin and a dutiful blacksmith’s apprentice — dream of playing the national sport of buzkashi, a violent version of polo involving horseback riders and a dead goat. As they ponder manhood, they face the realities of life in an impoverished, war-plagued nation.

Curfew

***

Director: Shawn Christensen

Story: Just as he is facing his deepest moment of despair, a man gets a call from his estranged sister asking him to look after his precocious 9-year-old niece for the evening.

Death of a Shadow (Dood van een Schaduw)

** 1/2

Directors: Tom Van Avermaet and Ellen De Waele

Story: An odd collector who has captured 10,000 shadows of dead people gives a soldier a second chance at life and love.

Henry

* * * ½

Director: Yan England

Story: An elderly concert pianist faces the mysterious loss of the love of his life.