BY KAREN BOSSICK
Sun Valley Museum of Art will launch the first of three screenings of Oscar Nominated Short Films beginning Thursday, April 8.
They can be viewed in person at the Magic Lantern Cinemas at 100 East 2nd St. in Ketchum. Or, you can rent the Oscar Shorts via SVMoA to watch at home with a 30-day period in which you have to view the films.
Shorts will be screened at Magic Lantern at 4 and 7 p.m. this Thursday and the next two.
- The series kicks off with Oscar Shorts Live Action on Thursday, April 8.
This year’s shorts includes “Feeling Through,” a film produced with the Hellen Keller National Center. It zeros in on a deaf and blind man standing alone on a Manhattan street corner holding a “Please Help” sign who gets sidetracked by a stranger he can hardly communicate with.
“Two Distant Strangers” follows a young Black New Yorker who heads home from a one-night stand to an enviable apartment only to have a run-in with the police.
The Palestinian film “The Present” depicts a father running errands with his daughter locked up in a cage following an attempt to go through a military checkpoint.
“White Eye” follows a man who finds a bike that was stolen from him at the workplace of an Eritrean immigrant at risk of deportation.
And “The Letter Room” portrays a prison guard who is trying to improve the environment in which he works.
- Oscar Shorts Animated will be shown on April 15.
“Burrow” features critters who live underground, where a bunny heroine trying to dig a one-room dwelling keeps bumping into others’ burrows.
The French “Genius Loci” offers a surrealistic portrait through the eyes of a young Black woman trying to process the chaos of urban Paris.
The Korean “Opera” depicts a giant pyramid populated by hundreds of bug-size stick figures come to life.
“If Anything Happens I Love You” explores the emotional state of a couple coping with tragedy.
And the Icelandic “Yes-People” shows neighbors in every day scenes, such as slurping soup, made comical through pantomimed performances.
- Oscar Shorts Documentaries will be shown on April 22.
“Love Song for Latasha” focuses on friends and relatives remembering a 15-year-old who was shot by a convenience store owner who got off with a mere slap on the hand.
“A Concerto is a Conversation” features an interview with a 91-year-old as he tells of escaping the Jim Crow South as a youngster.
“Colette” depicts a 9-year-old alum of the French Resistance who visits the concentration camp where her brother was killed during World War II.
“Hunger Ward” offers a look at a hospital that handles cases of child starvation during Yemen’s ongoing civil war.
And Anders Hammer’s “Do Not Split” zeros in on the movement for democracy in Hog Kong.
This is the sixth consecutive year that SVMoA has paired with Magic Lantern Cinemas to screen Oscar shorts.
Tickets for the Magic Lantern showings are $10 for SVMoA members and $12 for nonmembers. Tickets and information about viewing the shorts at home are available at https://svmoa.org/events.