Included with the DVD for Encanto, this short follows a young raccoon as she travels with her father from their forest home to the nearby seaside. Whenever she wanders from her father’s view, he aggressively returns her to safety. With a traditional animated look and tight story telling, this was much more my sort of thing than the movie it accompanied. 
The life of a cart horse from birth to adulthood is detailed with questionable humor in Kings of the Turf. I’m sure there is someone out there that finds such things amusing, but for me, it’s quite a bore and very forgettable. It’s too fictionalized of an account to feel informative and not appealing enough to bother otherwise. 
As the title suggests, Saved from the Flames is a collection of rare films that were made during the days of nitrate films. Comments on the films are available after the cut.
Oscar Nomination: Best Short Subject, One-reel (Kings of the Turf)
Slowly working through this year’s available-to-me Oscar nominees, I checked out these two that are currently watchable on YouTube. The Long Goodbye was made as an accompaniment to Riz Ahmed’s album of the same name. An extended Muslim family in the United Kingdom is gathered together when their festivities are interrupted by a gang of armed men who force them to the street and the women into unmarked vehicles. Though I found the second part of that a bit heavy handed in its approach, the two together stand in stark contrast to each other. I really enjoyed the third act with Ahmed’s rap providing a powerful finishing statement. 
The Queen of Basketball tells the story of Luisa Harris the first woman officially drafted by the NBA. What could be a fairly straightforward telling of her life from her college basketball career and her time on the Olympic team to her later life as a mother, coach, and teacher is made incredibly delightful and moving by the Harris’s own account of the events. She comes across as a beautiful soul and it’s a shame that she passed before the nominations were announced.
Oscar Wins: Best Live Action Short Film (The Long Goodbye); Best Documentary Short Subject (The Queen of Basketball)
These were two shorts included in the Que Viva Mexico DVD I watched. The first is a silent film that contrasts the differing conditions between a rich woman’s and a poor woman’s experiences when abortion is illegal. I think the edit I watched could have used a bit more to clarify the stories some but it still remains a powerful testament. The second film presents a Fantasia-esque interplay between music and changing visuals. Both films offer some uncommon glimpses into the pioneering director’s work.
In King for a Day, Bill Robinson is a talented dancer who wins a musical show in a craps game. The story is charming, but the real purpose of the short seems to showcase the various performers, including Robinson himself. 
In Rufus Jones for President, a bullied Sammy Davis Jr. comes crying to his mother Ethel Waters who helps him to imagine a reality where he has become President. The two leads are fantastic talents, but it’s especially great to see such a tiny little Davis dance. He looks exactly like he did 50 years later, just somewhat smaller. Both of the shorts are interesting artifacts of Black talent in the 1930s though there is sadly a bit of eye-rolling stereotyping at play.
A war propaganda piece set during Christmas is a bit of an oddity, but that is exactly what this is. It proports to illustrate the resilience of the British people to celebrate the holidays with the reminders of war all around them. Despite my general dislike for war films, I do enjoy seeing how civilians adapt and carry on despite the destruction surrounding them. There is plenty of that in this short, but it is very heavy handed. 
Oscar Nomination: Best Documentary
These were all short films that were included in the Criterion DVD set of Hiroshi Teshigahara films. The first three are all documentaries of varying quality. Ikebana discusses the Japanese art of flower arranging. It offers an interesting look into some beautiful pieces of artwork that expands beyond just flowers in a vase. Tokyo 1958 gives a glimpse into life in Tokyo during the late 1950s when its population was the largest in the world. Hokusai chronicles the life of the life of the artist. I thought I’d be most interested in this one because I’ve always liked the Great Wave Off Kanagawa, but for some reason, perhaps just its poor quality, it was a bit dull for me.
Ako is different than the other three shorts as it is a narrative film following a day in the life of a sixteen year old bakery worker. It’s a bit avant-garde in its presentation with dialogue that doesn’t match the film and often crosses over each other. The action is not told in a linear fashion either moving from work day to after hours and back again. Regardless, it’s an engrossing glimpse into the daily experiences of a group of 1960s Japanese teenagers.
This French short documentary inordinately details the realities of the Nazi concentration camps, juxtaposing color footage taken at the time of the film with black and white stills and videos from the years of the Holocaust. Over the years I’ve read and seen much about the Holocaust, but never have I seen such a comprehensive recitation of what went on behind the walls of the camps. It includes everything from the most mundane details on architecture to the worst degradations that are beyond normal imagination. The horrors just continue to grow through the film and serve as a stark reminder that this could happen again. My only slight complaint about the film was the overuse of narration. It was often unnecessary, overly opinionated and almost detracted from the strength of the images themselves.
Told from the perspective of narrator John Nesbit’s childhood, this short tells the tale of Swedish immigrant Annie who was hired to be a maid by Nesbit’s family. It’s a cute little bit of nostalgia, but is a really simplistic view of the lives of servants, reminiscent of Southern representations of slave characters in Civil War films.
Oscar Nomination: Best Short Subject, One-reel
The titular character of Blind Vaysha was born with one eye that sees only the past and the other that only sees the future. She can never live in the present. A beautifully animated tale, it’s an interesting parable that is ruined slightly by an ending that pushes for reflection instead of just allowing it to happen naturally.
Polarbearman features Lee Pace as a solitary man in a house with water levels gradually rising to the point where his only recourse is to move higher and higher until he is stranded on the roof. As a representation of the effects of climate change, it’s a metaphor for the dire situation for polar bears and the melting ice caps.
The other two shorts are part of my attempts to watching Richard Pryor’s filmography. The first experimentally flickers through footage from his stand-up routine. It’s not really my cup of tea. The other is a sketch from a Lily Tomlin special. It features Lily as the manager of a greasy spoon and Pryor as a junkie and friend who interact with a few characters who come into the diner, including Alan Alda. It’s an interesting slice of life bit incorporated with realistic characters and relationships.
Oscar Nomination: Best Animated Short Film (Blind Vaysha)