Everyday Activist - Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts 2019

Posted on Thursday, February 14, 2019 at 05:00 PM

Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts 2019

Movie Review by Everyday Activist X CalgaryMovies.com

The Calgary International Film Festival is having a weekend of the 2019 OscarⓇ Nominated Shorts and of course I watched the documentaries and animated shorts first, only to find out that the live action ones are screening on February 15th. The animated shorts are on February 16th and the documentary shorts are February 17th. I reviewed The End Game in a previous post. I wouldn’t be surprised if it won, given the social impact it has had as a teaching tool for palliative care units. Of the five listed for the Oscars nominees, I only managed to watch two others, A Night at the Garden and Black Sheep, so you’ll have to get to the Globe Cinema on February 17th to watch the rest.

A Night at the Garden

The Corporation, a Canadian 2003 documentary film, talks a bit about the involvement of U.S companies in Nazis Germany. To this day, the United States makes money selling guns to whomever will buy them on domestic or international markets. The documentary Shadow World does a beautiful job diving into those details; however, the Corporation describes the organization of the death camps had some computing power help from IBM. Taking all this information together, it’s not hard to see how a Nazis rally could take place in New York City at Madison Square Garden, filling every seat, almost 80 years ago to the day on February 20th,1939. Indeed The Garden is a place “where history happens”. In school we learned about the isolationist policies of the US, but we never were taught that this particular event happened on US soil months before the Polish invasion. Our education also omitted that the Enigma code was solved by Polish mathematicians and British codebreaker Alan Turing in the mid-1940s, making the “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor seem less surprising.

Black Sheep

Parents try to do what they feel is best for their families. In a bid to escape the violence and crime of the city, the idyllic setting of the country, seems like a safer place to raise a family. Unfortunately, small towns tend to be hostile towards outsiders, especially if they look different. I wish for Cornelius’ sake his mother wouldn’t have allowed fear be her guide and took time to assess whether or not the risk to her family was as terrible as the media portrayed. It’s hard to imagine that what seemed to be a well adjusted family in the city fall apart into violence anyway by simply changing addresses.

Everyday Activist (CalgaryMovies.com) Review: Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts 2019 >

Calgary Showtimes: Calgary Film: 2019 OscarⓇ Nominated Shorts >