The three Oscar categories that recognize films of 40 minutes or less — best live-action short, best documentary short and best documentary short — are often considered “minor,” but this year’s nominees will include some big names.
Following the recent Academy Awards ceremonies, in which Oscars for short films were taken home by retired NBA legend Kobe Bryant, former NFL player Matthew A. Cherry and Hollywood’s Alistair Riz Ahmed, The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Taylor Swift’s feature film debut All Too Well: The Short Film – which the pop star has described as “a film about an effervescent, curious young woman who ends up completely out of her depth” – received a string of Oscar nominations, making it eligible for the best live-action short Oscar, and is working with a top consulting firm to guide its awards campaign.
The 14-minute production (watch it here), which Swift wrote and directed a decade after the release of her critically acclaimed power ballad “All Too Well,” ran at AMC Lincoln Square for a week last fall, from 12 November (the day of its premiere there) until November 18. And while that timing would have disqualified it from this season’s Best Picture race, which requires a release within the calendar year preceding the Oscars, it works just fine for the Best Live Action Short Film race. The eligibility window of which started on October 1, 2021 and runs until September 30.
Swift, who has never been nominated for an Oscar but is also generating buzz this year for her original song ‘Carolina’ featured on Where the Crawdads Sing, injected a new mojo behind All Too Well: The Short Film during of the Tribeca Film Festival over the summer. On June 11, accompanied by her leading lady Sadie Sink (Stranger Things) and star Dylan O’Brien (Teen Wolf), she attended a screening of the film to a packed Beacon Theater and talked about it with the director/fan afterward. Mike Mills — citing Barbara Stanwyck’s films, especially 1937’s Stella Dallas , as major influences, and stressing, “This is not a music video” — before performing “All Too Well” live for die-hard fans.
Swift isn’t the only music star with a movie up for the Oscar for best live-action short. Kendrick Lamar’s We Cry Together, a six-minute film starring him and Zola’s Taylour Paige as a feuding couple, which Lamar made to complement his self-titled song from his May album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, played quietly at the Laemmle Royal Theater in the West. LA from June 3 to June 9, qualifying it for the race.
I was told that pgLang, a company recently formed by Lamar and Dave Free, Laemmle’s 180-seat, four-wall main theater for one show a day, each of which took place under the supervision of a special outside security detail that collected the phones of all those present. Attendees were mostly family and friends of those associated with the play, although about 20 members of the public were also able to purchase tickets to each performance.
Another short with familiar names—this one of the shorter documentary variety—is 38 at the Garden, which revisits the story of former New York Knicks basketball star Jeremy Lin, who came from nowhere before a decade to dominate the NBA. during a period known as “Linsanity”. Produced in 2021 by Academy Award winner for Best Live Action Short Travon Free (who, for Two Distant Strangers, became the first black winner of that award) and EP’d by CNN anchor Lisa Ling, the film — about which Lin gave a rare interview — marks the direction. The debut of Frank Chi, an Asian-American who runs a political DC creative agency and has had audiences cheering and crying since his Tribeca Film Festival debut in June.
38 at the Garden — a reference to a particularly notable Lin performance at Madison Square Garden on February 10, 2012 — most recently premiered at the HollyShorts festival in Hollywood on Thursday and will be released on HBO on October 11. In a time of rising hate crimes against Asian Americans, the story of an individual who brought so much pride to this community and whose popularity extended far beyond it, is especially poignant. And given that Bryant’s Dear Basketball won Best Animated Short in 2018 and Ben Proudfoot’s The Queen of Basketball won Best Documentary Short earlier this year, it’s safe to assume that today’s Oscar voters aren’t they dislike stories about life on the hardwood, such as these were. who a generation ago refused to recommend even one of the greatest documentaries ever made, Steve James’ 1994 masterpiece Hoop Dreams.
31-year-old Proudfoot has another doc short in the mix this year: Mink! (which you can watch here), the story of the late Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color ever elected to the US House of Representatives and co-author of the landmark legislation known as Title IX. If Wink! — released by the New York Times Op-Docs series on June 23, the 50th anniversary of the signing of Title IX — is up for grabs, which would make Proudfoot the only person ever to carry the best short documentaries in three consecutive years (his streak began with A Concerto Is a Conversation) except for Dick Young (who was nominated in 1980, 1981 and 1982 and, unlike Proudfoot, never won).
One of Proudfoot’s executive producers on the project? Professional tennis star Naomi Osaka.
