Oscar Shorts screenings at Kiggins Theatre celebrate little films that pack a big punch

Even lifelong cinema lovers like Richard Beer, the programming manager at downtown Vancouver’s independent Kiggins Theatre, find the gargantuan running time of some of today’s movie releases a bit absurd.

“Wicked,” the musical blockbuster: two hours and 40 minutes. “The Brutalist,” an epic about immigrants finding their place in America: three hours and 35 minutes, plus intermission.

“I found ‘The Brutalist’ pretty brutal to watch,” Beer said, adding that was partly for its violent content, but mostly for its massive length. “ ‘Wicked’ was only part one, and it was longer than the entire original musical. We even get these big, big Marvel movies.”

Other films stay short by design, making more out of less. Little films are often made by fledgling filmmakers who don’t have big budgets, Beer said. That often results in tighter, smarter, more compelling storytelling than you’ll find in overblown features with overblown budgets.

Starting this weekend at Kiggins, you can enjoy three anthologies of short films that are so good, they’ve been nominated for Academy Awards. The so-called Oscar Shorts will also screen starting Feb. 28 at the Liberty Theatre in Camas. The Academy Awards ceremony and telecast is set for March 2. All these screening and ceremony dates were postponed because of the fires in Los Angeles in January.

“At one point we weren’t even sure any of it was going to happen,” Beer said. “Including the possibility of canceling the Oscars.”

The three bundles of Academy Award-nominated short films are documentaries (averaging 32 minutes), live-action (20 minutes) and animated films (17 minutes).

“What’s so great about short films is … they can tell a complete story in 20 minutes, even less,” Beer said. “One of the ways I like to judge any movie is, do I want to know more? Do I wish I knew how the story continues? Or have I had enough already?”

Beer described the live-action short films in this year’s group of Oscar nominees as “nice and tight and down to the bone. There was so much better storytelling in the live-action shorts than there is in most feature films these days.”

He cited two great examples of minimal yet terrifically tense storytelling: “A Lien,” an American film that follows one young family on the day of the undocumented husband’s attempt to get his green card while immigration agents close in, and “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent,” which confines the viewer to a claustrophobic passenger train traveling through eastern Europe that is stopped by unidentified soldiers demanding to see everyone’s documents.

It’s not explained in “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent” that the film is based on a real incident during the Yugoslav war of the early 1990s. Serbian paramilitary forces pulled Muslims — and one former Yugoslav Army officer who indignantly protested — off a passenger train and massacred them.

“It’s the moral quandary of … people standing up for other people’s rights during a time when rights are disappearing,” Beer said. “So many of these stories are so relevant to today’s times.”

Beer’s favorite of the live-action films, he said, is also perhaps the most tragic. It’s called “The Last Ranger,” and it explores the crucial role women play in guarding elephants, rhinos and other big, endangered inhabitants of African wildlife reserves from well-armed poachers.

“I was a blubbering mess at the end of that one,” Beer said.

Sad, strange, joyous

Beer said he was glad to see that this year’s group of Oscar-nominated animated films doesn’t include anything ultra-cutesy and ultra-polished from the likes of Disney subsidiary Pixar.

“The animations are all strange and unique,” he said. “It all seems more avant-garde and ‘indy’ this year.”

In the Japanese animation “Magic Candies,” one lonely kid gains access to the impenetrable thoughts and feelings of others — even his remote father, even their apartment sofa! — through a bag of colorful sweets. In the surreal and poignant “Wander to Wonder,” the literally tiny cast of a children’s TV show winds up stranded in the studio after the show’s creator dies.

“It’s sad and it’s jaw-droppingly strange,” Beer said.

Sadness can be an unavoidable flavor of documentary films, Beer said, and the bulk of this year’s documentaries have plenty of it.

“Death by Numbers” follows the trauma and recovery of a school-shooting victim as she gets ready to face the shooter in court. “I Am Ready, Warden,” is a remarkable exploration of different people’s feelings about one death penalty sentence, including the feelings of the condemned man. And the utterly chilling “Incident” uses real security-cam and body-cam footage to reconstruct the police shooting of a Black man in Chicago — and to show how people’s understanding of what actually happened diverges from the confusing and fast-moving facts captured on video.

“That one was overwhelming,” Beer said. “You think you have it figured out, but there are so many points of view.”

Fortunately, Beer added, at least a couple of the documentaries will put smiles on viewers’ faces. “The Only Girl in the Orchestra” tells the unlikely life story of the first female musician in the New York Philharmonic — the too modest, genuinely outstanding double bassist Orin O’Brien — who was hired by maestro Leonard Bernstein in 1966. O’Brien’s tale is about opening doors in the world of classical music — but on a deeper level it’s a master class in growing older with purpose and joy.

Perhaps best of all, Beer said, is the unusually intimate, deeply delightful Japanese film “Instruments of a Beating Heart,” which follows one adorable public school first-grader as she struggles to master the rhythmic precision required to crash her cymbal correctly during a rendition of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The documentary’s close focus on this striving child is remarkable, and it’s impossible not to fall in love with her as she tries, fails, endures one teacher’s well-meant but severe scolding and eventually triumphs.

“It’s such a simple little story,” Beer said. “They’re all wearing masks, so all the expression is in their eyes. When she finally gets it, it is so joyous.”