Hollywood’s famed Egyptian Theatre actually consists of
two theaters ““ the lavish, 616-seat Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre,
and the lesser known, 78-seat Spielberg Theatre.
The cynical explanation for this is that it allows the Egyptian
to hold less appealing screenings in the smaller theater without
having to operate the larger one. But on Saturday, the Spielberg
Theatre’s smaller size provided a sense of directness and
immediacy to its Oscar Documentary Shorts program, packaged
together from all four Oscar nominees in that category this year.
The program will run every Saturday through May.
The Oscars have traditionally favored documentaries about
historical tragedies such as the Holocaust, so it’s no
surprise that apartheid, Rwandan genocide and Hiroshima comprise
the subject matter of three of the four half-hour shorts.
The academy’s stamp of approval almost ensures a lack of
any kind of innovation in these films, but each of these three
manages to find new and powerful stories amidst previously tread
ground. It’s a welcome dose of reality to be found,
ironically enough, in the middle of Hollywood.
Some thought clearly went into the order that the shorts are
presented. The program opens with “The Death of Kevin Carter:
Casualty of the Bang Bang Club,” about the Pulitzer
Prize-winning photojournalist who committed suicide after capturing
apartheid in South Africa and famine in Sudan.
“The Death of Kevin Carter” is followed by, and in a
sense paired with, “God Sleeps in Rwanda.” The film
explores the newfound role of women in Rwanda, where the 1994
genocide left the country with a population that was suddenly 70
percent female. The film carries the spirit of photojournalism,
going to Rwanda and sticking cameras in people’s faces. Those
people include, among others, a single mother who’s a
policewoman by day and law student by night, all the while
suffering from HIV.
The second half of the program deals with World War II,
beginning with Steven Okazaki’s “The Mushroom
Club.” Okazaki examines the lingering effects of the atomic
bomb on modern day Hiroshima. The title refers to people who suffer
mental and physical deficiencies resulting from radiation.
By this point, the cumulative effect of these horrific tragedies
becomes fairly overwhelming, too much reality for one sitting. But
the program ends more optimistically with “A Note of Triumph:
The Golden Age of Norman Corwin,” which was this year’s
Oscar winner in the category. Corwin fused poetry and drama in
order to turn radio into an art form, and 60 million Americans
tuned in to hear the broadcast of his “On a Note of
Triumph,” which marked the end of World War II in Europe with
a moving plea for peace.
““ Alfred Lee
E-mail Lee at alee@media.ucla.edu.