Oscar Nominated Short Films 2010

Five very engaging and briskly artful live-action shorts in a little over 90 minutes. Maybe none of them deserve instant classic status, but together they make an extraordinarily vibrant program. Juanita Wilson’s The Door (from Ireland) and Luke Doolan’s Miracle Fish (Australia) conjure up miniature visions of apocalypse in cunningly intimate terms. Patrik Eklund’s Instead of Abracadabra (Sweden) makes some rich and dark comedy out of the antics of an amateur magician who still lives with his middle-aged parents. Joachim Back’s The New Tenants (Denmark/USA), a savage sort of noir comedy about two guys’ first day in an apartment multiply cursed by its own recent history, gets good mileage out of a cast that includes Vincent D’Onofrio, Kevin Corrigan, David Rakoff and Jamie Harrold. Gregg Helvey’s Kavi (USA/India), a brilliantly expansive mini-epic with a child hero taking on Third World slavery, gets my vote as the best of the lot. Pageant Theatre. Not rated