Oscar-Nominated Shorts
8 Episodes
These exuberant and inventive Oscar-nominated shorts span animated, documentary, and fiction work, including eye-catching early films by Andrea Arnold, Richard Lester, and Shirley Clarke. At an awards show often dominated by stars and industry titans, the short-film Academy Award categories tend to recognize up-and-comers, outsiders, and unknowns, making for some of the ceremony’s most unpredictable and exciting moments.
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23:48Episode 1Return to Glennascaul
Episode 1
Directed by Hilton Edwards • 1953 • United Kingdom
Orson Welles, playing himself, picks up a hitchhiker who recounts a strange story. Actors Micheál MacLiammóir and Hilton Edwards made this short film during a hiatus from shooting OTHELLO (1952).
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10:08Episode 2A Chairy Tale
Episode 2
Directed by Claude Jutra and Norman McLaren • 1957 • Canada
This 1957 experimental short, codirected by Claude Jutra and Norman McLaren, shows Jutra’s daring and original approach to filmmaking early on in his career.
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21:12Episode 3Skyscraper
Episode 3
Directed by Shirley Clarke and Willard Van Dyke • 1960 • United States
Nominated for an Academy Award, this live-action short film by director Shirley Clarke playfully chronicles the construction of the Tishman Building at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City. Clarke referred to this work as a musi...
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The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film
Episode 4
Directed by Richard Lester • 1959 • United Kingdom
This film, directed by Richard Lester, was shot over two Sundays in 1959 for a cost of about seventy pounds. Nominated for an Oscar for best live-action short, it features Lester, Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Graham Stark, and Bruce Lacey.
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13:50Episode 5Happy Anniversary
Episode 5
Directed by Pierre Etaix and Jean-Claude Carrière • 1962 • France
A young woman waits and waits for her delayed husband to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
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Windy Day
Episode 6
Directed by John Hubley and Faith Hubley • 1968 • United States
Starring Emily Hubley, Georgia HubleyTwo little girls explore their views on marriage, death, babies, and love in this gently poignant, Academy Award–nominated idyll suffused with the offhanded wisdom of childhood.
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26:18Episode 7Christo’s Valley Curtain
Episode 7
Directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Ellen Giffard • 1974 • United States
Nominated for an Academy Award, CHRISTO'S VALLEY CURTAIN celebrates the Bulgarian-born artist's dramatic hanging of a huge orange curtain between two Colorado mountains. Since the late 1950's, Christo's large-sca...
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29:32Episode 8Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist
Episode 8
Directed by Saul J. Turell • 1979 • United States
Saul J. Turell's Academy Award-winning documentary short Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist, narrated by Sidney Poitier, traces his career through his activism and his socially charged performances of his signature song, "Ol' Man River."
