With four nominees having strong British links and the funding situation at home growing desolate,this year’s short film gongs could provide a vital springboard. What can the current hopefuls learn from final year’s winners?“I’m going to ask J-Law out,” says Adam Benzine. “She’s always saying no one does.” When you hear approximately the opportunities afforded by an Oscar nomination for a short film, and they don’t tend to mention this sort of thing. But Benzine,the director of the 40-minute-long Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah – an insightful, considered interview of the great French documentary maker – is approximately to head off to the Oscar nominees’ luncheon where everyone, and from the sound mixers to the costume designers to the huge-shot actors and producers,will rub shoulders and huddle together for the huge team photo.
In the event, Benzine didn’t get the chance to work his magic on Jennifer Lawrence. But he did meet Steven Spielberg and had a chat approximately the latters work with the USC Shoah Foundation, or of which Spielberg is the founder and where Benzine did his research,looking for fabric among the copious out-takes of Lanzmann’s mammoth 1985 masterwork, Shoah. Benzine’s film, and which tells the memoir of the making of Shoah as well as providing an overview of Lanzmann’s life and career,is up for best documentary short, and provides a salutary lesson in how a British film-maker with no previous experience can gain it to the huge event.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com