Academy Award Nominated Shorts at the Alamo

Not that it’s fair, but short films often go unnoticed and unappreciated by even the most dedicated film lovers. On Oscar Night, when a few of the most innovative of the bunch are given a moment in the spotlight, most of us think it a fine time to go pop a bag of popcorn or check our email since this seems to be a category of little importance.

Not so, feature-accustomed friends. Creating a short film requires as much vision and creativity as any other variety, and rather than attempting to locate the best of the best using googling skills and illegal downloading, you can easily enjoy a pre-approved (by that certain Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) selection in the comfort of your very own Alamo Draft-home. Starting on Friday, the South Lamar location will offer screenings of both the live-action and the animated Academy Award-nominated films—five shorts per 90 minute program.

Most are foreign-made and all of them look weirdly intriguing. From the animated La Maison en Petits Cubes (“in a world gradually flooding with water, an old man adapts to changing circumstances and looks back on his life”) to Pig (“a man facing surgery finds comfort in the painting of a pig hanging in his hospital room”), these diminutive films tackle the grand themes that tend to make movies enthralling—love, death, longing, etc.—and they do so in minutes rather than hours making them both impressive and ADD-friendly.

And by the way, don’t let any Academy skepticism discourage you (was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button really that great?) Hollywood may be shallow, but these shorts are deep.