(TRENTON, NJ) -- The Trenton Film Society is offering movie buffs the chance to see the Oscar-nominated short films of 2022, in the categories of live-action, animated, and documentary. A perennial hit with audiences around the country and the world, don’t miss this year’s selection of shorts. Predict the winners (and have the edge in your Oscar pool)! Showings will be in person (masks encouraged but not required) at the Mill Hill Playhouse in Trenton on Friday, February 24 and Saturday, February 25. The Academy Awards take place Sunday, March 12.
Buy your tickets through the Trenton Film Society website at http://trentonfilmsociety.org/. Tickets are $20 for the jumbo showing (166 minutes) of documentaries on Friday, and $12 for a single program or $20 for a double feature of animated and live-action films on Saturday. Half the proceeds will go to the distributor, and half to support the Trenton Film Society.
At the showings, you will get a ballot for marking your choices for the Oscar winner. Correct guesses for winners in each category will be entered into a drawing for an all-access pass to the Trenton Film Festival, happening later this spring.
Films in the documentary category as usual tackle important social issues around the world, from the humanitarian crisis in Yemen (Hunger Ward) to the uprisings in Hong Kong (Do Not Split). But several take a more personal look at history through individuals: Colette follows a French Resistance fighter confronting her past after seventy years; in A Concerto Is a Conversation a jazz pianist reflects on how his father’s decision to flee Jim Crow Florida led to his own greater opportunities in LA; and the most experimental entry, A Love Song for Latasha, meditates on the life, not the death, of a 15-year-old girl shot by a Korean grocer in 1992. This program runs 166 minutes.
The live-action category includes two stunning films from Israel and Palestine, both treating how people face ordinary challenges in the tense atmosphere of everyday conflict. In The Present, a Palestinian father and daughter try to buy something for a wedding anniversary while navigating checkpoints and roadblocks; and in White Eye, a man tries to retrieve his stolen bicycle. The films explore how people hold on to their humanity under pressure. The three other nominees are from the United States: The Letter Room features Oscar Isaac as a prison guard assigned to screen convicts’ correspondence who becomes too intrigued with one inmate’s personal life. Feeling Through explores the impact of a late-night encounter between an at-risk teen and a deaf man, and Two Distant Strangers has a man reliving a traumatic encounter over and over. The live-action program runs 115 minutes.
The animated category is always an audience favorite. This year’s nominees run the gamut from cute to really weird. Disney+ supplies the cute with Burrow, about a rabbit with a housing issue. The Icelandic film Yes-People conveys “a-day-in-the-life” of several people with a light touch. If Anything Happens I Love You uses simple animation techniques to deal with the heavy subject of parents grieving after a school shooting. Genius Loci, from France, is the longest nominee at 16 minutes, and quite experimental in form and subject. Another experimental entry, Opera, by a young South Korean filmmaker who interned at Pixar, will eventually be an art installation with all the segments running simultaneously on different walls of a gallery. The last film in the program, My Year of Dicks, is not suitable for children. There will be a short pause before the film screens to allow younger audience members to leave. The animation program runs 97 minutes long.
Please join us for these thought-provoking films. The Mill Hill Playhouse is located at 205 E Front Street in Trenton, New Jersey.
or region of New Jersey
click here for our advanced search.
or region of New Jersey
click here for our advanced search.
