March 9, 2006

Oscar Nominated Short Documentaries
Various Directors

By Lester Gray
Arts Editor

The Oscar-nominated short documentaries display a continuity of theme. Each of the four titles, independently selected, deals with humankind’s proclivity for armed confrontation and its struggles to arrive at a reckoning.

The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club tells the story of a group of young news photographers, who driven by equal parts courage and bravado, captured the chaotic and violent last days of apartheid South Africa. The most celebrated of these photojournalists was the titular Kevin Carter, who as the film’s title tells us, gave his life for his profession. It was not, however, a stray bullet that felled the journalist, but a psyche ravaged by prolonged exposure to the horrors of human conflict, further aggravated by recreational drug use. His most celebrated photo proved fatal— not in its capturing, but through its controversial public reception.

God Sleeps in Rwanda visits the uneasy aftermath of the country’s now infamous genocide. The women here, having survived the brutal rapes of enemy soldiers, now struggle with the consequences of those savage couplings--HIV and offspring. In addition, because so many males were lost in the conflict, these females find themselves tasked with running the country and shaping its future. Displaying wisdom wrought by harrowing experience, they share their visions on reconstructing their lives and their country.

A third offering, Hiroshima, takes a look at the Japanese city whose name is synonymous with atomic devastation. Sixty years after the bombing, there aren’t many survivors left to reflect on what likely stands as the single most devastating assault in human history: killing 80,000 people instantly, the blast left thousands of others mutilated.

Now there is a concern that the lessons learned from this tragedy are being lost. The city, now rebuilt, has little visible scarring. Hiroshima’s local peace movement, which budded in the wake of the attack, is fading, and militaristic voices are starting to emerge. New generations show little to no interest in the event or its lessons and no one seems to be able to explain to them why they should.

And walking away with the Oscar is A Note of Triumph, the story of CBS Radio’s Norman Corwin. The broadcaster’s dramatic and insightful prose passionately addressed the hopes and fears of the nation leading up to and through World War II. While not as celebrated as Edward R. Murrow, this self-styled poet and social commentator gave sublime voice to issues of the common man and woman. He spoke eloquently to the concerns of a nation fighting in its second major conflict in a little over two decades. At the close of the war, on VE day, his famous “A Note of Triumph” broadcast, which reminded a weary nation of why they had sacrificed so much, took the breath away from those who heard it. Reflecting on Corwin’s essay, even Walter Cronkite, interviewed in the movie, could only say, “Wow.”

This quartet of nominees serves as a reminder that documentaries are not measured best by box-office performance but by their ability to bring issues of substance to audiences intent on avoiding them. n