Tropic Sprockets / The 2019 Oscar-Nominated Shorts: Documentary

By Ian Brockway

The documentary shorts have a history of being pointed, uncompromising and confrontational, providing a full range of emotions. The entries often span the globe with intrigue, outrage and hope. This year of 2019 is no exception. Though the selections may be stressful to watch, each film is masterful and compelling worthy of nomination.

First is “Period. End of Sentence” by director Rayka Zehtabchi. Set in rural India, this film details the efforts of Arunachalam Muruganantham, known as the Pad Man, who works to end the stigma of female menstration. Muruganantham teaches any woman willing to make sanitary pads, striving to liberate not only young girls, but men. At the start of the film, men and women won’t even utter the word period yet though conversation and patience, the natural but unspeakable condition becomes familiarized.

It is as if women can breathe again, one pad at a time. They are no longer superstitiously thought to be impure because of puberty.

The film contains elements of suspense depicting women making the napkins in secret under the cover of night and set to the rhythm of catchy Indian music.

“Endgame” by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, is about the changing views of palliative care and how the Grim Reaper may not be so Grim after all. We meet Dr. BJ Miller, a survivor of a life-altering traincar accident who tells patients to “hold the unknown” rather than to be mortally afraid of death.

It is a tall order.

Despite its sober subject, the film captures moments of light humor, of people embracing the mystery that the final arc of the human circle reveals. That being said, it is no easy watch.

The sight of a bereft husband and a black shielded hospital bed will move you to tears.

“LIFEBOAT” by Skye Fitzgerald is about the painstaking efforts of Sea Watch and the late Captain Jon Castle who pulls 3,200 refugees from the Mediterranean Sea in one day. Most are escaping abuse and human trafficking. Castle’s efforts are tireless and one becomes almost dizzy by the sheer varieties of the refugee hardship and struggle as they face — dehydration, heatstroke, pregnancy and death on board.

As Castle grimly prophesizes, “One more turn of the historical cycle and our countries will be the very poor countries…not wanted not cared about…the riff raff…”

Director Ed Perkins’s “Black Sheep” is the story of Cornelius who moves from London to escape racial killing. The boy’s new neighborhood of Essex is run by white supremacists. The boy is beaten and tortured, only to discover to his gradual horror that he wishes to ingratiate himself to his violent racist friends, in part to please his abusive father. The film which is partly a sorrowful coming of age tale and partly a crime thriller on par with Dennis Lehane, is tense and riveting.

Lastly “A Night at the Garden” is a seven minute slice of documentary footage from 1939 and edited by Marshall Curry that defies description.

Shockingly, right in front of our eyes is a Nazi rally of 20,000 cheering men women and children filling Madison Square Garden in New York City.

The hyper-real vision of swastikas garnishing the American flag and George Washington is both surreal and outrageous. The sight of a small boy rubbing his hands together and dancing with glee as a man is punched in the face undressed and thrown to the crowd is sick-making. To see this film is to be stupefied beyond words. Shock is the only emotion that I was left with having no concept of such a huge Nazi crowd in New York City. As eerie and horrible as it is to watch, this film is bitter but necessary medicine, calling out our current Nationalist poisons.

For me, it is an experience in anxiety akin to “The Exorcist.” Subjectively, in my opinion, the film should win Best Documentary Short, without question.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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