Reviewed by Peter Debruge

There’s no question, of all the Oscar shorts categories, the year’s best is also the batch that will be hardest to see: the documentaries. The 2006 crop represented earnest stories about big issues — recovering from genocide in Rwanda, life after nuclear devastation in Hiroshima, the ethics of photojournalism in African hotspots — but were, by and large, clumsy and unpolished treatments of those subjects. The Oscar went to the most professional of the bunch, a snoozy PBS-style profile on golden-age radio host Norman Corwin.

Even the worst of this year’s noms is better than last year’s best. And three of the four are simply outstanding.

The Blood of Yingzhou District offers a devastating 39-minute look into the lives of impoverished Chinese orphans whose parents died of AIDS, leaving them outcast and, in some cases, HIV-infected. It’s OK if you’re rolling your eyes right now — if there’s one reason this short won’t win, it’s because producers Ruby Yang and Thomas Lennon so blatantly embrace every Oscar-bait ingredient imaginable: wide-eyed kids, terminal disease and harrowing third-world living conditions. But I assure you, the film is absolutely sincere. Yang and Lennon genuinely care about the five children they follows, and the superstition and ignorance they uncover are alarming. For example, it turns out the disease spread via the local blood-donation program, an easy way for poor locals to earn money. Collectors pooled all of the donated blood together, extracted the plasma and then reinjected it back into the poor donors, so they would recover quickly and be able to donate again. The subtitled movie shows empathy instead of outrage and seeks not to correct the past but educate future Chinese generations.

Recycled Life serves as another eye-opener, taking audiences into the subculture of “guajeros” that has evolved around Central America’s most enormous landfill, the Guatemala City Garbage Dump. Here, a community of thousands depends on what the city throws away, breathing the air and combing the surface of the toxic site. As the film points out (in a rather heavy dose of quasi-poetic Nature Channel-sounding narration performed by Edward James Olmos), entire generations have been raised in the dump, knowing nothing else of the world. Director Leslie Iwerks has social reform in mind, focusing on education and protection for the guajeros, but the 38-minute short loses its impact as she grows more agitated. It’s most powerful images are quiet ones, captured in co-writer Mike Glad’s still photos. In its more meditative moments, Recycled Life brings to mind both the outstanding Sundance documentary Manufacturing Landscapes (about similar conditions in China) and Agnès Varda’s transcendental cine-essay The Gleaners & I, about the broader role of collector-recyclers in both society and art.

If there’s a weak link here, it’s Rehearsing a Dream, an almost off-puttingly effusive promotional film about ARTS Week, where actors, dancers, artists and musicians come together to learn from professional mentors. For at least the first quarter of this 40-minute entry, the students offer soundbite-sized raves of how the program will change their lives; then directors Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon move didactically through each discipline to show these former outcasts, band geeks and closet cases experiencing a sense of inclusion for the first time. That’s all well and good, but the heavy-handed approach feels more like an Army recruitment video than a proper documentary (“Be all that you can be at ARTS Week!”). Why didn’t the filmmakers identify a handful of candidates before the fact, show them feeling ostracized in their hometown environments and then focus the film on how they adjust to a life-changing week of creative instruction, camaraderie and raging hormones? Instead, it’s all hyperbole all the time as the movie pounds home a point it’s hard to imagine anyone questioning: ARTS Week sure is great (even Vanessa Williams says so!). But to tell a story about these teens without acknowledging the D-R-A-M-A inherent in such a pressure-cooker event is to miss the point entirely.

The strongest nominee also happens to be the shortest. Two Hands runs a swift 18 minutes — half the length of the others and, blessedly, brisk enough to leave you wanting more. Two Hands is also the most overtly stylized of the docs, graced with elegant Errol Morris-esque touches in the way it presents the life of pianist Leon Fleisher, a virtuoso who nearly lost the use of his right hand in a freak accident. But this is no My Left Foot-like tale of inflated heroism, but a reflective character study based on a personality so interesting — and eloquent — that we hardly mind its narrowly focused intimacy. Fleisher had already “recovered”  (that is, regained sufficient use of his hand to hold a much-anticipated concert) before the filmmakers even approached him, but they’ve found such a compelling subject that his words transport us where the occasionally abstract images on screen cannot. He confides, for instance, that his return concert was a compromised one: The music had to be changed at the last minute to pieces less demanding on his right hand, so while the world applauded, Fleisher himself realized that the accomplishment was incomplete. Made by My Architect team Nathaniel Kahn and Susan Rose Behr, the doc draws no glib lesson from Fleisher’s experience, but satisfies itself to have shared with us his journey, carried out on the image of the determined artist seated at his piano accompanied by the sound of his music. Of the four praise-worthy nominees, it is the one that most compelled me to put my own two hands together in applause.

Note: While Magnolia releases the live-action and animated shorts in theaters around the country this weekend (you may read my reviews of both programs by clicking on the links), the docs are considerably harder to see. And yet, thanks to http://www.apollocinema.com Apollo Cinema the possibility does exist. Consult the following schedule to see when they are scheduled to show in your area:

Feb 9

AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE: SANTA MONICA, CA

1328 Montana Ave.

Santa Monica

www.americancinematheque.com

Feb 16- March 1

STARZ FILM CENTER: DENVER, CO

900 Auraria Parkway

Denver, CO 80204

www.starzfilmcenter.com

Feb 16-18, 23-25

RIVERVIEW THEATRE - MINNEAPOLIS, MN

3800 42nd Ave. S. Minneapolis, MN

612-729-7360

www.TwinCitiesGold.com

Feb 20-21

SFSU/BALBOA THEATRE: SAN FRANCISCO, CA

3630 Balboa St.

San Francisco, CA 94121

www.balboamovies.com/oscar/

Feb 22-23

LEGION ARTS THEATRE: CEDAR RAPIDS, IA

1103 3rd St.

Cedar Rapids, IA 52401

www.legionarts.org

Feb 22-23, May 12

OUT NORTH: ANCHORAGE, AK

3800 Debarr Road, Anchorage, AK 99508
907.279.8099

www.outnorth.org

Feb 23-March 1

STUDIO 35 CINEMA: COLUMBUS, OH

3055 Indianola Ave.

Columbus, Ohio

www.studio35.com

Feb 23- March1

RIALTO CINEMAS LAKESIDE: SANTA ROSA, CA.

551 Summerfield Road Santa Rosa, CA 95405

707.539.9771

www.rialtocinemas.com

Feb 23-25

PLAZA MAPLEWOOD THEATER: MAPLEWOOD, MN

1847 East Larpenteur Avenue

Maplewood, MN 55109

651.770.7969

www.plazamaplewood.com

Feb 24-March 3

WITCHITA PUBLIC LIBRARY: WICHITA, KS

Various Locations

www.wichita.lib.ks.us/Programs/Shorts.htm

Feb 24

TRENTON FILM FESTIVAL: TRENTON, NJ

New Jersey State Museum

Trenton, NJ

www.trentonfilmfestival.org

Feb 25- March 7

A CENTER FOR THE ARTS: FERGUS FALLS, MN

124 W Lincoln Avenue

Fergus Falls, MN 56537

March 1

True/False Film Festival

Columbia, MO

www.truefalse.org

March 2-8

REAL ARTWAYS: HARTFORD, CT

56 Arbor Street Hartford, CT 06106

Phone 860.232.1006 www.realartways.com

March 2-8

LAEMMLE GRANDE: LOS ANGELES, CA

345 S. Figueroa St.

Downtown Los Angeles, CA 90071

www.laemmle.com

March 7

LAKE WORTH PLAYHOUSE: LAKE WORTH, FL

Emerging Cinemas

713 Lake Ave

Lake Worth, FL 33460

(561) 586-6410

www.lakeworthplayhouse.org

March 7-8

MARKET ARCADE: BUFFALO, NY

Emerging Pictures

639 Main St.
Buffalo, NY 14203

www.dipsontheatres.com

March 9-23

THE LITTLE THEATRE: ROCHESTER, NY

240 East Ave.

Rochester, NY 14604

www.little-theatre.com

March 9-14

BLOOR CINEMA: TORONTO, ONTARIO

506 Bloor St. W

Toronto, Ontario

Canada

www.bloorcinema.com

March 9-23

COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE: BROOKLINE, MA.

290 Harvard Street, Brookline, Massachusetts

617-734-2500

www.coolidge.org

March 9-23

KEY CINEMAS: INDIANAPOLIS, IN

4044 S. Keystone Ave.

Indianapolis, IN 46227

March 9

THEATRE N AT NEMOURS: WILMINGTON, DE

Emerging Cinemas

1007 Orange Street

Wilmington, DE 19801

www.theatren.org

March 9 & 11

ENDLESS MOUNTAINS THEATRE: SCRANTON, PA

Emerging Cinemas

933 Scranton-Carbondale Highway

Scranton, PA 18505

www.endlessmountainstheatres.com

March 10

CINEMA PARADISO: FORT LAUDERDALE, FL

Emerging Cinemas

503 SE 6^th St.

Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

www.fliff.com

March 23-29

SCREENLAND THEATRE: KANSAS CITY, MO

1656 Washington Ave. Kansas City, Mo 64108

www.screenland.com

March 23-29

THE TOWER: SALT LAKE CITY, UT

876 East 9th South

Salt Lake City, UT 84105

March 24 & April 21

MIAMI BEACH CINEMATHEQUE: MIAMI BEACH, FL

512 Espanola Way @ Plaza de Espana

Miami Beach, Florida 33139

305.67.FILMS

APRIL 5-6

NORTHWEST FILM CENTER: PORTLAND, OREGON

1219 SW Park Ave.

Portland, OR 97205

503.221.1156

www.nwfilm.org

APRIL 8-12

GUILD CINEMAS: ALBUQUERQUE, NM

3405 Central Ave. NE

Albuquerque, NM 87106

www.guildcinema.com

April 13-15

OKLAHOMA CITY MUSEUM OF ART: OKLAHOMA CITY, OK

415 Couch Drive

Oklahoma City, OK 73102

www.okcmoa.com/film.htm

April 23

NEWPORT BEACH FILM FESTIVAL: NEWPORT BEACH, CA

Edwards Island Cinema

Fashion Island

999 Newport Center Drive

Newport Beach, CA 92660

www.newportbeachfilmfest.com

NEVADA THEATRE: NEVADA CITY, CA

401 Broad St., Nevada City, CA 95959
www.nevadatheatre.com

RED VIC MOVIE HOUSE: SAN FRANCISCO, CA

1727 Haight St.

San Francisco, CA 94117

www.redvicmoviehouse.com