The Red Jacket (Germany, 2003, 18 min.)
One of the purposes of the Oscar broadcast is to give “prestige” promotion to certain Hollywood films–it has been said that an Academy Award is roughly equivalent to an additional $20 million at the box office. Of course, this statistic can only be applied to features that are currently in release around the country, and rarely applies to the documentary or short film categories, which include films that usually get little to no distribution at all.
Fortunately, Apollo Cinema has been distributing the Oscar-nominated live action and animated short films each of the past couple of years, and they’ve just announced their national screening schedule for 2004. I haven’t seen any of the films yet (the series debuts in Oklahoma City and won’t reach Los Angeles until April) but the screenings should at least answer the age-old Oscar question, “Where on earth does anyone actually get to see these movies?”