Gail Dolgin and Robin Fryday’s The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement
Nate von Zumwalt, Editorial Coordinator
Leading up to the 84th edition of the Academy Awards this Sunday, February 26, we’re profiling all seven of this year’s Sundance-supported Oscar nominees. Three short films from the 2011 and 2012 Sundance Film Festivals have been nominated for Academy Awards, including two documentary shorts and an animated film. Click here for the full list of nominees.
The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement, directed by Gail Dolgin and Robin Fryday
Birmingham barbershop owner James Armstrong was a living, breathing archive of the African American Civil rights movement. Actively involved throughout the ’60s, Armstrong walked in the Bloody Sunday March and can even cite Martin Luther King, Jr. as a client. Directors Robin Fryday and the late Gail Dolgin enlist the singular insight of Armstrong to chronicle the days leading up to the election of the first African American president.
- Official Selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival
- Gail Dolgin directed the 2002 Grand Jury Prize- and Oscar-winning documentary Daughter from Danang.
- Dolgin’s Sundance Film Festival debut was with the 1994 documentary Cuba Va: The Challenge of the Next Generation.
- Robin Fryday is a photographer by trade and co-founder of the Bay Area Heart Gallery.
- Gail Dolgin passed away in 2010 after a long battle with breast cancer.
The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, directed by Lucy Walker
Rooted in themes of death and rebirth, The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom is an emotive ode to the victims of the 2010 tsunami in Japan. Veteran doc filmmaker Lucy Walker interweaves amateur footage and poetic cinematography to produce a mosaic that displays the process of rebirth in both nature and man.
- The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom won the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking, Non-Fiction, at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
- Walker’s documentary Waste Land won the World Cinema Audience Award at the 2011 Festival and was nominated for an Oscar.
- She has directed four Sundance Film Festival Official Selections: Devil’s Playground (2002), Countdown to Zero (2010), Waste Land (2011), and The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (2012).
A Morning Stroll, directed by Grant Orchard
Grant Orchard’s cleverly animated A Morning Stroll is a thoughtful and amusing tale portraying a New Yorker’s morning walk in three different eras, and a loss of human values over that time.
- A Morning Stroll won the Jury Prize in Animated Short Film at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
- The film is loosely based on an event in Paul Auster’s True Tales of American Life.
- Orchard is from Ealing, London.
- The film is nominated in the ‘Best Animated Short’ category of the 2012 Academy Awards.
