Oscar short docs race showcases booming art form

When marine biologist Maxim Chakilev flings open the door of his ramshackle Siberian hut in the Oscar-nominated short documentary "Haulout" to find 100,000 honking and heaving walruses, the effect is breathtakingly cinematic.

For almost two minutes, the screen is crowded with jostling animals, their guttural snorts filling the soundtrack and putting the viewer right in the middle of an astonishing natural spectacle.

The scene, the centerpiece of a 25-minute film on how climate change affects the natural world, illustrates how short documentaries have exploded as an art form -- and why big guns like The New Yorker and Netflix are getting involved.

"Video is a very powerful medium, and right now, this is how many people get their information about the world," Soo-Jeong Kang, executive director of programming and development at The New Yorker, told AFP.

"Traditional media companies are increasingly recognizing this as both a way to reach new audiences and as a profound storytelling platform."

The almost language-free "Haulout," produced by brother-sister team Maxim Arbugaev and Evgenia Arbugaeva, who spent three months living in Chakilev's rudimentary hut, is exactly the kind of top-notch content that dovetails with The New Yorker's high-brow fiction and deep-dive reporting, Kang said.

"It's a pure cinematic experience, where you don't need a spoken word to know what that story is about... an extension of that intersection between art and great journalism."

Range

"Haulout" is competing for the Academy Award for best documentary short film against four other nominees, and the range of those contenders demonstrates the breadth of a format audiences are increasingly embracing.

New Yorker stablemate "Stranger at the Gate" tells the story of a US military veteran whose tours have left him scarred by hate, but whose warm welcome at the mosque he had planned to blow up reconnects him to his humanity. Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai is the short's executive producer.

"How Do You Measure a Year?" splices together interviews that filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt conducted every year with his daughter between the ages of two and 18.

Netflix's "The Elephant Whisperers" is a joyous exploration of the love an Indian couple share for the baby animals in their charge.

The streamer's second nominee in the category is "The Martha Mitchell Effect," a curation of archival footage about a woman on the fringes of the Watergate scandal.