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“Two Distant Strangers,” about a young Black man caught in a deadly time loop with a white cop, won the Oscar for best live action short film Sunday, bringing more attention to the hot-button issue of police killings of unarmed Black men, which has dominated national headlines this week.
The victory, by co-directors Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe, came just days after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted for murder and manslaughter in the killing last year of George Floyd, which sparked protests around the world.
Free, who wrote the short film, was both celebratory and solemn as he and Roe accepted the award.
Robeson Taj Frazier was uneasy when he started seeing ads for Amazon s Them, about a Black family in the 1950s being terrorized by hostile white neighbors and supernatural forces.
The USC professor, who is the director of the Institute for Diversity and Empowerment at USC s Annenberg School of Communication, feared that the drama would contain disturbing images of violence and brutality toward Black people, echoing scenes in HBO s Watchmen and Lovecraft Country and other recent projects that mashed up the troubled history of racial turmoil in America with genre elements.
His concerns were underscored when a social media uproar erupted soon after the show s premiere earlier this month. Numerous Black viewers were outraged over its depictions of vicious racist violence, including the murder of a Black infant while his mother is being raped and a scene showing a Black couple being blinded with hot pokers and then burned to death.
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Robeson Taj Frazier was uneasy when he started seeing ads for Amazon’s “Them,” about a Black family in the 1950s being terrorized by hostile white neighbors and supernatural forces.
The USC professor, who is the director of the Institute for Diversity and Empowerment (IDEA) at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication, feared that the drama would contain disturbing images of violence and brutality toward Black people, echoing scenes in HBO’s “Watchmen” and “Lovecraft Country” and other recent projects that mashed up the troubled history of racial turmoil in America with genre elements.
His concerns were underscored when a social media uproar erupted soon after the show’s premiere earlier this month. Numerous Black viewers were outraged over its depictions of vicious racist violence, including the murder of a Black infant while his mother is being raped and a scene showing a Black couple being blinded with hot pokers and then burned to death.
Review: Two Distant Strangers highlights stellar class of Oscar shorts
Oscar-Nominated Short Films program, a favorite on the Detroit Film Theater s annual calendar, unfolds virtually beginning Friday
Adam Graham
A White cop and a young Black man are caught in an endless cycle of violence in Two Distant Strangers, an invigorating Groundhog Day -style tale with a social justice twist, and one of the highlights of the 2021 Oscar-Nominated Short Films program.
Even in an off year for the Oscars (and for Hollywood in general), the Oscar Shorts program which presents the Academy Award-nominated short films in three categories, Best Short Film (Animated), Best Short Film (Live Action) and Best Documentary (Short Subject) delivers. The entire program plays at the Detroit Film Theater s Virtual Cinema beginning Friday, while Ann Arbor s Michigan Theater will show the Animated Shorts beginning Saturday and the Live Action Shorts beginning April 10.