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Even a Little Rock can make ripples in the film industry at large. At least, that’s what Arkansas-born director Jeff Nichols and his Arkansas Cinema Society co-founder Kathryn Tucker are determined to prove by bringing Southern storytellers to the state capital each year.

The centerpiece of Acs’ activities is the annual Filmland event — somewhere between a festival and conference, for which Nichols invites friends and former colleagues to show and discuss their work — although the organization operates year-round. Acs supports the local film community, amateur and professional alike, hosting Arkansas screenings of movies that might not otherwise get adequate exposure in the state, such as Oscar best picture nominees “The Zone of Interest” and “Anatomy of a Fall.”

Eight years ago, Nichols felt the need for a centralized team to reach the local film community. “I’d taken ‘Loving’ back to Little Rock because I wanted to show it to friends and family,...

In a strange reversal of a long-standing trend with the Academy, this year’s documentary short ballot is almost entirely domestic, while the feature doc category — where subtitles aren’t so common — is entirely international. Judging by the overall quality of the films in the 141-minute “2024 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Documentary” lineup, that’s no sign of compromise. In fact, for Oscar completists, ShortsTV’s annual roundup is one of the most rewarding theatrical experiences audiences could hope for this year.

Director Sean Wang premiered his debut feature, “Dìdi,” at the Sundance Film Festival just four days before learning that his short, “Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó,” had been Oscar nominated. Both projects feature his paternal grandmother, octogenarian Chang Li Hua, who shares a house with his mother’s mother, 94-year-old Yi Yau Fuei (the title combines the two women’s nicknames). At times, Wang’s delightful, slightly freeform...

If you are aiming to win your Oscar pool you may feel relatively safe right about now predicting, as most are, a sweep by Oppenheimer — especially after its overwhelming showing last week winning seven BAFTA Awards, the DGA honor for Christopher Nolan the week before that, and on Saturday sweeping three of the five movie awards at SAG and winning the top prize last night at the PGA Awards.

However, key to actually winning your pool will not be those marquee feature film categories but rather the three shorts races that run under the radar, but can spell the difference in triumphing over all others in whatever pool you enter. So who could — or should, for these purposes — prevail in the Documentary Shorts, Animated Shorts and Live Action Shorts contests this year? Shorts TV in association with distributor Magnolia Pictures has, as usual, put all of them in theatrical release across the country,...

Every year, Oscar voters consider a series of short documentaries most of which focus on social issues and what’s wrong with the world. The Barber Of Little Rock does that, but it also looks at one man’s efforts to do something about it.

The barber, Arlo Washington points out, has long been a community figure whom people turned to when they needed advice or support.. As a barber himself, and the owner of his own business, he was seen as somebody who had done well for himself, and so one day he was approached with a request for a loan. He provided the money, not really expecting to get it back, but it did come back, and when he made a subsequent loan to the same person, that was returned, too. It got him thinking...

NBA Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade is considered one of the greatest to ever play the game of basketball, winner of three NBA championships and a gold medal at the Olympic Games. For those accomplishments, he and the rare sports figures on his level earn widespread public adulation.

“As athletes, we get tags on us — called heroes. We’re looked at as heroes, by a lot of people in the world,” Wade notes. “And I’m not saying that that’s not right for what we do, but when you talk about real heroes, we’re talking about the Arlos of the world.”

Arlo Washington in ‘The Barber of Little Rock’

The Arlo he’s referring to is Arlo Washington, the man at the center of the Oscar-shortlisted documentary The Barber of Little Rock, directed by John Hoffman and Christine Turner. Washington became a successful barber and later founded a...

When it comes to predicting the Oscars, there are no categories that can be more difficult than the three short film categories. That goes double for trying to predict the nominees in those categories. But don’t worry Derbyites. With the recent release of the Academy’s shortlists, we’ve got descriptions of each of the pieces that made the runoff for Best Documentary Short, we got you covered on this! Below we have descriptions of each of the 15 short films that made this year’s list. We even included information and links on where you can currently view them.

Among the topics that are tackled in this year’s crop are book bans in Florida, a barber who runs a community bank, how abortion was legalized in New York in the 1970s, a group of people who fix musical instruments, and the healthcare crisis that’s affecting rural America.

The Barber of Little Rock — an award-winning documentary short recently nominated for a Critics Choice Documentary Award, screened as part of Doc NYC’s Short List program and counts basketball great Dwyane Wade among its executive producers — has been acquired by the New Yorker Studios for an Oscar run.

The film is now part of the New Yorker Documentary series, which showcases innovative shorts from around the world that offer uncommon perspectives on important issues, and will launch on the magazine’s digital channels in January 2024.

Directed by John Hoffman and Christine Turner, The Barber of Little Rock explores America’s racial wealth gap through the story of Arlo Washington, a barber in Little Rock, Arkansas, whose barber college has created professional opportunities for more than 1,500 licensed barbers. Having experienced the effects of generational poverty and structural racism firsthand, Washington understands his community’s profound mistrust of financial institutions, which...