“Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.” The line has been variously attributed to half a dozen old-school Hollywood producers, from Samuel Goldwyn to Frank Capra, but the sentiment captures how classic studio types endeavored to separate political statements from popular cinema.
Certainly, the folks at Netflix don’t have any such illusions about John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson’s wrenching kids-in-peril short “,” whereas the film’s “Oscar-worthiness” was almost certainly a factor in acquiring it for the service.
British director Carol Dysinger also focuses on young people in her Afghanistan-set “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone ,” which takes a more optimistic stance, despite the sense that the very act of participating in the film seems to endanger her subjects’ lives.
A relatively new platform for nonfiction shorts, the New York Times’ Op-Docs series encourages a kind of personal expression and creativity within the form than that found in more traditional documentaries — those bound for television, or winning awards on the festival circuit. Laura Nix’s “Walk, Run, Cha-Cha” is a good example , in which the director uses dance classes as an oblique way of studying the challenges facing an immigrant couple.