Film.Ca Cinemas is hosting a special kind of digital event starting today. For the first time ever, three film packages showing the 15 short films nominated at this year's Academy Awards are available to stream at your home.
It's been five months since Oakville's Film.Ca Cinemas has hosted any screenings at the theatre. Today, however, the cinema is offering rentals of the 15 short films nominated in three categories:
- Best Animated Short Film
- Best Live-Action Short Film
- Best Documentary Short Subject
Each of the three packages have self-explanatory names; the package rental has the five short films nominated in their respective categories and last between 90 minutes and just over two hours each.
"The shorts category is often unvalued aspect of the whole Oscars experience," says Film.Ca Cinemas CEO Jeff Knoll.
"Most people don’t get an opportunity to see the awesome films in these three categories. This new program will allow people to have direct access to this incredibly engaging content that would otherwise get missed."
The animation package is rated PG and suitable for those age 10 and up, while the other two contain at least one short film rated 14A and is recommended for teens and older.
An individual rental costs $12 each, but there's also a package if you rent all three for the discounted price of $30 CDN. Once you rent them, you have 30 days to start watching. After that, you have 72 hours to finish watching all five shorts - the perfect amount of time before the 93rd Academy Awards next Sunday night.
Best of all, a portion of each rental price goes back directly to Film.Ca Cinemas. It's a critical revenue stream for them, having had the physical cinema closed for nine of the last 13 months.
The Oscars is just part of some of the new business ventures the cinema is working on - they have their own subscription streaming service with both free and paid content hoping to launch soon called Zuzu on Demand, including a new weekly film series.
Curious about the films included? Here's a list of all the titles in the three shorts packages:
Best Animated Short Film
- Burrow
- Genius Loci
- If Anything Happens I Love You
- Opera
- Yes-People
Best Live-Action Short Film
- Feeling Through
- The Letter Room
- The Present
- Two Distant Strangers
- White Eye
Best Documentary Short Subject
- Colette, dir. Anthony Giacchino and Alice Doyard
- A Concerto Is a Conversation, dir. Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers
- Do Not Split, dir. Anders Hammer and Charlotte Cook
- Hunger Ward, dir. Skye Fitzgerald and Michael Scheuerman
- A Love Song for Latasha, dir. Sophia Nahli Allison and Janice Duncan
For true movie fans and Oscar fanatics, both Knoll and Oakville News' film critic Tyler Collins (yes, also the author of this story) are co-hosting an Oscars Trivia night, taking place at 6:00pm before the live Oscars next Sunday, April 25, 2021. This event is in lieu of the annual and normally in-person party the cinema hosts.
Film.Ca Cinemas teamed up with ShortsTV and Eventive to make this program available in Oakville. This is the first year the Oscar short films have been available to see locally and first year they've been available for digital rentals anywhere.
More information about this new program is available online from Film.Ca Cinemas.