In recent weeks, packages of the short films nominated in the twin categories of Academy Awards (Best Live Action Short and Best Animated Short) devoted to such work have had some play in a few major movie markets, just as they do every year. Because of the hook that an Academy Award nomination provides, Oscar season is one of the rare times when short films can get any attention from theatrical distributors and theater programmers. Now, thanks to DVD and the Internet and such specialty cable channels as IFC and the Sundance Channel, things are a little better for makers of short films than they used to be; if a short gets a lot of attention on the festival circuit, it may turn up on TV, often jammed together with an hour's worth of other shorts and used to plug a hole in the schedule. Or if a director breaks into features and develops a name, his or her early shorts may be recycled as "bonus features" on the DVD of a bigger movie, as Lynne Ramsay's early shorts are used in the Criterion Collection DVD for her debut feature Ratcatcher. At least it's a way to keep the films alive and in circulation. Other short filmmakers — those who don't "graduate" to features, maybe because their talents are more naturally suited to the short form — may get a lot of attention for awhile and then slip through the cracks. This may be especially true in the case of independent animators, who have to work long and hard to produce a ten-minute masterpiece, and who lost a means of getting their work seen when such annual showcases as the Tournee of Animation began drying up several years ago.
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