Two Irish directors are on the shortlist of ten live-action shorts that will be considered for nominations in the upcoming Oscars.
Shoe, directed by Nick Kelly and produced by Seamus Byrne (Zanita Films) and The Crush, directed by Michael Creagh (Purdy Pictures) have made the list of films announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
A total of 76 pictures had originally qualified in the category. Members of the academy will now choose three to five nominees from the 10 titles on the shortlist, and these will be revealed on January 25th, 2011, with the other Oscar nominations.
The Crush, a 15-minute film, was written and directed by Creagh in 2009. The film tells the tale of an eight-year-old schoolboy Ardal (Oran Creagh), who falls in love with his teacher Ms Purdy (Olga Wehrly) and later challenges the teacher's fiancé to a duel to the death.
The work premiered at the Kerry Film Festival and went on to win Best Irish Short at the Foyle Film Festival, which qualified it for Academy Award consideration.
A "thrilled" Creagh said his film had almost failed to make entry date after it was held up in Memphis when it was sent to the United States. He said his work was initially refused by the Academy on the basis it had missed the deadline following some confusion over the package's paperwork.
However, after an exchange of emails, the Academy were very accommodating and agreed to include The Crush for consideration, said the director, who works in advertising. "I be happy if it never got anywhere else, I'd be happy with this," said Creagh, who is working on a number of other scripts and treatments.
Shoe, filmed last July, is a darkly comic film that relates the story of Vince (Peter Coonan) who is set to take his own life but for the intervention of a beggar, played by Pat Kinevane.
In April 2009, Kelly's script for Shoe secured first prize in the Short Screenplay Competition at the Vail Film Festival in Colorado.
Kelly's first short film, Delphine (2003), has been featured at a number of Irish and international festivals, as has his follow-up, Why The Irish Dance That Way (2006). It was one of nine shorts selected by New York's Museum of Modern Art for Shortfest: Outstanding Shorts from The International Festivals.
The film-maker is also well known as a singer and musician, with a current musical alter ago of Alien Envoy and a past as lead singer with The Fat Lady Sings.
Commenting today, Kelly said he received the "exciting and amazing" news in "a very welcome" email from the Academy.
"I'm very proud of the film, and I do think the two central performances. I really felt they were great from the shoot, and I couldn't have asked for more from that," he said, adding Coonan and Kinevane "gave a fantastically generous performance on set that radiated out to the rest of us".
"It's an amazing thing to happen . . . obviously it would be brilliant to get to the next stage, to be actually nominated and go out to Los Angeles, but I'll still have a glass of wine . . . to be honest, even this is a great affirmation, as it's my third short film, and I'm relatively inexperienced."
Kelly, who recently released an album called Nine Lives, has completed another film script for a work called Incognita, and is working on another, with the intention of moving into directing full-length films.
Other films making the list for possible nominations include Ana's Playground, directed by Eric D. Howell; The Confession, directed by Tanel Toom; and God of Love, directed by Luke Matheny.
The 83rd Academy Awards will be held on February 27th, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles.
