How short is the Oscar doc shorts short list?

We’ve read about one of another documentary short film being on the Academy Awards “short list,” which is a vehicle toward nomination, but we wondered how many films get the intermediary benefit of being on such a list.

There’s a list on the Movie On blog that there were, as of Oct. 10, eight films on the short list with a bit under three months to go. Last year, a total of 17 films were ultimately shortlisted.

The eight listed were:

China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province, Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill, USA,2009 (aired on HBO)
The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner, Daniel Junge, USA
The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, USA (aired on HBO)
Lt. Watada (aka In the Name of Democracy: The Story of Lt. Ehren Watada), Nina Rosenblum, 2009
Music by Prudence, Roger Ross Williams, USA (HBO)
Królik po berlinsku (Rabbit à la Berlin), Bartosz Konopka, Poland and Germany, 2009
Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak, Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze, USA, 2009 (aired on HBO)
Woman Rebel, Kiran Deol, Nepal and USA, 200

According to Examiner.com, voters from the Academy’s Documentary Branch viewed this year’s 37 eligible entries and submitted their ballots to PricewaterhouseCoopers for tabulation

The eligibility requirements for the Academy Awards is what keeps that number so low. The filmmaker must have a seven-day theatrical run in either Los Angeles or New York – Manhattan, that is, not Brooklyn! – and at times of day that would prevent one from renting a theater at 4 a.m. to get past the rules committee.

Here’s the letter of the law:

DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT Eligibility

1. To be eligible for Awards consideration for 2009, a documentary short subject must complete a seven-day commercial run in a theater in either Los Angeles County or in the Borough of Manhattan, between September 1, 2008 and August 31, 2009.
2. The qualifying run must take place within two years of the motion picture’s completion date. The picture must be submitted in the same Awards year in which it first qualifies. Documentaries submitted for any 82nd Awards categories will not be eligible for consideration in any awards categories in subsequent Awards years.
3. The picture must be projected using 16mm, 35mm or 70mm film, or in a 24- or 48-frame progressive scan format with a minimum projector resolution of 2048 by 1080 pixels; source image format conforming to SMPTE 428-1-2006 D-Cinema Distribution Master – Image Characteristics; image compression (if used) conforming to ISO/IEC 15444-1 (JPEG 2000), and image and sound file formats suitable for exhibition in commercial Digital Cinema sites. The audio in a typical Digital Cinema Package (DCP) is 5.1 channels of discrete audio, and that is the preferred audio configuration. The minimum for a non-mono configuration of the audio shall be three channels as Left, Center, Right (a Left/Right configuration is not acceptable in a theatrical environment). The audio data shall be formatted in conformance with SMPTE 428-2-2006 D-Cinema Distribution Master – Audio Characteristics and SMPTE 428-3-2006 D-Cinema Distribution Master – Audio Channel Mapping and Channel Labeling.
4. Screenings in the qualifying run must occur at least once daily and begin between noon and 10 p.m. The motion picture must be exhibited for paid admission, and titles and screening times must be listed for each day of its run in major newspapers (see submission packet).

We’ll keep an eye out for an expanded list.