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Comment ("The Blood of Yingzhou District" -- a film about children in the Anhui province in China who have lost their parents to AIDS -- won the Oscar for short-subject documentary on February 25, 2007.
The 40-minute documentary focuses on the life in a year of children from China's Anhui Province, who have lost their parents to AIDS. One child, Young Gao Jun, a Chinese AIDS orphan, faces possible rejection by his surviving relatives, who are torn between family tradition and their fear of the disease.
The movie was set in the Yingzhou district of Gaoyang city in southeast China's Anhui Province in 2004 and 2005. The impoverished residents of the district support themselves by donating blood but unsafe practices spread HIV and other blood-born diseases. As a result, the area has a high proportion of AIDS orphans.
Directed by Chinese American director Ruby Yang, "The Blood of Yingzhou District" presents a nerve-jangling look at the lives of AIDS orphans in rural China. One boy's uncle shows the ruins he allots to his HIV-positive flesh and blood, keeping the child separate from his own kin for fear that they will be infected or ostracized.
For the audience taste, the movie lingers insistently on shots of children sobbing into the camera, as if the horror of their circumstances weren't evident enough. But there's no question of its power to engender shock and sympathy, virtues which have put it over the top of the Academy Awards on Sunday night.
Veteran actor Alan Arkin and neophyte Jennifer Hudson won the first major Oscar awards Sunday night --- best supporting actor and actress ---at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre. And well into the show's second and third hours, "An Inconvenient Truth," which featured former Vice President Al Gore on the topic of global warming, won for documentary feature and best song, Melissa Ethridge's "I Need to Wake Up."
Arkin won for "Little Miss Sunshine," Hudson for "Dreamgirls."
The dark fantasy film "Pan's Labyrinth" won the first Oscar handed out tonight in the category of art direction. And if that wasn't enough, it won the second award for best makeup. It later won a third award for cinematography. But it was beaten in the prestigious best foreign language category by the German film, "The LIves of Others." And it lost the original screenplay Oscar to Michael Arndt for "Little Miss Sunshine."
The evening's third award, all for secondary categories, went to "The Danish Poet" for best animated short film. "West Bank Story," a parody of the Broadway musical and film, involving Israelis and Palestinians won for best short film.
The early portion of the show was dominated by production skits. One featured comic actors Jack Black, John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell. Another featured a "sound effects" choir making vocal noises to accompany movies scenes on a screen behind them. Host Ellen DeGeneres delivered a witty monologue and continued to crack wise while introducing the various segments. Pilobolus, a troupe that combines mime with physical contortions, was also featured throughout the evening.
Another early award went to Clint Eastwood's "Letters to Iwo Jima" for best sound editing. The award for sound mixing went to "Dreamgirls," the musical-to-movie's first award of the evening.
"Happy Feet," a fanciful penguin tale, won for best animated feature film. WIlliam Monahan was honored with the best adapted screening play Oscar for "The Departed," a Boston mob tale taken from the book "Internal Affairs." "Departed" also won for best film editing.
"Pirates of the Caribbean" was honored for best visual effects. "The Blood of Yingzhou District" won for best short subject documentary.
Gustavo Santaolalla took the best original music score Oscar for his work on "Babel." "
