Before the Academy Awards presentations on February 22, 2015, movie theatres began to show the Live Action and Animated Shorts nominated for Oscars. Last year these shorts gave kids a chance to see life in foreign countries.
"Butter Lamp" showed the reactions of Tibetan nomads as they had their pictures taken, not by selfies, but by a professional photographer who provided various backdrops showing sites in China.
"Boogaloo and Graham" captured the reactions of a mother and two boys in Northern Ireland who took care of the chicks their father gave them during the Troubles.
In "Parvaneh" (a Persian name meaning "Butterfly"), when an Afghan girl seeking asylum in Switzerland enlisted the aid of a local girl, Emely, to help her send money to her family, she encountered lots of red tape and learned girls in different countries with very different lifestyles can be friends.
A live action short, "My Father's Truck," that didn't quite make the cut to receive an Oscar nomination, showed how family members can live very different lives. When a girl in Vietnam skipped school one day, she found out her life as a school girl was a lot easier than what her father did transporting passengers in his truck. The Chinese father in "Carry On," a film also on a short list of possible Oscar-nominated movies, sacrificed his life to save his family during the Japanese invasion in World War II.
Some films might show how kids in other countries experience the same things as they do.
One child's parents can be very different from another child's, as a Norwegian 7-year-old-girl and her sisters learn when they request a bicycle from their hippie parents in "Me and My Moulton," an animated short nominated for an Oscar.
"Baghdad Messi," a live action short considered for an Oscar, showed how kids in Iraq, even those with only one leg, love soccer as much as kids in other countries.
"Summer Vacation," an Israeli short considered for an Oscar, may remind kids that every family vacation to a beautiful beach doesn't always go as planned.
And "Symphony No. 42," an animated short from Hungary that was considered for an Oscar, even notices the similarities between the activities that humans and animals perform. Music in this film includes bird and jungle sounds from Sri Lanka.
Considering the full-length, Oscar-nominated, foreign language films from Poland (Ida), Russia (Leviathan), Estonia (Tangerines), Mauritania (Timbuktu), and Argentina (Wild Tales), making and viewing movies are popular activities all over the world.
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