MONTREAL – The National Film Board of Canada received its 69th Academy Award nomination today for Torill Kove’s NFB/Norway co-produced animated short The Danish Poet.
This is the 69th Oscar® nomination for the NFB. In 2005, Hardwood was nominated in the short documentary category, and in the same year Ryan won the Oscar for best animated short. The 79th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, February 25, 2007.
Recognized around the world for its excellence in animation and documentary, the NFB has garnered more Oscar nominations than any production company or organization outside of Hollywood. Since its first Academy Award in 1941, for the short documentary Churchill’s Island, Canada’s public film producer has won a total of 11 Oscars: ten for individual titles and a special award for overall achievement on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 1989.
The Danish Poet This is the second nomination for animator Torill Kove, who was nominated in 2000 for her first professional film, My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts, also co-produced by the NFB.
Narrated by Liv Ullmann, The Danish Poet asks the question whether our lives are just coincidence – or do little things really matter? The 15-minute film follows Kasper, a poet whose creative well has run dry, on a holiday to Norway to meet a famous writer. As his quest for inspiration unfolds, it appears that a spell of bad weather, an angry dog, slippery barn planks, a careless postman, hungry goats and other seemingly unrelated factors might play important roles in the big scheme of things after all.
The Danish Poet is a co-production of the NFB (Marcy Page) and MikroFilm AS (Lise Fearnley-Norway).
The Danish Poet has already picked up ten awards, including the Audience Choice and Animated Short Award from the New York Short Film Festival, the Animated Eye Award from the Aspen Shortfest, and the C.O.R.E. Digital Picture Award for Best Animated Short from the Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto. In addition, the film was recently nominated for a 2007 Canadian Genie for Best Animated Short, with the winner to be announced on February 13.
