Long Fight Over Short Subjects : Movies: Oscar-nominated filmmakers dispute the academy’s contention that shorts are a relic of bygone days.

Kenneth Branagh was “thrilled and delighted” to win an Academy Award nomination for his 23-minute film, “Swan Song,” an homage to the theater starring John Gielgud. But for a previous nominee in the best-director and best-actor categories (“Henry V”), this latest honor is “utterly icing on the cake,” he acknowledges.

For most of the other filmmakers competing for Oscars in the short live-action (dramatic) or short documentary category, however, the nomination is no small potatoes.

“This is the ultimate award,” said Gerardine Wurzburg, a documentary filmmaker for two decades and a first-time nominee for “Educating Peter,” which tells the story of how third-graders in Virginia reacted when a boy with Down’s syndrome joined their class. “It is a salute to your ability to use the medium to move people.”

Not only is such recognition a career-booster for filmmakers, but it also serves as validation of what many believe is a vital and important, if often overlooked, art form.

Some nominees, such as novice live-action filmmakers Christian Taylor (“The Lady in Waiting”) and Matt Palmieri (“Cruise Control”), produced short films--defined by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as 30 minutes or less--because they couldn’t afford to make anything longer. Others, like documentary filmmaker Geoffrey O’Connor (“At the Edge of Conquest: The Journey of Chief Wai-Wai”), say the length was dictated by the particular story they wanted to tell--in his case, the efforts of an Indian leader in the Amazon to fend off encroachment by the outside world.

Branagh said he was captivated with the idea of transforming Anton Chekhov’s one-act play “Swan Song,” which he has admired since he was 15, into a short film. “There is something so tender about that piece,” he said. “It is something so beautiful in miniature.” Standing on a stage in a deserted theater, Gielgud plays a disenchanted actor who relives the prouder moments of a less-than-distinguished career.

Whatever their motive, the filmmakers insist that even though short films may be a rarity at your neighborhood movie theater, they are not a relic of bygone days, as the academy leadership recently contended.

Last November, the academy’s board of governors announced that as of next year, it would no longer give Oscars for short films. But after an outcry from some of the industry’s top names, the academy backed off, saying it would review its decision for another year.

“For the past quarter-century these films have been virtually nonexistent in theaters,” the academy said in its initial statement. When they do come before the public, officials added, they are most likely to be seen on television. The board, acting on a recommendation by a committee composed of past presidents of the academy, also concluded that the awards are redundant since student-made films are already recognized by gold medals during a separate ceremony.

Not surprisingly, the nominees couldn’t disagree more with the academy’s premises. Even though funding for some of these projects came either wholly or in part from television, the producers consider themselves filmmakers, not TV producers. For example, “The Colours of My Father: A Portrait of Sam Borenstein,” co-produced by the private company Imageries and the National Film Board of Canada (and partially funded, among other sources, by TV Ontario), tells the life story of a Canadian artist through an innovative combination of animation and live-action and was in production for a year and a half. “It uses an enormous quantity of film techniques,” said Montreal-based producer Richard Elson. “It is very much a film rather than a TV program.”

Far from being dominated by students, the list of nominees includes only two: Taylor, 24, from New York University, and Wendy Weinberg, who was 35 when she finished her 30-minute Temple University project “Beyond Imagining: Margaret Anderson and the ‘Little Review,’ ” the biography of the pioneering magazine editor who serialized “Ulysses.” Taylor and Weinberg won Student Academy Awards last year for best film and best documentary, respectively.

Unless a film qualifies by winning certain awards, including a student gold medal, it has to be shown in a movie theater for at least three days (for live-action) or seven days (for documentaries) in order to be nominated for an Oscar. But of the nominees, only “Swan Song” and “Omnibus,” actor Sam Karmann’s nine-minute French film about an unlucky train commuter, are likely to get much conventional theatrical exposure.

The Samuel Goldwyn Co., distributor of other Branagh films (“Peter’s Friends” and the spring release “Much Ado About Nothing”) plans to show “Swan Song” in the top 10 markets with “Il Ladro di Bambini” (“Stolen Children”), which opens here Friday, according to Richard Bornstein, vice president of worldwide publicity.

“We think an Academy Award-nominated short will help business,” he said. “How many times do you get to see an Oscar-nominated director and an Oscar-winning actor in this format?”

When “Swan Song” was screened during some shows at the Goldwyn’s Westside Pavilion theater in order to qualify for nomination, some audience members were upset if the showing they attended did not include a screening of “Swan Song,” Bornstein said.Despite this reaction, however, his company is not seeking rights to other nominated short films.

After an executive of MK2 Productions USA spotted “Omnibus” last summer at the Telluride Film Festival, the company became the film’s distributor, showing the movie, which has a surprising and ironic ending, in conjunction with “Alberto Express,” a full-length movie with “a shared train motif,” said executive vice president Derval Whelan.

“It was strictly at our cost,” Whelan said. “It’s not going to increase box-office appeal.” She added that the company hopes to be able to show the short film again in the future but has nothing appropriate to go with it right now. “You have to be careful what you pair it with,” she explained.

In Branagh’s view, short films have fallen victim not to public taste but to the financial pressures on theater-owners. “It has to do with economics, with the number of screenings (exhibitors) can get in a day,” he said. “I miss short films. I think there is a huge appetite for (them).”

Short films are popular at libraries, schools, universities, museums and film festivals, several nominees pointed out. Freida Lee Mock, who chairs the academy committee that culled the five short documentaries out of a field of 28, said short films are also a staple of world’s fairs, theme parks, expositions and specialized halls like the big-screen IMAX theaters.

The academy, which began awarding Oscars for live-action short subjects in 1932, needs “to broaden the understanding of what a theater is, of where Americans are going to have a theater experience,” Mock said. “There is a greater variety of theatrical venues than they had in the ‘30s and ‘40s (when the short documentary category was instituted).”

Taylor, who financed his $25,000 film by selling an apartment he bought with a small inheritance, does not believe filmmakers need to justify short films on marketing grounds. “The big bone of contention is, do these films get seen in theaters?” said the New York University graduate. “That is sort of irrelevant. The issue is what the academy stands for. What I think it stands for is to support film as a craft.”

Other filmmakers said it makes no difference whether a story is told through video, film or any of the newer technologies. “Don’t most people see films on videotape at home?” asked Weinberg.

For both Taylor, who began his career sweeping floors at a London studio but now lives in West Hollywood, and Palmieri, a former development executive at MGM, short films have proved a means of grabbing Hollywood’s attention. Courted by several agencies before he signed on with United Talent Agency, Taylor hopes to make a full-length feature out of his half-hour film about a prim British housekeeper (Virginia McKenna) stuck in an elevator with a black transvestite (Rodney Hudson) during the 1977 New York City blackout.

Palmieri was able to persuade four actor-friends to appear for free in his 17-minute tale of a smug self-centered lawyer (Ed Begley Jr.) who is forced to seek help from three dubious-looking yokels (Sean Penn, Harry Dean Stanton and Max Perlich) when his car breaks down on a deserted road. Made for $50,000, the film was shot in three days.

“Everybody believes in short films as an inexpensive way to discover new filmmakers,” said Palmieri, who became a client of Bill Block, a prominent agent at International Creative Management, as a result of “Cruise Control.”

It’s not at all unusual for prominent actors to appear in short films, said Hillary Ripps, associate producer of “Contact,” a nominated short with Brad Pitt and Elias Koteas playing enemy soldiers caught in a minefield together. “If it’s a part that interests them and they’re available, they like to do their craft.”

“Contact,” written and directed by Jonathan Darby, was made as part of Chanticleer Films’ Discovery program, funded by Showtime, for people in the arts who want to switch to filmmaking. Darby, for example, is an English stage director.

While many contenders in the live-action category--chosen this year from among 111 entries--hope to make an impression on Hollywood, the producers of short documentaries often have entirely different goals.

The Oscar-nominated “When Abortion Was Illegal: Untold Stories” is the first part of an as-yet uncompleted trilogy by Dorothy Fadiman, herself the victim of what she describes as a “classic back-alley abortion.” She said she raised the first half of her $150,000 budget from 200 individual contributions, with the rest supplied by foundation grants.

“I want to make films about subjects that are important to me and that need a more meaningful examination than is often done on commercial TV,” Fadiman said.