Movie Awards for 2023

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[txfilmfan]

A thought occurred to me. If The Red Balloon can win best original screenplay despite not being a feature film, what other Academy Awards can short films win, aside from short subject?

The Academy is always changing their rules, but the current rules, state, in Rule Two, Paragraph 2, part a, that eligible films must be feature length (over 40 minutes). They carve out eligibility exceptions to the general rules for:

- Animated Feature
- Animated Short
- Documentary Feature
- Documentary Short
- International Feature
- Live Action Short
- Music Awards

Since the carve-outs are mostly for clarifying the feature/short categories, that leaves the music awards. As I read the rules, there's no carve out exception to the feature length rule for the music awards.

So I don't think this can happen today.

https://www.oscars.org/sites/oscars/fil ... _rules.pdf

Apparently, the rules for feature vs. short classification were different when The Red Balloon was released. The definition then was in terms of feet of film, with 3000 feet of 35mm film being the delineation for a short feature. 3000 feet of 35mm film at a standard of 24 fps is 33 minutes 20 seconds (3000 feet/ 90 feet per minute). So it seems that by the Academy's rules that year, The Red Balloon was deemed a feature (barely).

https://www.atogt.com/askoscar/display- ... ules-cover

As far as I can tell perusing various sources, this was the only time what most would consider a short subject received an Oscar outside of the designated "shorts" categories.