"What that means," according to Brenau spokesman David Morrison, "is the film was one of 10 culled from 76 submitted."
That field will be narrowed to three to five films that will receive final nominations.
Carlson, who teaches voice, diction and stage movement at Brenau in addition to her work at Gainesville State, created the language for and coached language for the film.
"Creating language," she explains, means exactly that. "I took the words of the script and made up a language for the actors to use to convey them, so that they could not be pegged as being from any one particular place. I got a nice compliment from our director who said that when they edited our film at Skywalker Ranch the sound editor from "Avatar" said our made up language was better than theirs. I don't know about that, but I appreciated the thought."
According to a plot summary on imdb.com, "Ana's Playground" depicts just another day for children surrounded by armed conflict. When Ana is forced into a sniper zone to retrieve a soccer ball, she finds herself in a game of cat-and-mouse with a mysterious shooter. As their interaction comes to a head, she and her friends make the ultimate decision, showing that a moment of humanity can quickly be lost in an environment of war and violence.
It runs only 18 minutes and was filmed in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The film has already won 18 awards and has been nominated for one more in addition to the Academy Award "short list." Most of the awards it has won so far have been at film festivals both in the U.S. and overseas. Among them is Honorable Mention for Short Film at Atlanta International Film Festival.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2010/12/234270