BEHIND THE FOREIGN FILM OSCARS: Boy, this is weird stuff. But fascinating. Excerpts:

“In Slate, June Thomas explains that Almodovar’s film wasn’t even presented to the Academy’s nominating committee, since Spain — perversely, to my mind — decided to submit another film, Mondays in the Sun, instead. Similarly, Mexico’s nominating committee decided on El Crimen del Padre Amaro over a hit film, Y Tu Mama Tambien, which was disqualified on a technicality, and which was overlooked the previous year for another film, Perfume de Violetas, which didn’t even have a US distributor.

“…There was a furor late last year when it was announced that Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention was ineligible for nomination since Palestine, by Academy rules, is not recognized as a country. As Thomas points out in Slate, this is absurd, since ‘non-countries’ like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Puerto Rico regularly submit films. That there’s no Palestinian nominating committee is another reason; that a film has to be screened for a week in its home country is yet another — working theatres in the Palestinian authority willing to devote a precious week of screentime to an art film are understandably scarce.

[clipped]

Via Relapsed Catholic.