Oregon Public Broadcasting

Several Oregon filmmakers were nominated Thursday for this year's Academy Awards. April Baer reports that movie buffs will recognize their names.

As many expected, Gus Van Sant's biopic Milk is up for Best Picture. Van Sant is also nominated for Best Director.

It's not a first nomination for him, but rave reviews for Milk have his fans hoping this will be Van Sant's year. The film got eight nominations in all.

Portland filmmaker Irene Taylor Brodsky's movie The Final Inch was nominated in the Documentary Short category -- it's a 38-minute exploration of the global war on polio.

Irene Taylor Brodsky   "My interest from the get-go was to make a film that was beautiful, so beautiful, that people could not look away. I think it's so easy when we're dealing with poverty, and children with disease in poverty, it's very easy for us to look the other way."

 Her film will be screened on HBO in the month of April. Her prior documentary, Hear and Now, is a family story about her hearing-impaired parents.