Oscar nomination

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Tuesday that the Los Angeles Lakers legend's short film, "Dear Basketball," is one of five nominees for this year's Best Animated Short award.

The film was put together by illustrator Glen Keane as an animated version of the letter Bryant wrote to announce his retirement.

"What?? This is beyond the realm of imagination," Bryant posted on Twitter in response to the nomination.

While viewers will be able to watch the glitz and glamour of the event on a big screen, all eyes will be on the cast and crew of the movie Tanna which was filmed in Vanuatu.

The movie has been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film award.

‘Tanna’ depicts the true story of a couple who decided to marry for love, rather than fulfil their parents’ wishes to marry other people.

The livestream is from 4pm Vanuatu time.

But a special group of people are preparing to make the long trip from a remote island in the South Pacific Ocean to the United States and create a small piece of movie history.

They're part of the cast and crew of the movie "Tanna" which has been nominated for an Oscar.

The Australian-produced movie was filmed in Vanuatu using local people speaking their own language, and none of them had ever acted before.

The film’s Cultural Director, Jimmy Joseph Nako says his tribesmen are excited but they didn't comprehend just how big a deal an Oscar nomination is.

"We were merely the conduit for telling their story."

Standing on the edge of an active volcano, the spiritual mother of the island of Tanna, Australian documentary filmmakers Martin Butler and Bentley Dean never expected to be swapping traditional penis sheaths for red-carpet wear at this year's Oscar ceremony.

Tanna, a tale of tragic lovers, has received Australia's first-ever Oscar nomination for foreign language film.

The film is shot in the indigenous Nauvhal language and uses an entire amateur cast selected from villagers.

Director Bentley Dean moved to island with his wife and two young children and lived there for seven months.

The villagers choose to live like ancestors, without electricity and hunting for food with bows and arrows.

The premiere was held in cyclone-flattened village with a makeshift screen made from sheets tied to banyan tree