Category That Almost Wasn’t Narrows Field : Oscars: The short-lived death knell for short films probably helped shrink the number of entries. Only three documentary nominees were selected.

He may not be as famous as most of the other Academy Award candidates, but Steven Cantor’s telephone has been ringing madly with calls from agents, producers, directors and journalists ever since the nominations were announced Wednesday morning.

“Taylor Hackford woke me up this morning,” Cantor, 26, said Thursday, referring to the director of “An Officer and a Gentleman.”

Cantor’s 30-minute film, “Blood Ties: The Life and Work of Sally Mann,” was one of three short documentaries nominated in a category that was almost wiped out by the academy last year. Earlier this month, the organization’s board of governors reversed itself, voting unanimously to continue recognizing both short documentaries and short live-action (fictional) films.

It is unusual, though not unprecedented, for only three films to be selected out of a possible five in the short-documentary category. This has occurred only three other times since 1955 (in 1957, no films were nominated). Five films were nominated in the live-action category.

Freida Lee Mock, who chairs the academy’s documentary screening committee, said last year’s announced death knell for short films probably helped shrink the number of entries. This year, only 16 short documentaries were entered, while usually there are from 30 to 40 submissions.

“Many of us surmised that a major contributing factor was the confusion caused by the controversy,” Mock said. Another factor, she pointed out, may have been her committee’s decision to tighten eligibility requirements. For example, a film can still qualify if it has been shown at a festival, but the list of approved festivals has been cut back, she said.

Academy spokesman Bob Werden praised the committee for limiting its selections rather than trying to bend its standards. “If they had been political they could have pushed in five,” he said.

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For one of the nominees, good news arrived even before the academy selections were made. A production company headed by Rosalie Swedlin has been negotiating with Disney’s Hollywood Pictures to make a feature film based on former USC film student Elaine Holliman’s “Chicks in White Satin.” Holliman’s documentary, which screened at the recent Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, is about two lesbians who decide to formalize their eight-year relationship with a commitment ceremony. As part of the deal, Holliman will co-write and direct the film, according to a spokeswoman for Swedlin’s Longview Entertainment Co.

Holliman, who left for Germany to show the 20-minute short at the Berlin Film Festival, could not be reached.

The third nominee in the short documentary category is “Defending Our Lives,” produced by Cambridge Documentary Films, a Massachusetts-based group that has been making social-issue films for 17 years but has never before received an academy nomination.

The film, budgeted at $135,000, records the experiences of battered women who were convicted of killing their mates despite a claim of self-defense. It was made in conjunction with Battered Women Fighting Back, a nonprofit group.

Co-producer Margaret Lazarus said the nomination will mean much greater exposure for her cause. “It means that many more people will see this documentary, and hopefully they will get a greater understanding of domestic violence and be in a position to stop the cycle,” she said.

Cantor, producer of the Sally Mann film, said the project originally began as a documentary about censorship. After interviewing Mann, a prominent photographer who has been criticized for taking nude pictures of her young daughters, he decided instead to concentrate on her. “I grew up in New York, in an artistically oriented family, but I had never been so moved by any artist,” he said.

Now a USC film student, Cantor said his film cost $4,000, excluding perhaps $30,000 worth of free services provided by a New York editing facility. Documentary filmmaker Mark Mori (“Building Bombs”) was so impressed with the film that he raised $11,000 from a foundation in order to give the film wider exposure, Cantor said.

As he continued to field calls, Cantor expressed delight that the academy chose to abandon its original decision to drop short films.

“What this category does is provide for young and not very well-financed filmmakers a chance to have access to a large public and to be seen by the industry,” Cantor said.