Welcome change of colour for the Oscars
IF THE Oscars turn out to be “so white” again next year, it will not be for a lack of candidates.
A handful of critically acclaimed movies featuring people of colour are vying for awards attention this season, ranging from a Pulitzer Prizewinning family drama to historical tales of men and women fighting for dignity.
This year’s Oscars were mired in controversy when not a single person of colour was nominated in the acting categories for a second straight year, and all eight best-picture nominees reflected white, mostly male, culture.
“2017 could be historic because theoretically we could see all four acting Oscars go to someone of colour,” awards prediction website Goldderby. editor Tom O’Neil said.
What is exciting about next year’s contenders is the range of topics, said Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph J Bunche Centre for African-American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“The criticism of Hollywood has been in the past that if you are making a black film, it’s either going to be about slavery or civil rights,” Hunt said.
That is hardly the case for Moonlight, a heart-wrenching, contemporary tale of a black boy growing up in Miami struggling with bullying, his sexual identity and the scourge of drugs. Made with little-known actors, it has received some of the best reviews of the year and has been nominated for six Independent Spirit Awards.
Hidden Figures, opening in the US on Christmas Day, is the true story of three unsung African-American women mathematicians (played by Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae and Taraji P Henson) who worked on Nasa’s early space missions, while Lion, starring Dev Patel, is the reallife tale of an Indian child who gets lost in Calcutta and is adopted by a white couple in Australia.
Loving focuses on an unassuming blue-collar white man and black woman in Virginia who were sentenced to prison in 1958 for getting married.
Fences, the movie version of the Pulitzer-winning stage play by August Wilson, is expected to bring Oscar nominations for stars Denzel Washington and Viola Davis.
Ironically, The Birth of a Nation, the slave rebellion drama that looked like an Oscar front-runner earlier this year, now appears to be out of awards contention – following headlines about a 17-year-old rape case involving its writer, director and lead actor, Nate Parker, who was acquitted in a 2001 trial.
Nominations for Golden Globes were announced on December 12 and Screen Actors Guild awards announced yesterday, while Oscar nominees will be unveiled on January 24 next year. — Reuters