Diversity season again
with most cinemas in the United States and Europe closed, and the major studios holding back most of their 2020 releases until the end of next year, including Steven Spielberg’s remake of the musical West Side Story, we are entering an untypical awards season.
Because of the Covid pandemic, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has decided that it will host an in-person ceremony on 25 April, two months later than usual, and accordingly has extended the eligibility period for entries by two months (from 31 December, 2020, to 28 February 2021), which means a seven-month period of campaigning.
This year is an embarrassment of riches in terms of possible Best Picture candidates with African-American stories and directors. First up is Ma Rainey’s Black
Bottom, directed by
George C. Wolfe, who is better known for his theatre direction, and produced by Denzel Washington.
The film is adapted from Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson’s play of the same name, set in Chicago in 1927, and is essentially a showcase for two superlative acting performances by Viola Davis, who plays “Mother of the Blues” Ma Rainey, and Chadwick Boseman, who plays impassioned young trumpeter Levee.
A first feature for actress and TV director Regina King, One Night in Miami, is adapted by Kemp Powers from his own stage play and portrays a fictional encounter between boxer Muhammad Ali, radical activist Malcolm X, pro football player Jim Brown, and soul singer Sam Cooke in a Miami hotel room following Ali’s surprise victory over Sonny Liston in February 1964. British actor Kingsley
Ben-Adir takes the role of Malcolm X. Then there is Judas and the Black
Messiah, directed by Shaka King, which tells the story of Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), the Chicago Black Panther and revolutionary socialist betrayed by FBI informant William O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) and assassinated in a police raid in December 1969. Of course, this is competing with The Trial of the Chicago 7, which depicts another episode from the same period in American radical history. And finally there is The United States v.
Billie Holiday, directed by Lee Daniels, previously nominated for Best Director for
Precious (2009), and starring singer-songwriter Andra Day. Nobody has had sight of
WHAT MAKES CHLOÉ ZHAO'S WORK SO REMARKABLE IS THAT SHE IS ABLE TO GET UNDER THE SKIN OF AMERICA'S HEARTLAND