New Academy Award ‘inclusion’ standards draw praise from Native filmmakers
Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
If movies look more diverse the past few years, there is more than just coincidence on the screen.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is responding to the backlash they have been getting for several years about the #OscarsSoWhite, a social justice campaign that began on Jan. 15, 2015, when the academy awarded all 20 acting nominations to White actors for the first of two consecutive years.
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That inspired lawyer and strategist April Reign – who is also a pop-culture-obsessed contributor to a community of black Twitter users – to create the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. The campaign took off.
Now, the academy has announced new representation and inclusion standards for a film to be eligible starting in 2024 for an Academy Award, albeit solely in the Best Picture category. The standards are designed to encourage equal representation on and off screen to better reflect the diversity of the movie-going and movie-making audience.
Reign could not be reached by ICT for comment. But for Indigenous people in the film business, the academy’s new requirements are good news.
Sierra Teller Ornelas, shown here in 2021, is a television writer and was writer/producer of “Rutherford Falls,” a popular series on the Peacock streaming service. (Photo by Reginald Cunningham via AP)
“I know that the academy has made a lot of steps to try to improve the voting standards by bringing in a lot of diverse voters,” said Sierra Ornelas, Navajo, a member of the Writers Guild of America and a writer/producer on “Rutherford Falls,” a popular series on the Peacock streaming service.
“Back in the day, there were less opportunities for people of color,” Ornelas told ICT. “I know they've pushed it. I feel like the Oscars themselves, there's so many facets to it that aren't necessarily equal, and so anything we can do to help increase diversity in that realm, I think is important. When a person of color is nominated or gets an award, it can completely change their life. If you look at someone like Viola Davis, and other actresses of color or performers or writer-directors who have been around for many years, it was not until they got that award that things really turned around for them.”
She continued, “On its face, it could look a little weird, but I think anything we can do to give people opportunities, I think is a good thing.”
Help from the Brits
Academy governors DeVon Franklin and Jim Gianopulos headed a task force to develop the standards that were created from a template inspired by the British Film Institute Diversity Standards used for funding eligibility in Great Britain and eligibility in some categories of the British Academy of Film and Television Awards.
The academy also consulted with the Producers Guild of America, as it presently does for Oscars eligibility.
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“The aperture must widen to reflect our diverse global population in both the creation of motion pictures and in the audiences who connect with them,” academy President David Rubin and chief executive Dawn Hudson said in a statement.
“The Academy is committed to playing a vital role in helping make this a reality,” they said. “We believe these inclusion standards will be a catalyst for long-lasting, essential change in our industry.”
For the 94th Oscars (2022) and 95th Oscars (2023), submitting a confidential Academy Inclusion Standards form was required for Best Picture consideration. But films will not be required to meet the new inclusion standards to be eligible for Best Picture until the 96th Oscars in 2024.
The form is lengthy, but basically requires that the film must meet at least one of the following criteria: that at least one of the lead actors or significant supporting actors, or that 30 percent of the secondary roles are from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group,or that the main storyline, theme or narrative from from an underrepresented group.
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The new rules also require that at least two of the key creative leadership positions or department heads — casting director, cinematographer, composer, costume designer, director — and crew composition must include be women or representatives of a racial or ethnic group; LGBTQ+; or people with cognitive or physical disabilities; or who fall into one of the following categories: Asian; Hispanic/Latinx; Black/African American; Indigenous/Native American/Alaskan Native; Middle Eastern/North African; Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, or another underrepresented race or ethnicity.
The list goes on, but the academy said it doesn’t expect production companies to know every demographic detail about the workers.
“We acknowledge that not everyone will disclose that information,” said Jeanell English, the academy’s executive vice president of impact and inclusion, during a recent Zoom meeting.
Despite the reservations, English said the first two years of the program have seen “overwhelmingly high participation,” noting that the “majority of films that submitted Oscar submission forms completed a version of the form.”
“Sometimes the response was, ‘Wow, this has actually helped me think about what I’m doing on set, and this exercise is valuable,’” English said. “Others said, ‘I am really proud of what I’m doing, and I want to highlight it.’ Others said, ‘Hey, I haven’t quite met this standard, but I’m going through this just to practice what it could look like for us.’”
Ornelas said that getting diverse voices in positions of power allows “a lot of those checkboxes [to] just happen organically. And so hopefully more of us have those opportunities. And folks who have been doing this a very, very long time, I don't think there's anything wrong with shaking up their situation and asking them to look at their hiring practices or asking them to look at why they do the things they do.”
Overcoming ‘systemic racism’
English said that nearly 300 films participated in the process during the first two years the academy asked for the information.
“We've had a really, really high success rate, and we've had incredible participation from countries outside of the U.S.,” English said. “However, there's always a way to opt out. You can simply say unknown, prefer not to describe or prefer to describe and write in your own description. Something that was super important to us in creating this form was the ‘preferred to describe’ option. In rolling this out globally, it's been incredibly important to say, ‘Hey, we're giving examples of what an underrepresented community may be or may look like or may encompass in our country.’”
Getting to a Best Picture nomination is not easy, aside from the new requirements.
“There's so much behind the scenes that goes into getting a nomination like that,” Ornelas said. ”It's almost like an election. There's so much money and campaigning that no one gets in just based on talent alone. It's a little bit like scholarships, where folks who get in due to a diversity scholarship break through.”
Joanelle Romero, Spanish Sephardic and Apache, is an award-winning director and producer of film and television who is the only North American Native director shortlisted for an Academy Award for a documentary short film. She founded the Red Nation Celebration Institute to promote Indigenous filmmakers and their works. She's a member of the Academy AMPAS and of SAG AFTRA. (Photo by Michael Stahlberg, courtesy of Joanelle Romero)
Joanelle Romero, Spanish Sephardic and Apache, told ICT the move provides an opportunity to renew discussions on an important issue.
“It's so problematic,” said Romero, an award-winning director and producer of film, television who is the only North American Native director shortlisted for an Academy Award for a documentary short film.
“We are not a checklist,” she said. “I'm just talking about the bigger picture of systemic racism within these institutes. This is a meaningful opportunity to begin this dialogue. Going back to ‘Dances with Wolves’ and 25 years later ''The Revenant’'. Hollywood needs to do better regarding representation. it's just the last 3 years that we have success stories 'Prey,' 'Wild Indian,' 'Dark Winds,' 'Reservation Dogs,' and soon to be released 'Killers of the Flower Moon.'
"Native and Indigenous creatives are not here to help the film industry or institutions figure out how to fix the problem that they created ... The solution is to hire us in executive positions, fund our storytellers, and hire us in front of and behind the camera."
She continued, “But it's not a checklist that's going to change anything in our industry. We need to get people that have been doing the work for years that have a legacy in this industry, in those positions. My motto has always been,’Who Tells the Story Matters.’”
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