Steve McQueen has said the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) risks becoming irrelevant, redundant and of no interest or importance unless it undergoes reform to avoid a repeat of this year’s nominations where there was a lack of diversity in many of the principal categories, including all the main acting awards.
The director, who has won two BAFTAs — one for his debut feature film Hunger in 2009 and another for best film in 2014 for 12 Years a Slave — said that the British film awards could become obsolete if it fails to recognize diverse talent.
“After a while you get a bit fed up with it,” he said. “Because if the BAFTAs are not supporting British talent, if you’re not supporting the people who are making headway in the industry, then I don’t understand what you are there for.”
Photo: AFP
“Unless the BAFTAs wants to be like the Grammys, which is of no interest to anyone, and has no credibility at all, then they should continue on this path,” he added, referring to the criticism of the Grammys for consistently snubbing black talent. “If not then they have to change. Fact.”
McQueen said there was a vast amount of British talent that could have been nominated this year including Marianne Jean-Baptiste for In Fabric, Joanna Hogg for The Souvenir, Cynthia Erivo for Harriet, and Daniel Kaluuya for his performance in Queen & Slim. “But not even just British talent, it’s talent in general,” he said, using the example of Lupita Nyongo’o not being nominated for Jordan Peele’s Us. “It’s crazy.”
In response to the backlash on Monday last week after the nominations were announced, Marc Samuelson, chair of BAFTA’s film committee, called the lack of diversity infuriating and said the awards could not make the industry do something about it. His comments echoed BAFTA’s deputy chairman, Krishnendu Majumdar, who said the lack of female nominees in the best director category was an “industry-wide problem.”
McQueen said the argument that the lack of nominations could be explained as mostly an “industry problem” was nonsensical. “When these films are being made to critical acclaim, they’re not even being recognized — that’s nonsense.”
The director’s comments follow a week of criticism for BAFTA, which announced on Thursday last week that it would undergo a review of its voting system after another year when its main acting awards will all be competed for by white talent. In 2018, a report revealed that 94 percent of all BAFTA film award nominees had been white.
The criticism also came before the Oscars nominations on Monday, which has its own long history of diversity issues. In 2015, the Oscars — along with all the leading film and music awards — were heavily criticized for a lack of diversity among nominees, only 12 months after a “breakthrough” year when 12 Years a Slave won best picture. In 2016 — after another year of all-white nominees in the acting award, which led to a threatened boycott by Spike Lee, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Will Smith — the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it would review its membership process. The Academy eventually pledged to double female and minority members by this year.
Todd Phillips’s superhero film, Joker, led the BAFTAs field this year with 11 nominations, with many films featuring ethnic minority and female talent missing out, including The Souvenir and Greta Gerwig’s Little Women — neither of whom featured in the all-male best director category.
In an e-mail to voters, Samuelson and BAFTA chief executive Amanda Berry said the nominations were “frustrating and deeply disappointing” and confirmed they would review all aspects of the voting process and listen to all interested parties in order to tackle the root cause of underrepresentation in BAFTA nominations.
BAFTA voting is divided into two rounds: nominations and then a final say on the shortlist. At present, the four main acting categories are nominated by the full membership, with specific “chapters” — made up of specialists from BAFTA’s 6,700 members — choosing nominees for other categories such as best director, score and screenplay. After the nominations are complete, all BAFTA members vote on the main awards, with some specialist juries and chapters deciding the winners in certain categories.
Berry said on Monday: “It’s clear there is much more to be done and we plan to double-down on our efforts to affect real change and to continue to support, and encourage the industry on the urgency of doing so much more.”
Other prominent British actors have voiced their disappointment with BAFTA. Erivo, who was directed by McQueen in the Bafta-nominated film Widows, said she was asked to sing at the ceremony on Feb. 2, even though she had missed out on a best actress nomination. Erivo turned down the invitation.
“I felt like [the invitation] didn’t represent people of color in the right light,” Erivo told the US entertainment Web site Extra. “It felt like it was calling on me as an entertainer, as opposed to a person who was a part of the world of film, and I think that it’s important to make it known that it’s not something that you just throw in as a party trick, you know?”
Erivo said the many actors of color who worked hard last year deserved to be celebrated and she also criticized the lack of nominations for any female directors. “And no women directors? It just was like, c’mon,” she said.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist