Film academy announces reforms to diversify

That would be the large body known as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has just announced a promise to double its minority and female members by 2020, part of an effort to have more inclusive contenders after the backlash to the lack of diversity this year.

Now the board has 51 members, and every single one-with the exception of Isaacs and cinematographer Daryn Okada-is white, while only 17 (including Isaacs) are women.

At the same time, the academy said it would augment the traditional process by which current members sponsor newcomers to the organization by launching “an ambitious global campaign to identity and recruit qualified new members who represent greater diversity”.

Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs and the Board of Governors approved a series of substantive fixes – in a unanimous decision – to their voting process and election of people to the Board.

“The academy is going to lead”, she said in a statement, “and not wait for the industry to catch up”.

Boone Isaacs, the academy’s first African-American president, will also have to contend with the concerns of older members, whose academy membership will flip to “emeritus” status if they’re no longer active in the industry at the time of their review.

The new changes came with positive replies from Ava DuVernay and Lupita Nyong’o. “Deaf ears. Clòsed minds”.

Both had pledged not to attend the Oscars this year.

Boone Isaacs said she is ready to embrace “any and all ways we can increase the conversation about storytelling and how to bring more diverse voices in storytelling into the marketplace”.

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith had no immediate reaction to the Film Academy’s reforms announced Friday.

Under the new rules, the Academy will strip voting rights from those who have not been active in the industry for the past decade. The new inductees also included a record number of worldwide filmmakers, she said. Members will get lifetime voting rights after three 10-year-terms, or if they’ve been nominated for an Oscar.

The board made the changes in an emergency meeting Thursday night, presumably in response to the controversy over the Academy not including any actors of color in the four major acting categories for the second straight year.

The Board is applying these same standards retroactively to current members. The nominations prompted the revival of #OscarsSoWhite on social media, which pointedly called out the homogeneity of the Academy Awards.

Boone Isaacs acknowledged that the academy can only honor films that ultimately get made, but she thinks the changes announced today will “move the needle” in all aspects of filmmaking.

None of these changes will affect voting for this year’s Oscars.