Film academy leader announces plans to increase diversity

“I am encouraged that, under the bold leadership of President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is taking important steps to ensure that its voting membership better reflects the range of experiences and perspectives that make cinema such a powerful and indispensable art form”.

Members can still get locked in for life if they’ve had three, 10-year voting terms, or if they receive an Oscar nomination.

“Those who do not qualify for active status will be moved to emeritus status (who) enjoy all the privileges of membership, except voting”, according to the academy release.

Three new seats will be added to the Academy’s board of governors to improve diversity in leadership.

“The academy is going to lead”, she said in a statement, “and not wait for the industry to catch up”. The board passed a series of measures to remove from its voting rolls members who have not been active in the film industry for many years, and establish a precedent requiring active engagement in the industry for new members. British actress Charlotte Rampling, who was nominated for her role in drama “45 Years”, told French radio station Europe 1 the objection to the lack of diversity among her fellow nominees was “racist to white people”. In order to maintain an active voting body, the Academy is mandating “activ[ity] in motion pictures” over the course of an initial decade-long membership.

The makeup of the academy’s membership has always been secret; in 2012, the Los Angeles Times published an analysis showing 94 percent of voting members were white and hundreds of members hadn’t worked in movies in decades.

The new rules include a commitment to doubling the number of women and minorities in the academy by 2020 and limiting lifetime voting rights. Boone Isaacs is expected to name the new board members as soon as early February.

The people in charge of the Oscars have promised to make big changes to the award system.

Acclaimed director Spike Lee, who won an Oscar a year ago honoring his lifetime achievements, wrote an open letter to the Academy decrying the “lily white” nominations. “That’s how we’re really going to solve the problem – not by more programs or committees, but by jobs”.

Television rights for the Oscars are lucrative for the Academy, and a widespread boycott of the broadcast could have been damaging.

Actor-director Don Cheadle applauded the move, but he said it deals with the symptom rather than the cause.

The changes are “one good step in a long, complicated journey for people of color and women artists”.

The voted upon changes will also work on changing the demographics of the Academy.

Currently, Isaacs is the only African-American on the board of governors which is predominantly white.

This time, the academy is trying not just to reform itself, but to spur all of the movie industry to greater diversity.

NPR’s Neda Ulaby reports that the academy called an emergency meeting on Thursday night in response to threats of boycotts against this year’s awards ceremony. We need to get out there with what we’ve been talking about internally, but now we have to put it into action.