Film academy announced reforms to diversify

With the growing uproar over the lack of diversity at the Oscars this year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was forced to announce sweeping changes in the nomination process.

The membership changes outlined above are being supplement by what the Academy is calling “an ambitious, global campaign to identify and recruit qualified new members who represent greater diversity”. Lifetime voting rights will be granted only to Academy Award nominees and winners, and to members after three 10-year voting terms.

It will also involve new members on decisions about membership and governance, giving them a chance to become more active in decision-making and to help spot and nurture future leaders.

“The Academy is going to lead and not wait for the industry to catch up”, president Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a statement. 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.

The announcement came amid a backlash over the absence of actors or filmmakers of color in this year’s Oscars nominations, prompting actor Will Smith, director Spike Lee and a handful of others to say they plan to shun the Oscars ceremony on February 28.

The changes were approved by the board Thursday night in an emergency meeting.

The academy’s membership is made up of roughly 6,200 movie professionals around the world, and it was not immediately clear how many would be purged from the voting rolls by the new rule.

The Academy is adding three new seats to its 51-person board of governors.

“I applaud their attempts to do something about it”, said Don Cheadle, who was nominated for best actor in 2005 for his performance in “Hotel Rwanda”.

Longer-term change faces a deeply entrenched white, male-dominated system of studios, talent agencies and production companies that have been slow to welcome minorities in lead acting roles or as directors and screenwriters. It is understood that in addition to the new members, there will also be a move to review the voting status of new and current members every 10 years.

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. “So what we really need is people in positions to greenlight those stories, not a hunk of metal”, he said.

The Academy’s action is arriving in the midst of weeks of sustained, widespread criticism regarding its recently announced 2016 nominations. The organization invited 322 new members to join past year, with an emphasis on women, young people and people of color.

Shawn Edwards, co-founder of the African-American Film Critics Association, said this change was crucial to gradually change the academy make-up. “I commend the Academy for what they’ve done”.

UCLA’s latest annual Hollywood Diversity Report concluded that women and minorities are substantially underrepresented in front of and behind the camera, even while audiences show a strong desire for films with diverse casts.