Wider change in Hollywood sought after Academy reforms

The academy’s Board of Governors, constituted by 51 members, unanimously adopted the membership rule reforms on Thursday night, but the changes will not affect voting this year’s awards.

The academy says it’s also actively recruiting new members global.

Beginning later this year, each new academy member’s voting status will last 10 years, and will be renewed if that new member has been active in movies during that decade. Voters’ ten-year terms will only be renewed if they are “active” in in film within that decade, and members can only achieve lifetime voting status after being considered active for three consecutive ten-year terms.

Stephanie Allain, a producer of “Beyond the Lights” and a member of the academy, said she was elated, especially with the addition of three members to Board of Governors who, she assumed, would be women or people of colour. 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 on Friday came after a week-long furore over a lack of diversity in the Oscars awards, with an all white cast in the nominations for the main acting categories for the second year running.

Some of Hollywood’s most prominent African-Americans, including Will Smith and Spike Lee, have said they won’t attend this year’s Oscar ceremony, which is to be hosted by Chris Rock.

Now – perhaps pushed to action by several celebrities’ plans to boycott this year’s Oscars – the Academy is actually doing something about it.

Potential limits for existing members: The academy set out to limit the voting powers of members not active in the film industry.

The Academy now has 6,261 voting members, all of whom work in the film industry.

African-American actor and director Don Cheadle has said the Academy’s planned membership changes to improve diversity are a “step in the right direction”.

Oscar-winners George Clooney and Lupita Nyong’o are also among those who have expressed disappointment over the nominations.

This year, the Academy had nothing to show for their promises made last year as the nominations all consisted of white actors.

“It’s unprecedented for the academy to make this kind of drastic overhaul”, said Tom O’Neil, editor of the awards-tracking website Gold Derby.

Ava DuVernay, director of last year’s best picture-nominee “Selma”, tweeted that the changes were “one good step in a long, complicated journey for people of color and women artists”.

A 2012 Los Angeles Times study found that the academy was 94 percent white and 77 percent male.

In its statement, the Academy said its goal was to double the number of minority members by 2020.

“There is a regressive slide towards separatism, towards racial and religious disharmony and that’s not the Hollywood that I want to leave behind”, he said. I appreciate the fact that the vote was unanimous, which indicates to me that the academy is serious about making the organization more inclusive and more diverse.

“Just received from The Academy”.