Academy joins race for change

Board members will meet January 26 to consider overhauling of voting system.

LOS ANGELES: With the 88th Academy Awards just around the corner, the board members have arranged a meeting on January 26 to fight the perception that the award ceremony is racist or elitist.

Following allegations by actors and commoners for the lack of diversity in its nominations, the board team of the Oscars are meeting to discuss and reach a conclusion over the issue.

Several insiders predict a return to 10 best-picture contenders, following the widely held opinion that Straight Outta Compton would have made the cut if there were more than this year’s eight, reported variety.com.



Another theory suggested that the preferential voting system for nominations will be overhauled, since a widely admired film could still fail to score a nomination because of a complicated system.

There are members who want to expand the acting categories to more than five nominations.

Performances such as that of actor Will Smith’s in Concussion and Idris Elba’s in Beasts of No Nation failed to receive a nomination and many Academy members agreed that there were far too many worthy contenders for the five slots. The strongest possibility is a rethink of membership rules.

Each of the Academy’s 14 branches have its own requirements for new members, but several Academy members said those rules are too strict and unrealistic in the current atmosphere.

“The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership. A review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity” Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), said on January 18. 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 22^nd,  2016.

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