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 A handful of critically acclaimed movies featuring people of
color are vying for awards attention this year, ranging from a
Pulitzer Prize-winning family drama to historical tales of men
and women fighting for dignity.
The 2016 Oscars were mired in controversy when not a single
person of color was nominated in the acting categories for a
second straight year, and all eight best-picture nominees
reflected white, mostly male, culture.
"2017 could be historic because theoretically we could see all
four acting Oscars go to someone of color. It's possible," said
Tom O'Neil, editor of awards prediction website Goldderby.com.
What is exciting about the 2017 contenders is the range of
topics, said Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph J. Bunche
Center for African-American Studies at the University of
California, Los Angeles.
"The criticism of Hollywood has been in the past that if you are
making a black film, it's either going to be about slavery or
civil rights," Hunt said.
That is hardly the case for "Moonlight," a heart-wrenching,
contemporary tale of a black boy growing up in Miami struggling
with bullying, his sexual identity and the scourge of drugs.
Made with little-known actors, it has gotten some of the best
reviews of the year and has been nominated for six Independent
Spirit Awards.
"Hidden Figures," opening on Christmas Day, is the true story of
three unsung African-American women mathematicians (played by
Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae and Taraji P. Henson) who worked
on NASA's early space missions, while "Lion," starring Dev
Patel, is the real-life tale of an Indian child who gets lost in
Calcutta and is adopted by a white couple in Australia.
"Loving" focuses on an unassuming blue-collar white man and
black woman in Virginia who were sentenced to prison in 1958 for
getting married. "Fences," the movie version of the
Pulitzer-winning stage play by August Wilson, is expected to
bring Oscar nominations for stars Denzel Washington and Viola
Davis.
ALTERNATIVES TO 'BIRTH OF A NATION'
Nominations for Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild awards are
announced next week, while Oscar nominees are unveiled on Jan
24.
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Most of this year's contenders were in production before the
Hollywood soul-searching prompted by #OscarsSoWhite. But unlike some
previous years, movie studios are throwing money behind promoting
them.
"If you have a film that is diverse in terms of the cast and tells
nontraditional stories, you're definitely going to get some mileage
out of that and promote it. And the media are going to highlight it
in ways that maybe they didn't four or five years ago," said Hunt.
Ironically, "The Birth of a Nation," the slave rebellion drama that
looked like an Oscar front-runner earlier this year, now appears to
be out of awards contention.
Bought for $17.5 million in a bidding war at the Sundance Film
Festival in January, the movie was later overshadowed by headlines
about a 17-year-old rape case involving its writer, director and
lead actor, Nate Parker, who was acquitted in a 2001 trial.
The film has taken in just $16 million at the North American box
office since opening in October.
"The controversy really tripped up the film. It made it uncool to
see the film even though it had done very well at early festivals
and with film critics," said Goldderby.com's O'Neil.
Fortunately for an awards season looking to redeem itself on the
diversity front, "there are other alternatives to fall back on,"
O'Neil said.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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