There’s just a few weeks to go until the 90th Academy Awards are upon us. It’s been a great year for film, the likes of The Shape Of Water, Darkest Hour, Lady Bird, Call Me By Your Name, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Post gracing our screens in the last twelve months, all of which feature heavily amongst this year’s nominations.
Nominated in the best director category this year is none other than Greta Gerwig, the actress turned filmmaker whose debut feature Lady Bird is also up for best feature. But did you know that Gerwig is only the fifth female to secure a best director nomination from the Academy? The folks over at Betway Insider have put together a ‘Women At The Oscars: A History of Academy Snubs’ feature, from which we took that fact – the other four nominees are Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties, Jane Campion for The Piano, Sofia Coppola for Lost In Translation and of course Kathryn Bigalow for The Hurt Locker, the only women to walk away the golden statue.
Whether or not Gerwig manages to walk away with the award remains to be seen as it is a very crowded field, Guillermo del Toro the current hot favourite to win with his superb The Shape Of Water, a film which is still to be released in the UK (as is Lady Bird).
Betway’s article drills down into more baffling facts from the awards over the years – like out of a possible 162 chances to win a screenwriting statue, only 14 women have managed to take home an Oscar. Notable examples are the like of Campion once again for The Piano in 1994, Coppola for Lost in Translation ten years later in 2004, and and Diablo Cody for Juno a little later in 2008. Callie Khouri’s gong for Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise was the win that really sparked conversations about feminism and sexism in Hollywood though, all of the way back in 1990, her award the first one given to a solo female for an original screenplay, and rightly so.
With equal pay being such a hot topic across every industry, it’s hard to take in that out of the 5000-plus voters that decide who gets nominated and ultimately wins the Academy Awards each year, 72% are men. This may account for some of the figures above, but already times are changing, the Academy having vowed in 2016 to double female membership within four years.
This year’s Oscars will be dished out in Hollywood on the 4th of March, with women receiving 40 nominations across all non-acting categories, the joint-highest total ever. Like the Golden Globes, it’s sure to be a night filled with glitz, glamour, huge political statements and hopefully a few surprises.
You can check out Betway’s article on ‘Women at the Oscars: A History of Academy Snubs’, a really great read, complete with a detailed accompanying video,all at the end of the link above.
