The film academy in Los Angeles, which awards the Oscars every year, has admitted mistakes according to allegations by “Selma” star David Oyelowo and director Ava DuVernay. “Ava & David, we understand you. Not acceptable. We strive to progress,” the film association said on Twitter on Friday.
The Academy, which has over 9,000 members, responded to Oyelowo’s allegations that some voters “Selma” were given a vote in the 2015 Oscar vote after the black filmmakers had previously protested openly against police brutality. Oyelowo, who played black civil rights activist Martin Luther King in “Selma” in 2015, had reported in an interview with “Screen International” that at the film premiere in New York he and his colleagues were wearing t-shirts that said “I can’t breathe” carried. They wanted to protest the killing of African American Eric Garner during a police check in New York. According to Oyelowo, some Academy members complained to the film producers about the action and were annoyed that they would not vote for “Selma” at the Oscars. “True story,” director DuVernay agreed with her main actor on Twitter.
The critically acclaimed film biography only won two Oscar nominations in the “Best Film” category in 2015, and the song “Glory”, the director and the British leading actor, went away empty-handed. Under the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, the Academy was later under fire because African-Americans were largely overlooked in the nominations. The film association has promised greater diversity in recent years by including more minorities in the predominantly white group.
Garner’s death in July 2014 had made headlines worldwide and his last words – “I can’t breathe” – had become a slogan of the “Black Lives Matter” movement . 46-year-old George Floyd also uttered these words during a brutal arrest in Minneapolis last week. He died after a white police officer pushed his knee into the neck of the man lying on the floor for almost nine minutes.
Source: Apa / dpa
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