Women of the Lens Film Festival
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News I Commentary
Hair & Makeup Win for Ma Rainey
Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson won Academy Awards in the 2021 Oscars in the hair and makeup categories. They make history as they are the first ever Black women to do so.
If you’ve not seen the George C. wolfe directed Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Netflix original, it’s still available to view on the streaming platform.
The adapted production also stars Chadwick Boseman in his final peformance.
UK actors and the cost
of leaving
Ahhh…the perennial challenge for British Black actors; to stay or leave…the UK that is.
Daniel Kaluuya came away with an Academy Award for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his part in ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ in April of this year. The chances that he’d have been offered roles in the UK that would have taken him on a pathway to this climatic event are pretty slim.
What this tweet from @lailatweetzx hints at is that for many Black UK actors, their career trajectory falls short and any effort to propel themselves to fulfilment must include leaving UK shores for, more often than not, the USA. The move many Black UK actors make to then take up roles in Hollywood have become gristle for a few arguments about Brits taking on African American roles that should be for African American actors…so the argument goes.
A lot of this topic ties into an earlier piece of ‘news’ about the BBC’s Miranda Wayland who chastised the television detective series ‘Luther’ for being inauthentic. Wayland, the new ‘diversity’ head-honcho lamented that the character had no ‘roots’ of any kind, he didn’t eat Caribbean food (hmmm…do we know if ‘Luther’ is of Caribbean extraction?), nor did he have any Black friends.
The series creator, Neil Cross admitted that ‘Luther’ was not written as a Black man and that to maintain integrity, Cross couldn’t have written about that part of the character.
Erm…couldn’t Black writers have been hired to do the job? Why didn’t anyone on the ‘Luther’ production think to look at recruiting Black and/or people of colour you know, for authenticity?
Decisions, decisions. Should they stay or should they go?
Small Axe Series by
Steve McQueen
Director Steve McQueen’s ability to bring his Small Axe series of films to the BBC screen is no small feat.
The series title can take some credit from legendary reggae artist Bob Marley’s song of the same name. The song’s lyrics tells those in power that it doesn’t matter how big they get little by little, using a small axe and chipping away at iniquity, they can be cut down.
The Small Axe series contains Mangrove, Lovers Rock, Red, White and Blue and Alex Wheatle. They are like little love letters to the first generation of Windrush settlers who, upon finding that they were having a hard time being accepted as British by the establishment and the white population as a whole, found ways to push back at the Mother Country’s inequality in employment, education, the judiciary and housing, to name a few.
It was a time where those children carved out their own sense of style, fashion, music, art and filmmaking. The Lovers Rock genre for example was created in the UK by Windrush children. How special is that?!
A film series reflecting the life of that generation has been a long time coming…on mainstream platforms anyway. Here’s hoping that it sparks more productions – big and not so big, that celebrate a galvanising period in British history.
Small Axe now available on BBC iplayer
(image credit: BBC)
Diverse industry discussions continue
(image credit: Jess Hurd)
Leslie Jones to host MTV Moive & TV Awards
(image credit: Getty)
Leslie Jones (Ghostbusters/Coming 2 America) will host the MTV awards on 16th May in Los Angeles.
Idris Elba as ‘Luther’
(image: BBC)
One of the reasons this platform exists is to showcase and show off under represented women who get limited, if any form of exposure. What Nina Simone experienced should not happen again.
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