Skip to main content

Geena Davis receives honorary Oscar for work against gender bias

LOS ANGELES: Actress Geena Davis urged Hollywood filmmakers to take new steps to address an ongoing gender imbalance in media as she accepted an honorary Oscar on Sunday for her work to promote more women on screen.

While equality for women lags throughout U.S. society, it is even worse in film and television, said Davis, the Thelma and Louise star who founded a nonprofit research group called the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in 2004.

“However abysmal the numbers are in real life, it’s far worse in fiction – where you make it up!” said Davis as she accepted the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. “We make it worse.”

The actress spoke to an audience of hundreds of Hollywood power players at the Governors Awards, an annual black-tie event hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the group that hands out the Oscars.

Davis, who won a supporting actress Oscar in 1989 for The Accidental Tourist, said gender inequality on screen “can be fixed absolutely overnight.”

She urged everyone in the audience to take the scripts they were currently working on and “cross out a bunch of first names, of ensemble characters and supporting characters, and make them female.”

“With one stroke, you have created some non-stereotyped characters that might turn out to be even more interesting now that they have a gender swap,” she said.

“Let’s make this change happen,” she added.

Other honorees were Wes Studi, who was recognized for his commitment to authentic portrayals of Native Americans in films from Dances with Wolves to The Last of the Mohicans, and Blue Velvet filmmaker David Lynch.

Italian writer-director Lina Wertmuller also received a lifetime achievement award from the film academy. Wertmuller was the first of just five women ever to be nominated for best director. That was in 1977 for her film “Seven Beauties.”

Like Davis, Wertmuller called out Hollywood for tending to favor men, according to actress Isabella Rossellini, who translated Wermuller’s acceptance speech from Italian to English.

“She would like to change the name Oscar to Anna,” Rossellini said.

The post Geena Davis receives honorary Oscar for work against gender bias appeared first on ARY NEWS.



from ARY NEWS https://ift.tt/2qLpUhY
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trump says he urged team to ‘slow’ COVID-19 testing

US President Donald Trump said Saturday he was encouraging health officials in his administration to slow down coronavirus testing, arguing that increased tests lead to more cases being discovered. The president has claimed falsely on several occasions that surges of COVID-19 in several states can be explained by greater numbers of diagnostic tests. At his first rally since the outbreak forced nationwide shutdowns in March, Trump told the crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma that testing was a “double-edged sword.” The United States — which has more deaths and cases than any other country — has carried out more than 25 million coronavirus tests, placing it outside the top 20 countries in the world, per capita. “Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases,” Trump argued. “So I said to my people ‘slow the testing down.’ They test and they test.” It was not clear from Trump’s tone if he was playing to the crowd, who ...
Post a Comment
Read more

IT ministry forms panel to review social media rules

ISLAMABAD: While uproar against the new rules to regulate social media continues from various segments of society, including parliamentarians, the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and civil society, the information technology ministry on Friday formed a committee to review the rules. The federal cabinet approved the rules on Feb 11, but later after opposition from various quarters, including companies that manage different social media platforms, the prime minister announced that a fresh consultation process would be launched over the Citizens Protection (Against Online Harm) Rules 2020. The committee formed by the IT ministry is headed by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority Chairman Amir Azeem Bajwa while its members are Eazaz Aslam Dar, additional secretary of IT; Tania Aidrus, member of the Strategic Reforms Imple­mentation Unit, Prime Minister Office; and Dr Arslan Khalid, focal person on digital media at the PM Office. Federal Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Ma...
Post a Comment
Read more

IS confirms Baghdadi’s death, vows revenge

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.—AP BEIRUT: The Islamic State militant group confirmed the death of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a statement on Thursday and named his replacement as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi. “We mourn you ... commander of the faithful,” said Abu Hamza al-Quraishi — presented as the group’s new spokesman — in an audio statement. Baghdadi, who led IS since 2014 and was the world’s most wanted man, was killed in a US special forces raid in Syria’s province of Idlib on Sunday. The group also confirmed the killing in another raid the following day of the group’s previous spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir. The statement said the group’s legislative and consultative body convened after the 48-year-old Iraqi-born jihadist chief’s death. “The Islamic State shura council convened immediately after confirming the martyrdom of Sheikh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the elders of the holy warriors agreed” on a replacement, said the seven-minute message. Little is known abou...
Post a Comment
Read more