Academy Awards: Best picture win by low budget 'Moonlight'

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Academy Awards not racist anymore "Thanks to Trump" award ceremony host announces to national TV, as black actors win many awards.

MOVIES

Academy Awards: Best picture win by low budget 'Moonlight'

27/02/2017
Bloomberg News agency

LOS ANGELES -- In an upset made all the more shocking by a wrong announcement, “Moonlight” won the Oscar for best picture on Sunday night.

Winning best picture is a crowning achievement for African-American filmmakers after two years of controversy over institutional racism in Hollywood.

MISTAKEN ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE WINNER

Actor Warren Beatty mistakenly announced that “La La Land,” the favourite, had won the best picture award.

The winners had already taken the stage when he was corrected.

Instead of the retro musical, a coming-of-age film about a black gay man, distributed by tiny A24, was Sunday night’s big winner.

Moonlight was quite a low budget film ($1.5 million) compared to La La Land ($30 million) (see here & here).

Oscar voters also honoured black actors for both supporting actor categories in a ceremony peppered with political barbs at President Donald Trump.

“La La Land,” won six of its 14 nominations, including best director for Damien Chazelle, who at 32 is the youngest to win the award, and best actress for Emma Stone.

Casey Affleck won best actor for “Manchester by the Sea.”

BLACK ACTORS NOT OVERLOOKED AS IN THE PAST

Mahershala Ali’s portrayal of a drug-dealing father figure in “Moonlight” and Viola Davis’s embattled housewife in “Fences,” both supporting roles, were early winners in Sunday night’s ceremony.

Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney won for adapted screenplay for “Moonlight,” the first time multiple African-American writers have received an Oscar in the same year.

“This goes out to all those black and brown boys and girls and all those non - gender - conforming,” McCraney said. “This is to all of you.”

Ali and Davis were two of six black actors nominated for an Academy Award after two years when people of colour were overlooked.

In response to complaints about a lack of diversity, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences last year brought in 683 new members [to judge and vote on the awards], almost double the number added the previous year, to include a more diverse group of people.

In more African-American themed happenings at the awards, film director Ava DuVernay, whose film “13th” about mass incarceration was nominated for best documentary, posted a picture of herself on social media holding a sweater with the name Trayvon, in memory of Trayvon Martin, the teenager gunned down in 2012.

Her film lost to “O.J.: Made in America,” which explores the racial themes behind the 1995 murder trial of the former football star O.J. Simpson.

OSCARS NOT RACIST ANYMORE, THANKS TO TRUMP

The Academy Awards was hosted this year on ABC by Jimmy Kimmel, an American television host, producer, writer, comedian, and voice actor.

The awards can boost the fortunes of small films and create new power brokers in Hollywood.

More importantly, they’re an important cultural touchstone, drawing more than 30 million viewers in the US alone.

A lack of diversity remains an issue in front of and behind the camera, and the #OscarsSoWhite Twitter campaign of the last two years clearly bruised Hollywood, normally known as a bastion of liberalism.

“Thank you, President Trump,” the host Kimmel said in his opening monologue.

“Remember last year when it seemed like the Oscars were racist? That’s gone, thanks to him.”

STANDING OVATION FOR MERYL STREEP'S CRITICISM OF TRUMP

Kimmel led the Academy Awards audience in a standing ovation for actress Meryl Streep.

The election of Trump, a Republican, in November also gave this year’s awards ceremony special significance, since actors such as Meryl Streep have directly drawn the president’s ire for using their celebrity to make political statements.

Streep, nominated for best actress this year for “Florence Foster Jenkins,” drew Trump’s attention after a speech at the Golden Globes criticising the president and urging viewers to support a free press.

Trump responded by tweeting that Streep, a 20-time Oscar nominee and three-time winner, is an overrated actress.

TRUMP REFUSED CHALLENGE TO TWEET ABOUT OSCAR JOKES

That was one of several jokes at the president’s expense, including several entreaties by Kimmel for Trump to tweet about the proceedings.

As of the end of the ceremony, he had not obliged.

HOLLYWOOD BATTLING TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS

Few other presenters or winners made overt political statements.

Ruth Negga, nominated for her role in “Loving,” and Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the musical “Hamilton,” were among actors wearing a blue ribbon Sunday night in support of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has battled Trump’s immigration restrictions in court.

This year the Oscars has been directly affected by President Trump’s policies. Asghar Farhadi, the Iranian director of best foreign film winner “The Salesman,” said in a statement read at the ceremony that he boycotted the event in solidarity with those affected by “inhumane” travel restrictions Trump attempted to impose on Iran and other majority-Muslim countries.

“Dividing the world into the ‘us and enemies’ categories creates fear,” said Farhadi. His film was distributed by Amazon.com Inc, whose chief executive officer Jeff Bezos was in the audience.

Khaled Khateeb, the Syrian cinematographer of documentary short-feature winner “The White Helmets,” was barred entry to the US, according to the Associated Press. The film, distributed by Netflix Inc, is about volunteer rescue workers in war-torn Syria.

INTERNET-BASED AMAZON & NETFLIX GET FIRST OSCARS IN CHANGING MOVIE WORLD

“The Salesman” and “The White Helmets” were the first Oscar wins for Amazon and Netflix and the first for streaming-video services, a reflection of how the technology industry infiltrating Hollywood. Amazon’s “Manchester by the Sea” also garnered a best original screenplay award for Kenneth Lonergan.