Annie Martin reports on UPI that the British Independent Film Awards introduce gender-neutral acting categories.

She says:

“BIFA will replace its gendered acting categories with five new awards: Best Lead Performance, Best Supporting Performance, Best Joint Lead Performance — for two or three performances that are the joint focus of the film — and Best Ensemble. The new categories join Breakthrough Performance. Other organizations have also switched to gender-neutral categories, including the Berlin Film Festival, the MTV Movie Awards and the BRIT Awards.”

Meanwhile, John Norris argues on The Daily Beast Why the Oscars Should Do Away With Gender.

He says:

“It’s long past time for acting awards like the Oscars to be non-gendered. Whenever this, to my mind, sensible, modest proposal is brought up, the objections generally come down to three areas: (1) that if men and women competed against one another for Oscars, Emmys, Tonys, BAFTAs and Golden Globes, the result would be an XY tsunami, in which women would hardly stand a chance; (2) the inequality of acting opportunity in Hollywood and beyond is so skewed in favor of men that having separate female categories is necessary; and (3) that no one, from award show producers to networks to the public, wants to see any change that could potentially decrease the number of stars on stage or on a red carpet in a designer gown.“

He proposes that the two five-person categories should be combined into one ten-person category. Note that Best Picture is a ten film category.

My take: just to play Devil’s Advocate, I think we should acknowledge more excellence by female creators and therefore recognize male and female winners in every category. How about separate nights for each Academy Awards: one night the women can bask in their collective successes and the next the men can duke it out among each other for supremacy?

Troy Kotsur won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in CODA last Sunday night.

CODA also won Best Picture, the first time a streamer (AppleTV) has done so. CODA’s director Siân Heder won in the adapted screenplay category as well.

Kotsur becomes the second Deaf actor to win an Oscar; Marlee Matlin, his co-star in CODA, won Best Actress in 1987, 35 years ago.

I asked Sarah Nicole Faucher, a filmmaker with a hearing deficit in Victoria, how she felt about CODA’s wins:

“They made me feel hopeful that positive change is coming, not just for profoundly deaf people who only communicate with ASL, but for all disabled people like UK actors Alex Brooker (paraplegic amputee), Heather Mills (amputee), and Genevieve Barr (professional lip-reader) as well as American actors like R.J. Mitte (cerebral palsy) and the very well-known Peter Dinklage (achondroplasia). Better late than never.”

Sarah Nicole won CineVic’s CineSpark competition last year and her short “Going Home” will premiere at this year’s Short Circuit Pacific Rim Short Film Festival.

“For that, I’m very grateful. The director, Trent Peek, and the cameraman-editor, Connor Nyhan, are passionate about the project. ‘Going Home’ is a true drama based on an incident that happened not quite 40 years ago. Some members of our team experienced synchronistic incidents just prior and during the filming. Disabled people, some with hidden disabilities, including two background actors, came up to us expressing that no one makes films about difficulties experienced by people with disabilities. They were moved, touched, and thanked us that it was not ‘inspiration porn‘. My hopes for specifically deaf and hard of hearing stories are that they are coming for the sake of an inclusive, diversified society. We can not be afraid of change.”

My take: of course, there was another “upset” at the Oscars. All I’m going to say about that is that Chris Rock ought to know better than to poke fun at a black woman’s hair. After all, he made a documentary all about it, called “Good Hair“: