Berlin Film Festival Switching to Gender Neutral Acting Awards

[TweeBree]

www.indiewire.com/2020/08/berlin-film-festival-gender-neutral-acting-awards-1234581984/

“We believe that not separating the awards in the acting field according to gender comprises a signal for a more gender-sensitive awareness in the film industry,” said Berlinale directors Rissenbeek and Chatrian in a statement.

Watch as men scoop all the awards, since they tend to be cast in more interesting roles and more appreciated than female actors.

They mean sex of course. Sigh.

Watch as men scoop all the awards, since they tend to be cast in more interesting roles and more appreciated than female actors.

Quite. Despite the original premise of gender neutrality in reality so called gender neutral almost always skews to male.

In an ideal world it would be a good idea, but...

@Suffrajester

Watch as men scoop all the awards, since they tend to be cast in more interesting roles and more appreciated than female actors.

Exactly. It’s very male-dominated and the stories almost always center them or give them a proper voice/perspective.

I remember reading the reason they made Black Mask stand out so much in Birds of Prey instead or the actual Birds of Prey because the ladies who made the film didn’t want it to be seen as a chick-movie.

They want to highlight inequality by removing the thing we introduced to stop inequality.

Totally agree @TweeBree - it's all just ridiculous if it weren't so sad and to the detriment of women in general!

There are very few films were a woman is the lead character, and it's usually the lead character that gets the attention and acclaim.

I'd like to see a new category that gives awards to films that pass the Bechdel test.

The Grammy Awards abolished male and female categories in 2012. Between 2013 and 2018, over 90% of all nominees were male. I believe the ratio of male vs female winners is similar.

When this was raised as an issue with the Recording Academy President in 2018, he said women needed to step up. If talented women were out there, the academy would welcome them.

Here's a study that looked at the underrepresentation of women in the (US) music industry as a whole:

assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/inclusion-in-the-recording-studio.pdf

This reminds me of how the Orange Prize (now called the Women's Prize for Fiction I think) came about - after no women writers were shortlisted for the Booker in 1991.

@Suffrajester

Watch as men scoop all the awards, since they tend to be cast in more interesting roles and more appreciated than female actors.

YES

Wrong I think. You can base the award on the character they play in any case, as 99.99999% of men's roles will be played by men etc.

What does that mean?

What would happen if the Oscars mooted this one?

its bollocks if there is one acting ward for men and woman it would go to men 9/10 times and it will have to have women pointing out the patent unfairness another ten years of wranging before anything is changed meanwhile women actors miss out on the kudos of major awards

sigh .. I'm getting tired of this