Ahhh, Oscars season! The fashion, the glitz, the glamour. All to commemorate the best of the best in the film industry in 2017. Personally, as a hard-core movie buff, awards season is one of my favorite times of the year. The 90th Academy Awards, which aired live last Sunday, was a defining moment in film history, as this year’s Oscar nominees set the mark for new records in Oscar history.
With her nominations for Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Song, Mary J. Blige is the first person to be nominated for both acting and songwriting in the same year.
At the age of 89, James Ivory became the oldest person to win a competitive Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for “Call Me by Your Name.”
Rachel Morrison became the first woman to be nominated for Best Cinematography (“Mudbound”).
Jordan Peele became the fifth black filmmaker to be nominated for Best Director (in the critically acclaimed and fan favorite “Get Out”). On top of that, with his win for Best Original Screenplay, he became the first black screenwriter to win that award.
Just to name a few of the great accomplishments made in the filmmaking industry last year…
But something I found groundbreaking last weekend was the amount of films nominated for Academy Awards that had Deaf people involved.
As an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter myself, I could not have been prouder of the awareness for Deaf culture that was made with this year’s Oscar nominees. This year’s Best Picture, “The Shape of Water” uses American Sign Language throughout the movie.
Another significant win for the Deaf community was the Best Live Action Short Film award for “The Silent Child”, written by Chris Overton and Rachel Shenton, who are fluent in British Sign Language (BSL). Bringing Deaf culture and awareness to such a mainstream audience was so important for the Academy Awards and the film industry.
The Academy Awards continue to break barriers in filmmaking and have successfully given credentials to performers, screenwriters, directors, producers, makeup artists, etc. for nearly a century.
And Hollywood will only continue to break more records as the Oscars go on!