Golden Globes president Lorenzo Soria defends decision on picking an ‘all-male’ Best Director category despite backlash
The president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the head honcho of the Golden Globes has been in the headlines for creating quite a stir with the nominations for Best Director in a Motion Picture. According to a report by the Daily Mail, the nominations, which reflect only male directors, have enraged their female counterparts, who had equal prospect to make to the list. But Soria defends the decision saying that the association doesn’t “vote by gender” and that the nominations were only a result of the work that came out of these people. But, as disappointed as the women directors were, they took to social media.
According to the committee, there has only been one female winner in the Best Director, Motion Picture category, which was in 1984, when Barbara Streisand took it home for ‘Yentl’. It’s been 77 years since the awards started and so far there have been only five nominations. And it was last in 2015 that a female director (Ava DuVernay for ‘Selma’) received a nomination for Best Director.
This disparity caused further uproar, especially among new generation directors like Alma Har’el. ‘Honey Boy’ director, @Almahareltweeted, “Unless we have a new category for women directors — the same way we have [separate] actor and actress categories — we won’t see any changes. I will not live my life as a filmmaker who plans to keep working subjected to a group of voters that doesn’t see us.”
She followed it with a list of a few female directors who made a difference this year with their movies this year. “Lulu Wang, Mati Diop, Greta Gerwig, Olivia Wilde, Lorene Scafaria, Marielle Heller, Melina Matsoukas, Chinonye Chukwu, Céline Sciamma. Made films this year that reached people and touched them. That's our awards. No one can take that away.”
The media also reported a comment from Barry Adelman, one of the executive producers of the Golden Globes, stating, “Every year, somebody gets left out, a lot of the big television shows are created by women, so I think across the board there is a good representation.”
While the debate continues and keeps the industry divided, the Golden Globes is all set to air live on January 5, 2020, on NBC.