Dear April,

April,

I’m a little scared. I have been looking into some statistics lately about women in filmmaking, and you know how that is important to me. I have found that The Academy Awards, what we usually call the Oscars, has a series of awards awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Did you know the Academy is made up of 9,921 people? And the Awards started in May of 1929 and became Hollywood’s annual ceremony where twenty-four categories are announced and a winner is chosen to take home an Oscar. One category is very important to me, it is Best Director. The award has been given to seventy-two directors or directing teams. A woman has been nominated for Best Director award five times, although a woman has only won once, and women have been directing feature films since 1896. Therefore, it is shocking to see that nominations for women directors are so low. How can I compete with that?
Also, I noticed the number of years between each nomination was important to point out. The first nominee was in 1977. Forty-eight years after the first award was given. Then it took seventeen years for the next women to be nominated in 1994. Then another nine years till the next nomination in 2003. Then the first award won by a woman was in 2010 by Kathryn Bigelow. Then again took eight years for another nomination. There is quite a gap between each nomination. Even though women have been directing films longer than the awards were even considered. Therefore it concerns me, and makes me think, what can I do?
I want to find a way to support all women in filmmaking, not just pursuing directors or established ones. I want to fully support everyone. Therefore I believe in addressing the Academy, all of them. Because there is good to be done in the industry and it deserves a push in the right direction. By asking them to respond to gender inequality, since they are made up of thousands of filmmakers working in Hollywood, we can get it more publicly noticed. By reaching out past the borders of Hollywood, we can gather support from all women and men to support Hollywood’s change towards equality in the workplace.
The hope is that they will notice the unbalanced industry and want to pursue a new change in the workplace and the production process. From a new process and workplace, Hollywood can grow for the better of movies and the better of people. But there is the chance the Academy doesn’t respond or responds unexpectedly, but there can still be good to come from that. The community can see from their silence or choice of words what the Academy truly feels and from there is where we find a true need for change. There are almost 10,000 people who are considered members of this organization that is known by millions. How they respond will say a lot about them and who we are as an industry.

Your best friend