Through dance, music, fashion and art, the documentary RWANDArt explores Rwanda’s growing creative industry through the stories of a new generation of creative entrepreneurs.
Idris Elba to Parliament, “I’m not just a black actor, don’t lock me in a box”
Actor Idris Elba makes a heartfelt appeal to the British Parliament to act against the lack of diversity in media, as Hollywood faces a similar controversy.
Every single one of the nominees in the acting categories of the 88th edition of the Oscars are white, just like last year. This has re-stoked a fire of controversy that has long burned at the heart of Hollywood, namely the absence of diversity among those chosen as the best performers of the year by the United States’ Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (“the Academy”). Director Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith will be boycotting the award ceremony, which will take place on the 28th of February in Los Angeles, and a Twitter storm denouncing the Oscars has congregated around the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.
It is in the midst of such heightened media attention around an issue as old as cinema itself that British actor Idris Elba spoke to his country’s Parliament on the 18th of January about the need to encourage diversity in media. Best known for his role in the US series The Wire, the actor of Ghanian descent made a passionate appeal for more diverse and multidimensional roles for people of colour, women, individuals with disabilities and of diverse sexual orientations, as well as more empowered positions for such groups in the creative industries in general. He used his personal experience as a black actor in Britain to demonstrate just how much needs to be done to create more inclusive television and film that is also more reflective of reality.
Diversity in the modern world is more than just skin colour, it’s gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, social background, and, most important of all as far as I’m concerned, diversity of thought. Because if you have genuine diversity of thought among people making TV and film, then you won’t accidentally shut out any of the groups I just mentioned.
As an up and coming actor … when a script called for a ‘black male’, it wasn’t describing a character. It was a describing a skin colour. A white man was described as ‘a man with a twinkle in his eye’. My eyes may be dark, but they definitely twinkle!
Today I’m asking the TV and film industry to think outside the box, and to get outside the box. This isn’t a speech about race, this is a speech about imagination. Diversity of thought.
Filmmaker Matthew Cassel follows a family’s journey from Syria towards Europe, documenting the perilous voyage in six episodes.
We talk to Avo Kaprealian, the documentary filmmaker who shares a compelling account of everyday life in war-torn Aleppo. The city he once called home.
Music plays a key role in the Black Lives Matter movement. A journey through the most powerful beats in support of the struggle against racism in the US.
The Upopoy National Ainu Museum has finally opened. With it the indigenous people of Hokkaido are gaining recognition but not access to fundamental rights.
Ennio Morricone passed away at the age of 91. We remember the life and works of one of the most important soundtrack composers of the 20th century.
We must listen to witnesses on the ground who are seeing abuse, duplicity, and the dereliction of duty firsthand. Our lives depend on their voices being heard. The op-ed by Sean Thomas, International Director of Investigations at Animal Equality.
Costa Rica celebrated its first same-sex marriage when two women, Alexandra Quiros and Dunia Araya, celebrated their wedding: an “extraordinary moment”.
A woman doesn’t want to leave her land in the Peruvian Andes despite pressure from those who want to expand one of the world’s largest gold mines, in the documentary Aguas de Oro.