As a member of the AFI Scriptwriting Jury this year, I am aghast at the reading of the list of final nominations released on August the ninth and feel ashamed in having participated in the unrepresentative and undemocratic process in which the nominations are selected.
No matter which film may ultimately win the award, a nomination is supposed to be an important acknowledgment of the industry’s opinion of the four top contenders in each category. This year the nominations (especially for best film and best cinematography) seem to have created a situation where the nominations and ultimately the final award, obviously dont mean a thing.
This may be able to be dismissed as a personal opinion, but when films like "To Have and to Hold", "Life" and "Love and Other Catastrophes" are not included in the nominations for Cinematography in a year that is not particularly strong in that category, one must surely question the processes of selecting those nominations.
Six people sit in a room and decide which films are not eligible to be voted for by the hundreds of other industry personnel that may actually make their way to the final screenings and vote. Six people, sometimes opinionated, sometimes with personal axes to grind, sometimes embittered, usually out of work and sometimes with film credits of a highly variable quality. On my Director’s panel a couple of years ago, sat a renowned DOP who had been roped in to make up the numbers.
As any market researcher will confirm, such a small sample of the underemployed is obviously no guarantee of a result representative of a thriving film industry. Is it fair that people’s lives, reputations and careers are placed in the hands of such an erratic and unrepresentative system? How can an institute that purports to represent an industry hand over the selection of the top four films of the year to such a small handful (in our case six) of unemployed industry professionals of dubious repute (myself included)?
Does the AFI have any interest in their nomination system (and ultimately their awards) having any connection with any aesthetic judgment or the industry at large? Or is it just a handy way to diminish the amount of screenings shown to the AFI voters? Out of the twenty films submitted to the pre-selection process this year, sixteen films are now to be shown to the voters at large. But an accredited AFI industry voter may only vote for the four films nominated in each category, even though they might see an unnominated one they like better. Maybe the juries should decide upon which film wins the award while they’re at it? It’d make as much sense.
What if the six Directors/Scriptwriters or DOP’s this year were allergic to Rachmaninof? Would that mean a film such as "Shine" would’ve been knocked out and no-one would’ve been able to vote for it? Do six DOP’s with a feature film credit know what good cinematography is? Do the rest of us know what the four best films are? It seems not. Specially not this year anyway.
The nominations this year are an embarrassment to the film industry.
There must be a better way... No wonder Kennedy Miller refuse to enter
any of their films.
Richard Lowenstein.
Director - "Strikebound", "Dogs in Space", "Say
A Little Prayer"
