The Oscars and the 'Selma' issue: Why is Hollywood so white?
By ITV News correspondent Nina Nannar
It's become one of the big issues not just at the Oscars but across the whole of the industry. Why is Hollywood so white?
They've been tackling this issue for years at the Icon Mann group gatherings - where the most influential black figures in film get together to promote more diversity in their industry.
Each person I spoke to at the event last night had something to say about the "Selma" issue. How is it they asked that a film so well received by critics and audiences was roundly ignored by voters in the American academy?
The omission of its cast in the acting categories and of its black female director Ava DuVernay, has caused outrage. How can that be, they surely made a mistake and they know it, Louis Gosset Junior, himself an Oscar winner, told me.
The film, incredibly the first major film about Martin Luther King Jr., is up for best film, but other than best song that's it.
The omission of its cast in the acting categories and of its black female director Ava DuVernay, has caused outrage. How can that be, they surely made a mistake and they know it, Louis Gosset Junior, himself an Oscar winner, told me.
Bill Dukes, an actor and now a successful director, says simply we've got to start playing the game properly, films are being green lighted by just a few white film executives, he says, we need "different eyeballs" as he put it.
David Oyelowo the star of Selma was at the gathering too. A British actor, he has made a career for himself in the US, and is now amongst the lead campaigners for diversity in film.
He argues that if only a few people are controlling what films get made, you can never have an industry where minorities are represented on screen. Why?
A recent survey showed that 94% of voters in the Academy are white. Most of them are male.
Critics say that until the personnel who run Hollywood start to commission and fund films that properly reflect the world we live in, Hollywood will remain what it is. A place where all the nominees in the Oscar acting categories are white.
The world's most famous and iconic film industry stands accused of ignoring vast tracts of its audience. Perhaps say critics when it starts to bite at the box office, the message may get through.