Los
Angeles: Director Deepa Mehta and actors Freida Pinto And Sharmila Tagore are
among the seven Indian-origin film personalities that have been invited by the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to be part of its new class
of members.
The
Academy invited a record 683 new members — 46 per cent female and 41 per cent
persons of colour —- as it aims to diversify following criticism of its largely
white and male membership.
Apart
from Tagore, Pinto and Mehta, British filmmaker of Indian origin Asif Kapadia
who bagged the Best Documentary Feature Oscar for Amy, based on the life of late singer Amy Winehouse — also features
in this year's class of new members.
The
other notable people of Indian-origin in the class of 2016 are Pixar animator
Sanjay Bakshi, producer Anish Savjani and animator Sanjay Patel.
The
diversity push was in response to the #OscarsSoWhite uproar that took place
earlier this year, when all-white acting nominees put a microscope on the
Academy’s largely white and male membership.
“We
are proud to welcome these new members to the Academy, and know they view this
as an opportunity and not just an invitation, a mission and not just a
membership,” Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a statement.
Isaacs
also encouraged Hollywood and the larger creative community to “open its doors
wider, and create opportunities for anyone interested in working in this
incredible and storied industry”.
Issacs,
who is the 35th and current President of AMPAS, is the first
African-American to hold this office, and the third woman, after Bette
Davis and Fay Kanin. The fact that she is a woman and a person of color speaks
in itself the diversity in the Academy.
The
new class is by far the largest ever announced by the Academy — and it features
celebrities aged as young as 24 and as old as 91.
On
the Hollywood front, the new members also include Boyega, Idris Elba, Brie
Larson. Also invited are Kate Beckinsale, Ryan Coogler, Michael B. Jordan and
Emma Watson.
Following
the controversy in January 2016, the Academy had vowed to make radical changes
to its voting requirements, recruiting process and governing structure, with an
aim towards increasing the diversity of its membership.
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