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Berlin Film Festival Switching to Gender Neutral Acting Awards in 2021

MiyazakiHatesKojima

MiyazakiHatesKojima

Banned
www.indiewire.com

Berlin Film Festival Switching to Gender Neutral Acting Awards in 2021

Festival organizers have announced the 2021 festival is being planned as a physical event and not a virtual one.
www.indiewire.com www.indiewire.com

Berlin Film Festival directors Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian have announced a major change to the annual event: Beginning with the 2021 festival, the Silver Bear acting prizes will go gender neutral. A statement from the festival reads: “Instead of the awards for the Best Actor and the Best Actress, a ‘Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance’ and a ‘Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance’ shall each be awarded on a gender-neutral basis.” The Silver Bear prizes for actor and actress have been handed out since 1956. The most recent recipients are Elio Germano (“Hidden Away”) and Paula Beer (“Undine”) from the 2020 festival.

“We believe that not separating the awards in the acting field according to gender comprises a signal for a more gender-sensitive awareness in the film industry,” said Berlinale directors Rissenbeek and Chatrian in a statement.

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JimmyRustler

JimmyRustler

Gold Member
So the actors and actresses won‘t just compete against their own gender now but against everyone? Well, O guess that change will make em stoked. :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
S

slugbahr

Unconfirmed Member
eh, i don't see the problem.
best performance. everyone is eligible.
 
J

jason10mm

Gold Member
Better hope a man doesn't win twice in a row, Berliners gonna build a wall or something.

I think this kind of stuff is going to spell the end of awards shows in general, at least for such subjective things as acting. They can't collapse the categories yet service IDPOL at the same time.
 
MrS

MrS

Banned
slugbahr said:
Yeah, ok, the event saves on giving out rewards (saves time too)

But why is one reward for each cactegory a bad thing?
Why is this "some bullshit"?
Click to expand...
It sucks for actors because if this becomes the norm, fewer actors and actresses will have their work spotlighed and it will lead to less exposure for their films.
 
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J

jason10mm

Gold Member
slugbahr said:
But why is one reward for each cactegory a bad thing?
Why is this "some bullshit"?
Click to expand...

Because when a Meryl Streep or Tom Hanks shows up, nobody else gets anything.

These types of award shows seem to do best when they can service a couple large but divergent audiences. Try to serve a bunch of splinter groups...chaos. Try to give just one big award...Not a lot of interest.

It certainly can be done, look at cooking or restaurant awards. But then, I think most of those go to men and no one really cares.
 
S

slugbahr

Unconfirmed Member
MrS said:
It sucks for actors because if this becomes the norm, fewer actors and actresses will have their work spotlighed and it will lead to less exposure for their films.
Click to expand...

Oh no, won't someone please think of the actors! I don't think less exposure in this day and age is going to hurt much.
Why is having a single award per category a bad thing? Why do they need to be split by gender anyway?

jason10mm said:
Because when a Meryl Streep or Tom Hanks shows up, nobody else gets anything.

These types of award shows seem to do best when they can service a couple large but divergent audiences. Try to serve a bunch of splinter groups...chaos. Try to give just one big award...Not a lot of interest.

It certainly can be done, look at cooking or restaurant awards. But then, I think most of those go to men and no one really cares.
Click to expand...

And if they both show up, one of them gets nothing. So what.
 
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Reactions: MrS
MrS

MrS

Banned
slugbahr said:
Oh no, won't someone please think of the actors! I don't think less exposure in this day and age is going to hurt much.
Why is having a single award per category a bad thing? Why do they need to be split by gender anyway?
Click to expand...
Alright, I answered your question. So tell me, what's so good about this change? What's the point of doing it? Why are you defending it so fervently?
 
S

slugbahr

Unconfirmed Member
MrS said:
Alright, I answered your question. So tell me, what's so good about this change? What's the point of doing it? Why are you defending it so fervently?
Click to expand...
It's a change that doesn't seem that big a deal. To me.

It doesn't need to be "so good". But it isn't horrible and it isn't great. It's just a change.
I can't speak to the reasons for the decision made. Even if the organisers "explained" why, it wouldn't necessarily be the truth anyway.
I'm defending the lack of importance of the change, and disagreeing with the hedless chickens running around in this thread. Also, my first post was a rather simple one. It got responded to, I've replied. Is that wrong of me?
 
Fbh

Fbh

Member
On paper this seems fine.
The problem is that it will inevitably result in some great performances being left out in order to make nominations and winners diverse enough. Because god forbid that nominees on any given year are predominantly male, or that the award goes to male actors a couple of years in a row. Add to that that they'll probably also have make everything as racially diverse as possible and they might as well start giving out the awards through a random raffle from anyone that was in a movie that year
 
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DESTROYA

DESTROYA

Member
WTF is the Berlin Festival and why should we care ?

All these award shows are pretty stupid anyway , bunch of overpaid A-holes rubbing each others balls
 
belmarduk

belmarduk

Member
That makes sense. Women are just as capable of acting in and directing movies as men. Its not like transgender people in womens sports or anything.
 
Airola

Airola

Member
There are no separate awards for the best male and female directors/writers/editors/cinematographers etc. So that could be used as an argument for why there shouldn't be separate categories for acting either.

So why there are those categories for male and female actors in the first place? Is it because the performances tend to be in some deeper level fundamentally different? Are people looking for different things in male and female acting? Is a strong dramatic male performance somehow different with strong dramatic female performance? Maybe they just can't really be compared to each other and maybe that's why they are judged separately?

Or is the reason that men would win more awards for whatever reason?

I kinda see where they are coming from but I also see the chance to politicize those awards too much. Will it now be so that the judges will put even more focus on gender now that there shouldn't be any focus on that anymore? Will the judges now vote for certain gender to avoid being judged as a "sexist judge" for one way or another? Will they feel a need to vote for a woman if the winner has been a man for the past few times? Or vice versa?

I think separating categories for men and women has been a good thing in acting awards, as there has always been the same amount of winners for men and women in that category and it has been impossible to award them for sexist reasons. So I think this might be a situation where a previous non-sexist tradition has been faulty seen as sexist, and the result will be that the previous non-sexist way to do it ends up becoming sexist.
 
RokkanStoned

RokkanStoned

Member
The separating of gender when it comes to awards like this has been done because of problems with one gender feeling overlooked. Instead of arguing about who deserved it, they found out that by dividing by gender, there'll be no bickering about the gender of the winner. So while gendered awards feel weird and petty, they've had a good rationale behind them. What do you think would be written if 4 years in a row, men win the "best actor" award? You'll have bickering and calls about sexism and you might potentially end up with a person being chosen for their gender, because the pattern of winners become more relevant than the actors.
Then again, "best actor" is overall just a dubious award and makes for a hard comparison, often also being a big wankfest about character acting.
 
J

jason10mm

Gold Member
slugbahr said:
Oh no, won't someone please think of the actors! I don't think less exposure in this day and age is going to hurt much.
Why is having a single award per category a bad thing? Why do they need to be split by gender anyway?



And if they both show up, one of them gets nothing. So what.
Click to expand...

Well, currently if Meryl and Tom show up, they both win an award. Gender divide works well in this category because the audience is...shocker, half male and half female. Imagine a "white only" award in China or an "asian only" award in the West. That is such a tiny fraction of the audience, not to mention the competitors, that it doesn't make a lot of sense.

I suspect a lot of the non-acting awards are non-gendered because A. they are heavily weighted towards one or the other (costuming, for example, seems to be very female dominated) or B. barely a tolerable category in the first place (best sound editing, for example).

Director is probably the most glaring exception though I'd postulate it was 95% men until fairly recently and even now is probably a 80/20 split. So "Best female director" would be won by like 3 women for the past 2 decades. Though I'd accept an argument that IF THERE HAD BEEN a "Best Female Director" oscar or equivalent, it might push those few women into more jobs more quickly and they would pull in more women in their wake. As it stands, I see a handful of outstanding female directors and a bunch that did a decent job once and are now being handed the reigns of big projects with middling success (which mirrors the career of most male directors, quite frankly).
 
S

slugbahr

Unconfirmed Member
Still yet to see what's so bad about it. All these comments about "men only winners" and what that will lead to ... same thing happens anyway with current awards - first black, first foreigner, etc etc
Half of the people that are not happy with this change are probably the ones going on about "go woke, go broke", participation awards suck, make it a level playing field, etc etc .... so what is the actual problem here??
 
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