New Urban Awards Season- A Closer Look At Oscars 2019: How African-Americans Showed Up & Showed Out Live & In Living Color to Take Major Prizes At This Year's ACADEMY AWARDS
As a lead into spring, international awards season for fine and performing arts came to a close this past Monday with the 91st Annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles, California- highlighting America's best and brightest in motion picture arts and sciences. For Hollywood's most glamorous night of the year, trophies were awarded across categories spanning performance, production, sound, and visual arts in long & short film, documentary, and animation. In a marked turn from previous years, efforts by former President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (MAPAS) President Cheryl Boone Issacs (2013-2017) worked diligently to expand the diversity of members of the Academy to reflect varied stories, perspectives, and experiences in its 6,000 + membership- resulting in the recognition of a rich pool of diverse nominees for Oscar races thereafter, aptly rewarded for their efforts on Monday night. Of all the nominees, here's a look at the fiercest African Americans who made the cut, giving their all doing their best for their craft at the Academy Awards.
A first-generation Egyptian- American son, Amazon series star Rami Malek (Mr. Robot) captured the eyes and imaginations of the film world in the critically panned, but publicly loved biopic celebrating Freddy Mercury in "Bohemian Rhapsody".
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For 35 years in American television and film, she's been the Girl Next Door, Dependable Best Friend, Whippersnap Legal Mind & American Sweetheart. On Monday, actress/director Regina King finally takes her place on the stage to accept her Best Supporting Actress Oscar, in her role as a loving family matriarch in Barry Jenkins' acclaimed film, "If Beale Street Could Talk".
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He won his first Academy Award in Barry Jenkins' 2017 Best Picture coming of age tale, "Moonlight". Monday night, Mahershala Ali brought the gold home again for Best Supporting Actor in his portrayal of jazz musician Dr. Don Shirley in the film, "Green Book".
He's the might be the smallest of the gang, but is the unapologetically the loudest, with the longest (and arguably most contentious) relationship with the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences for nearly three decades: eclectic auteur Spike Lee scores a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar from his peers after taking the Grand Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival with the Palm d'Or for BlacKkKlansman. Fun movie trivia: Lee dressed for the occasion in purple to honor the late artist Prince, whom he revealed was partly responsible for quietly funding the production of Lee's 1992 film, "Malcolm X". Malcolm X went on to earn 2 Oscar nominations for Denzel Washington (Best Lead Actor) & Ruth Carter (Costume Design).
Alongside collaborator and fellow Oscar-winner Jay Hart, she envisioned and manifested an entire Afro-Futuristic nation based on the seed inspiration of a 1960s Marvel comic and anthropological study of the African continent. With her visionary art design for the largest blockbuster to hit global movie screens, New Orleans bred, California based Hannah Beachler became the first black woman to be nominated for and win the Oscar for Best Production Design.
Marvel fans Comic book nerds everywhere rejoiced at director/animator Peter's Ramsey's Best Animated Feature win for "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse". The story follows the journey of a young Afro-Latino named Miles Morales, who inadvertently becomes a Peter Parker protegè groomed to follow in Spider-Man's footsteps. Ramsey originally hails from the Crenshaw district of LA, and his 30-year career as a unit director, illustrator, and storyboard artist encompasses an endless array of Hollywood hits- including Rise of The Guardian, Independence Day, Men In Black, Sharktale, Shrek the Third, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Castaway.
