The international film festival Berlin Film awards “actor” and “actrice” to be more “gender neutral”
In an effort to be more sex-sensitive, the organizers of the festival announced that at their next event, in 2021, they would avoid granting separate acting awards to women and men.
On Monday, Festival Directors Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian made a public statement saying: “We believe it is the sign of a more sexually sensitive awareness of film industry not to separate awards according to gender in the field of acting.”
Reports from RT: While the ‘Silver Bear’ award has previously been given to actors and performers separately, typical for events, categories are now joined together to celebrate “best leading performance” and “best supporting performance.” RT reports.
The move will take place during the next festival in February 2021. Given the Covid-19 pandemic, the case will be partly human.
The organizers argued that the “lively link with the public” is a “significant and special aspect” of festivals in support of the decision to hosts a physical event. “When the Corona pandemic occurred, it has become even clearer that analog experiences in the cultural field are still needed,” they added.
The Berlin Film Festival is the first major to win sexless awards, with Cannes, Venice and others still dividing their acting awards into gender. Nevertheless, there has been a growing movement to exclude sex from acting classes over the last few years, and since introducing the idea over 2017, the MTV Film and TV Awards have made waves.
The Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Award is also a big shift during the festival, replaced by the Silver Bear Jury Award. The Alfred Bauer Prize had previously been suspended when there was controversy over the fact that the filmmaker Bauer was a high-ranking Nazi party member.
Although genderless awards suit modern times and the frequent calls for less separation among men, some on-line people have pointed out that entertainment awards have a contentious past of nominating women and men in categories where they compete directly. In its 90 + years of history , for example, the Academy Awards in the USA only nominated five women for Best Director Oscar.
