This Academy Awards Supercut is a guided tour through the prominent female directed films not nominated or recognized during this past award season. With a focus on the Academy of Arts and Sciences whose voting population is 94% white, 77% male, and 62 is the average age, the supercut places clips of each women-made movie back to back, illustrating how women have moved beyond the problems of ‘not creating enough work,' the often cited excuse for women's missing place at the content-creators' table. Launched before the Oscars, the video generated 15,000 views in just 48 hours, launching a discussion throughout the web and social networks about why and how no one heard of these films.
Bookended by recent statistics, For Your Consideration uses copyright footage to honor prominent female directors in an effort to encourage more women to write and direct their own work, open the conversation about women-made narratives and shed light on who decides what narratives get honored, why and how that affects our popular culture. When paired with this particular footage, the looped chorus of the song, "A Change Will Do You Good" by Sheryl Crow, changes in meaning and purpose. It's no longer a song about an individual lover but one about society's need to change who is continually represented.
** It is important to note that the use of the music goes beyond what the Codes of Best Practices describe, making it a riskier judgement as the practitioner is acting beyond the consensus of peers.
Why It's Fair Use: Best Practice #5: Copying, reposting, and recirculationg a work or part of a work for purposes of launching a discussion
Content originally created as entertainment now serves the distinct purpose of launching an online conversation. Such uses are at the heart of freedom of expression and demonstrate the importance of fair use: when protected works are selectively repurposed to launch a discussion, a fundamental goal of the copyright system--to promote a robust social discourse--is achieved.
Source Material:
- Pariah, Written and Directed by Dee Rees
- We Need to Talk About Kevin, Co-Written and Directed by Lynne Ramsay
- Circumstance, Written and Directed by Maryam Keshavarz
- Higher Ground, Directed by Vera Farmiga
- I Will Follow, Written and Directed by Ava Duvernay
- The Future, Written and Directed by Miranda July
- In the Land of Blood and Honey, Written and Directed by Angelina Jolie
- Meek’s Cutoff, Directed by Kelly Reichardt
- The Whistleblower, Directed by Larysa Kondracki