History Was Made At The 2021 Academy Awards
Apr 26, 2021 by apost team
The 2021 Oscars this year were not only different from last year's Oscars, but also all Oscars held before. Known officially as The Academy Awards, the Oscars are regarded as one of the most prestigious award ceremonies for film and the entertainment industry across the entire world. The very first Academy Awards or "Oscars" were held as a private dinner in 1929, where the golden knight statue was also revealed and became the iconic physical manifestation of the award. Since its inception in 1929, a total of 3,140 Oscar statuettes have been awarded to actors, directors, musicians, and other artists in the film and entertainment industry for their outstanding contribution to the art.
Last year's Oscars also made history, with the film "Parasite" having become the very first foreign-language film to have secured the award for Best Picture.
In this year's 93rd annual Academy Awards ceremony, history was made again. The awards took place on Sunday, April 25, at Union Station Los Angeles and the Dolby Theatre at the Hollywood & Highland Center and honored films that were released in 2020. After much criticism on the lack of diversity at the historical awards, both last year and this year's 2021 event boasted a more diverse amount of recipients, many of which had historical wins.
The film "Nomadland" won a plethora of awards, including best actress being won by Frances McDormand and Best Director won by Chloé Zhao. The film also secured a third award, for Best Picture. However, McDormand and Zhao's wins were significant of larger Academy Award history.
Read on to learn about how history was made at the Oscar's ceremony this year.
This year also marked a different type of Oscars ceremony due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The guest list was highly vetted and all attendees needed to be vaccinated and had to be tested multiple times to qualify as a guest. This, of course, made the guest list much smaller than usual, and the ceremony marked by restrictions and limits according to Harper's Bazaar. However, it also allowed viewers to see the awards with some sense of normalcy, as virtually no one was wearing a mask, in stark comparison to daily life in many places across the world.
However, despite the differences in the ceremony, the tradition of giving out awards for films released in 2020 proceeded as normal, with only a few changes in which the awards were given out. Usually, the ceremony saves Best Picture for the end, but this year revealing the winner of Best Actor was the last category.
One film in particular, "Nomadland," was nominated for six different categories, and won three awards in total. The drama film premiered on September 11, 2020, at the Venice Film Festival and stars Frances McDormand as a woman who lives in her van after leaving her hometown following the death of her husband. The film centers around the widow's story, and what it means to be 'houseless' and traveling around the United States. For her outstanding performance as the character "Fern," McDormand won Best Actress. This was her fourth Academy Award in total, and her speech was quite short as she accepted her award and said:
"I have no words. My voice is in my sword. We know the sword is our work and I like work. Thank you for knowing that and thanks for this."
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McDormand also accepted the film's win for Best Picture, with an interesting nod to the film's sound producer, Michael Wolf Snyder, who committed suicide at the young age of 35 and was found by his father on March 1.
As a tribute to him, the 63-year -old actress howled as she accepted the award for Best Picture:
"We give this one to our wolf."
However, the most history-making award the film earned was that of Best Director, won by Chloé Zhao. Zhao is only the second woman ever, and the very first woman of color to have won Best Director in all of the 93 years of the Oscars' history. During her acceptance speech, Zhao said:
“When I was growing up in China, my dad and I would play this game. We would memorize classic poems and text and try to finish each other’s sentences."
Zhao then recited a line of Chinese poetry before she translated it, having said, "People at birth are inherently good.”
“I have always found goodness in the people I met. This is for anyone who has the faith and courage to hold onto the goodness in themselves.”
Zhao's win is certainly a unique moment in film and entertainment history, and her speech was both inspiring and fitting to the circumstances. Although the awards have received dozens of nominations for films directed by women, only seven women have even been recognized in the category, and Zhao became the second woman to have ever won the award. The first woman was Kathryn Bigelow in 2010, for directing "The Hurt Locker."
What do you think about the history that was made at the Oscars this year? Which film was your favorite? Let us know, and be sure to pass this on to your friends and family.
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