While accepting Honorary Oscars at the Academy’s Governors Awards last night, both Lina Wertmüller and Geena Davis spoke about the need for change in show business — specifically regarding its representation of women. According to Variety, Davis is pushing for equal screentime for women and men, while Wertmüller is looking to reform the Oscars themselves.
With Isabella Rossellini serving as her translator, Wertmüller said she “would like to change the Oscar to a feminine name.” Rossellini continued, “She would like to call it ‘Anna.’”
Wertmüller became the first woman to be nominated for a directing Oscar with 1976’s “Seven Beauties.” Since then, just four women — Jane Campion (“The Piano”), Sofia Coppola (“Lost in Translation”), Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”), and Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”) — have been nominated in the category. Bigelow is the sole woman to take home the prize.
Campion and Gerwig helped present Wertmüller her Honorary Oscar. Referencing the Italian filmmaker’s place in in cinematic (and feminist) history, Gerwig said, “I learned the name Lina Wertmüller before I had seen her films.” Campion asked, “How do you correct centuries of patriarchal domination? It started with Lina Wertmuller.”
Davis received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her gender parity work with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. “The message we are sending [in society] is that men and boys are far more valuable to us than women and girls,” she said in her speech. She called for Hollywood to just fix the on-screen gender imbalance once and for all. “Here’s my theory of change: nearly every sector of society has a huge gender disparity problem,” Davis noted. “But there’s one category of gross inequality where the under-representation of women can be fixed absolutely overnight: on screen.”
Constance Wu and Tom Hanks presented Davis with her prize. “The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award is given to ‘an individual in the motion picture arts and sciences whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry,’” Hanks, Davis’ “League of Their Own” co-star, explained. “So is there a better example of that than creating an entire organization dedicated to providing young girls with examples of women on screen who are smart, who are resilient, who are hardworking, who are inspiring, who are instinctively talented, and who are actually played by women who are employed in the business of show?”
Davis previously won an Oscar for her supporting turn in “The Accidental Tourist.” She received another nod for “Thelma & Louise.”
The Governors Awards also saw Wes Studi becoming the first Native American to win an Oscar. “I’d simply like to say, it’s about time,” the veteran actor declared. “Hostiles,” “Avatar,” “Dances with Wolves,” and “The Last of the Mohicans” are among his 90-plus credits.
Prior to the 2019 Governors Awards, women received just 22 of the 180 Honorary Oscars given out, The Hollywood Reporter confirms. Judy Garland, Agnes Varda, Mary Pickford, Sophia Loren, Lauren Bacall, Angela Lansbury, Gena Rowlands, and Cicely Tyson are among those who have been honored.
