French movies soul-search over race – ‘H’wood hiring programs aren’t enough to solve diversity problem’

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LOS ANGELES, April 18, (Agencies): Born in Cuba to African slaves, Rafael Padilla battled racism to become the toast of bourgeois Paris, feted by the rich and powerful for his performances as “Chocolat the clown,” France’s first black celebrity. Almost a century after he was laid to rest in a mass grave in the French capital, his largely forgotten story is being told in the North American premiere on Monday of Roschdy Zem’s “Chocolat.”

It is a bold choice to open COLCOA, the world’s largest festival of French film, as it challenges audiences to consider whether Hollywood’s notorious diversity problem is also an issue in France. The US film industry has been facing a very public backlash over its lack of prominent ethnic minority stars, exemplified by February’s Oscars, which featured no black nominees for acting awards for the second year running. In marked contrast, a record number of ethnic minorities competed in major categories at France’s own annual industry prizegiving, the Cesars, this year.

Underlining America’s diversity problem, the Center for African-American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles published a damning “Hollywood Diversity Report 2016” in February.

Ethnic

It found that ethnic minorites claimed just 12.9 percent of lead roles in 163 films released in 2014, down from 16.7 percent the year before and 15.1 percent in 2012. But minority filmmakers and actors involved in features being shown at the nine-day COLCOA festival in Los Angeles believe the Cesars’ relative diversity may be masking the true situation in French film.

“Chocolat” is led by rising star Omar Sy, the first Frenchman of African descent to win a best actor Cesar for his role in 2011’s “The Intouchables.” Sy has managed to parlay his popularity in the francophone world into a Hollywood career, first in sci-fi adventure “X-Men: Days of Future Past” in 2014 and then with a role in 2015 dinosaur blockbuster “Jurassic World.”

The 38-year-old points to Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, Dwayne Johnson and other ethnic minority actors who have been able to make it big despite the bleak picture outlined by UCLA’s diversity report.

Non-white actors have traditionally been denied leading roles in certain genres, like romantic comedy and superhero movies, but Sy says studios producing global blockbusters, at least, are increasingly trying “to pluck people from all areas of the world.”

Shot on a budget of 18.5 million euros ($20 million), “Chocolat” has been lauded by critics for shining a light on a subject which is more taboo in French society than in Hollywood.

A review in the Hollywood Reporter said the film deserved “plenty of credit for using this kind of commercial vehicle to look French racism in the face and call it what it is.”

In France it is forbidden by law even to collect statistics referring to “racial or ethnic origin,” so any discussion of diversity is necessarily anecdotal, but Sy suspects the problem is as big as in Hollywood.

“We have a track record of actors and directors from diverse backgrounds being given awards but if you look at production as a whole, they are not there,” Sy told AFP at COLCOA.

“Chocolat” writer and director Zem felt the problem acutely when casting around for big names to bolster his film, and only Sy emerged as a credible choice.

“I needed a recognized actor of color and there was only one name in the frame,” he told AFP.

COLCOA’s focus on diversity is evident in its world cinema section, which hosts two of the most talked-about films in Muslim countries.

Directors and producers across the world protested against Morocco’s ban of Nabil Ayouch’s French-Moroccan drama “Much Loved,” a candid take on prostitution which earned its lead actress Loubna Abidar death threats.

Prejudice

Ayouch says that even when minorities get prominent roles in French cinema, it is often just to typecast them, to play to stereotypes that serve as crude plot devices, reinforcing prejudice.

“If we want to present a son-in-law to parents, we will make a joke out of it by making him black or Arab,” he says, referring to last year’s comedy “Serial (Bad) Weddings.”

“A cop will be black or Arab if he lives in the housing projects.”

Mohamed Hamidi, whose comedy “One Man and his Cow” tells the story of an Algerian farmer dreaming of winning a Paris agricultural show, believes the status of minorities in French cinema is improving, however.

His film, he says, follows a strong slate of recent French features led by black or North African actors, including “Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra” (2002), “Welcome to the Sticks” (2008), and “The Intouchables.”

“You only have to look at the big successes of the last 20 years… I think the French are largely there,” he says.

Hollywood’s lack of diversity is hot topic, and that has prompted some companies to set up programs to expand minority hiring.

Yet are those diversity programs, well intentioned and even necessary as they are, missing an essential part of the industry?

That was one question raised at a panel on how to increase diversity in the future of cinema. The panel was held at the Future of Cinema Conference run by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).

Producer Stephen Love of BS Pictures reminded the gathering that diversity programs tend to be top-down, and are intended to pull people up, but without minority representation on the administrative side, that’s not enough.

“If you don’t have representation in those ranks as well, it’s really hard to make everyone feel like there’s not a glass ceiling in the organization,” said Love. Love pointed out that no African American has ever run a major American studio. “I know several executives who are all looking to that point,” he said, “but before they get there, they’re all somehow pushed to producing.

“There’s more money in producing but there’s more power in the studio ranks,” he said.

Love also pointed out that having a “check-box” for hiring minority categories is not enough. He cited the example of an African-American female writer he knows who was hired by a show that had all-black cast but needed a diversity hire.

“The problem with that was that there were 12 writers in that room but she was the only person of color and the only woman. Unfortunately, she had no input,” said Love. “They would develop scripts without her, to the point where she just stayed in her own office.” She didn’t get a chance to contribute, said Love, until one of the show’s stars threatened to quit if she was not included.

Along with Love, who is African American himself, the panel his producing partner Bake Pickins, who is Native American, and three women: Barbara Lange, executive director of SMPTE; Danielle Feinberg of Pixar: and writer-director Abi Corbin, who moderated.

While the panel was generally skeptical about check-box hiring, Pickens noted that there’s rarely a box to check for Native Americans, a minority that tends to be overlooked by the majority community.

“Knowing that we exist is probably the biggest thing,” said Pickens. He later asked the audience, “How many of you have a Native American friend?” Of perhaps 150 people in the room, less than a dozen hands went up. Pickens said that was more than he expected, and when he asked who had more than one, some hands went down.

 

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