Bafta 2026 film awards longlists hope to avoid #BaftasSoWhite diversity criticism

With strong showings for Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and target hit for 50% female directors, criticism that has dogged the prizes in recent years may have been headed off For now, the Bafta film awards appears to have headed off further criticism over its long-running diversity crisis after revealing its longlists on Friday. Despite Bafta overhauling its awards voting system in 2020 after claims of “systemic racism” , outrage re-emerged in 2023 after no people of colour won awards . The longlists, which are an intermediate stage on the way to the final nominations with each category determined by different mixes of membership voting and jury selection, suggest that some progress is being made. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/ws6nORV via IFTTT

‘It has become a sort of silver bullet’: why are rap lyrics being put on trial?

In compelling documentary As We Speak, a controversial legal practice that uses rap lyrics to secure convictions is explored

In September 2001, McKinley Phipps Jr, also known as the rapper Mac, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for manslaughter. It had been a year and a half since gunfire erupted outside a club where he was slated to perform in Slidell, Louisiana, resulting in the death of 19-year-old Barron Victor Jr. Phipps, then 22, maintained his innocence, and the case against him was weak – there was no gun linking him to the crime, several witnesses recanted their testimony and another person confessed to pulling the trigger. And yet, prosecutors had their trump card: Mac, a former New Orleans rap prodigy who began releasing music at the age of 13, had rapped about murder.

“Murder, murder, kill, kill”, Phipps recites in As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial, a new documentary on the criminalization of rap lyrics. Prosecutors spliced that line with one from a different song – “Pull the trigger, put a bullet in your head” – to create the portrait of a killer; Mac’s art was the evidence that DNA, solid confessions, or a missing weapon couldn’t provide. An all-white jury bought it. Phipps served over 21 years in prison before being granted clemency in 2021.

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