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Honestly, I thought it was going to be Train Dreams. I was wrong. Now, I feel like I have betrayed my culture.
When Demi Moore (in a gorge custom Gucci plumage) announced Sinners DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw for Best Cinematography, I was gagged — and my gag reflex is usually good. It’s not that I didn’t believe that Durald Arkapaw couldn’t win, it’s just that I don’t trust a lot of the voting members of the Academy.
Also, I always just expect the Academy to deliver disappointment — and usually they do. It’s only on the rarest of occasions that I am genuinely shocked. I mean, this is the same Academy that gave Green Book an Oscar and dubbed Crash as Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain. Durald Arkapaw’s win was a very welcome pleasant surprise.
Donned in a chic Thom Browne suit, Durald Arkapaw stepped on the stage and as she was handed her the Oscar, it was clear that even Moore knew that this was gonna be a moment for the books… right up there with Halle Berry winning Best Actress for Monsters Ball in 2002 and all the way back to 1939 when icon Hattie McDaniel made history as the first Black person to win an Oscar for her role in Gone with the Wind.
Durald Arkapaw just made history as the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Cinematographer.
“Whenever I say thank you to Ryan, he replies and says, ‘No, thank you. Thank you for believing in me and thank you for trusting me’,” Durald Arkapaw started. “And that’s the kind of guy that I get to make films with… and he really, truly means it.”
She gave shine to her cinematographer peers, including Black Panther DP Rachel Morrison, as well as the trailblazing DP Ellen Kuras. As she expressed her gratitude, she looked out into the audience in the Dolby Theatre and said, “I really want all the women in the room to stand up, because I feel like I don’t get here without you guys.”
The women stood up to a room of applause.
“I really, really, truly mean that,” she continued, “I have felt so much love from all the women on this whole campaign and gotten to meet so many people, and I just feel like moments like this happen because of you guys, and I want to thank you for that.”
Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s win is hope for a new direction in a Hollywood that is filled with virtue and integrity; a Hollywood that embraces progress and inclusivity; a Hollywood that honors the artist first; a gracious Hollywood.
Instead, we just have to deal with the burning bag of shit that has been thrown on the industry’s doorstep.
I was more than happy to celebrate Durald Arkapaw’s win. As a fellow Filipino, I had to celebrate my fellow fly pinay. It was my moral and civic obligation to do so. When she won, I felt a surge of Filipino joy through my veins, a familiar feeling that could only be compared to how I felt living in San Francisco during the Obama era and the Giants’ World Series winning streak.
Durald Arkapaw is the epitome of the phrase, “If one of us wins, we all win” while Coogler is the epitome of reaching up and reaching back.
As the world drowns in a chaotic whirlpool of shit and divisiveness, wins like these are like a lifeboat — and we need as many lifeboats as we can get right now.
Durald Arkapaw’s history-making win signified progress within the ranks of the voting Academy members, which could arguably be a microcosm of the world at large. Having a half-Black, half-Filipino woman win in a category that has a history of being white man-heavy is a pivot from the norm. It shakes the status quo. In fact, there have been only four women nominated for Best Cinematography in nearly a century (that’s 100 years for all you non-math majors!) of the Oscars.
That’s why this is a big deal.
Rachel Morrison was the first woman to be nominated in the category in 2018 for her work in Mudbound. From there, there was a sparse sprinkling of women nominees that included Ari Wegner for The Power of the Dog (2022), Mandy Walker for Elvis (2023), and, of course, Durald Arkapaw.
I didn’t realize how much of a sausage party the cinematography scene was, but at the same time, I am not surprised since all of Hollywood is practically a bonanza of wieners.
Durald Arkapaw is part of Ryan Coogler’s ecosystem of creativity, where he doesn’t limit his storytelling to his own perspective. As Durald Arkapaw said in her acceptance speech, Coogler has the utmost gratitude for those who contribute to his vision — because unlike the stereotypical neurotic controlling “tortured artist” filmmaker, he knows that it literally takes a village.
Coogler has been very vocal about inclusivity on his sets in front of and behind the camera. Specifically, he makes a blatant effort to include more female voices on his team.
In an interview with Variety in 2016, Coogler admitted, “I feel like women are better filmmakers than men.”
He added, “I mean, it’s true, bro. In film school, life, whatever, they’re equipped to do this job, in many ways, better than us. They’re infinitely more complex than we are. Stronger and sharper. So, you know, we’re going to get better movies [if we have more female filmmakers]. The industry would improve. That’s the best thing I could say about that. They’ve got to be given the opportunity.”
He said something similar in an interview with Fast Company in the same year: “You’re absolutely missing something [in a room that’s all men]. Too often, you find yourself in a room like that. Sometimes dealing with studios, you go to a session, and there are only a few women, or sometimes there are none. That’s not really healthy for the creative process. That’s how stuff slips through the cracks. Everybody’s a prisoner of their own perspective. I can only see the world through my own eyes. The last few times I made a movie, I had a cinematographer who was a woman. And my editors, one of them is a woman, and the way those two view things and give notes are radically different, and when you have that balance, it’s really an asset.”
In 2016, we were living in a post-#OscarsSoWhite era. The acronym “DEI” was sacred and not repellent. Diversity was on the rise, and opportunities started to open up. There was a degree of narrative change that we had not seen in the industry ever. The term “Representation Matters” became Hollywood’s mantra… until they decided they had had enough.
As the last helicopter took off from the scorched land of DEI, the windows to opportunities for those who were not part of the dominant culture started to close as if everyone decided to be casually racist and homophobic all of a sudden.
It’s not to say that there isn’t any inclusive representation out in the media landscape, but you can feel the contraction of opportunities in the air. But it’s Coogler and his collective that continue to be a model of what could be.
Under his Proximity Media umbrella, he produces with his wife, Zinzi Coogler (I just read that she and I have the same birthday! Go Aries!), as well as Sev Ohanian, his partner-in-crime since USC Film School and the days of Fruitvale Station. From the Creed franchise to Judas and the Black Messiah to Ironheart, the projects produced by Proximity are reflective of the culture of inclusivity fostered by Coogler… a culture that Hollywood should aspire to be.
One could dream, right?
This utopia is not an attainable reality because evil is a stubborn motherfucker. It never dies. It is impossible to control the chaos that is impacting the world at large. The only thing a person can do is improve and do good by their immediate community around them in hopes that it will be an example to others. In other words, why can’t more filmmakers — and more people in the world — be like Ryan Coogler and Autumn Durald Arkapaw?
Coogler has taught us that inclusivity brings a creative advantage and, therefore, more opportunities to hone and make ideas better. His practices of inclusivity aren’t performative. There is no moral obligation. It’s just how you make great art.
In the aforementioned Variety interview from 2016, Coogler talks about diversity and working with Rachel Morrison on Fruitvale Station. He asks the interviewer if he knows the cinematographer Adam Arkapaw. Coogler goes on to say, “His wife, she shot Palo Alto. She’s incredible. She shot second unit on Arakpaw’s new movie with Derek Cianfrance, The Light Between Oceans. I’ve seen her work, and it’s just outstanding. I mean, it’s something that needs to change fast. But the ones that are doing it are so talented, I feel like they’re going to become directors. That’s the thing.”
In case you haven’t figured it out, the woman in question he was talking about is Autumn Durald Arkapaw, thus proving Coogler’s eye for talent and ability and unwavering willingness to collaborate.
Everyone is limited by their own perspective, and by bringing in diverse perspectives, it expands what a film can see and say — and with that comes good storytelling… and an Oscar or two.
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