Recent research shows that White men overwhelmingly dominate film criticism. This year, the Time’s Up initiative and critical aggregator Rotten Tomatoes created and supported pipelines to bring more writers of color into the profession. On yesterday’s (September 26) espisode of Code Switch, Pakistani-American journalist Bilal Qureshi discussed these efforts.
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??This week on the pod ??
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rnttBilal Qureshi went to the ?️ Toronto Film Festival ?️ to check out what exciting movies are coming this fall … and who gets to judge ?
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rntt?????????https://t.co/ljzHQhqIYHrnt— NPR’s Code Switch (@NPRCodeSwitch) September 26, 2018
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rnt"Movies, in fact, are much further along than the critics are," Qureshi said. "The big stars of the last festivals have been Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins [and] Ava DuVernay. You have a kind of sense that the actual culture that’s being made now is moving much further along. If you look at [the last two years] alone, you had huge hits—‘Girls Trip,’ ‘Coco,’ ‘Black Panther,’ of course, and ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ now—which each then lead to some kind of [critical] discussion like, ‘Well actually, people of color go to the movies!’ Happens every time."
Listen to the full conversation with Qureshi: