Hrithik, Alia, Senthil invited to become Academy members

The Academy of Motion Pictures has announced the list of actors, directors and others associated with cinema who have been invited to join them as members in the year 2020. The Academy has invited 819 new members this year.

V Senthil Kumar, co-founder of Chennai-based digital services provider Qube Cinema Technologies, is among the list of 819 new members. Others from India include Bollywood actors Alia Bhatt and Hrithik Roshan, casting directors Nandini Shrikent and Tess Joseph, documentary filmmakers Nishtha Jain and Amit Madheshiya, costume designer Neeta Lulla, visual effects supervisors Vishal Anand and Sandeep Kamal, and film composer Nainita Desai.

Senthil Kumar has been selected under the ‘Members-At-Large’ category.

This year, most of the members who have been invited are from the Hindi film industry. Last year, Baahubali VFX director Srinivas Mohan was the only person from the southern film industries to be invited.

According to Variety, “If all 819 invitees accept their invitations (which would bring its total membership to 9,412), 45 per cent of the new members will be women and 36 per cent are from underrepresented ethnic/racial communities. International make-up is 49 per cent from 68 countries”.

Since 2016, the Academy has been looking to increase the diversity among its members, following consistent criticism of the Oscars being “too white”. In 2018, as many as 20 Indians were invited to become members. However, the list from India has remained Bollywood-centric.

Last year, the prominent Indians in cinema who were invited, apart from Srinivas Mohan, were Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Riesh Batra, Anupam Kher and Sherry Bharda.

Image courtesy of thesatimes |

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