Questões

Kew Gardens

            From the oval-shaped flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of colour raised upon the surface. The petals were voluminous enough to be stirred by the summer breeze, and when they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights passed one over the other, staining an inch of the brown earth beneath with a spot of the most intricate colour. The light fell either upon the smooth, grey back of a pebble, or, the shell of a snail with its brown, circular veins, or falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one expected them to burst and disappear. Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.

           How hot it was! So hot that even the thrush chose to hop, like a mechanical bird, in the shadow of the flowers, with long pauses between one movement and the next; instead of rambling vaguely the white butterflies danced one above another, making with their white shifting flakes the outline of a shattered marble column above the tallest flowers; the glass roofs of the palm house shone as if a whole market full of shiny green umbrellas had opened in the sun; and in the drone of the aeroplane the voice of the summer sky murmured its fierce soul.

            Yellow and black, pink and snow white, shapes of all these colours, men, women, and children were spotted for a second upon the horizon, and then, seeing the breadth of yellow that lay upon the grass, they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees, dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere. But there was no silence; all the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels and changing their gear; like a vast nest of Chinese boxes all of wrought steel turning ceaselessly one within another the city murmured; on the top of which the voices cried aloud and the petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into the air. 

(Source: Virginia Woolf — adaptation.) 

Who votes for the Academy Awards?

        After the glitzy red-carpet arrivals, the feel-good montages, and the host’s opening roast, the Oscars ceremony switches to its raison d’être: revealing the previous year’s highest achievers in cinema. One after another, the presenters list the nominees, open a lavish envelope, and reveal the winner in each category. The champions breathlessly accept their awards and, over and over, effusively thank their mothers, God, and the academy... What is this obscure body? The academy—that is, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—is the organization that votes for the Oscar winners.

        The academy is an exclusive Hollywood institution that has its own governing body, 17 separate branches, and a thorough rule book on membership eligibility and voting processes. Since 2016, when the board announced that it would diversify its membership, the academy has grown to about 8,000 members. It doesn’t publicize the names of all those members, but each spring it releases a list of the individuals it has invited to join its ranks.

        The rest of the academy members are not listed, but we can guess who a few are by looking at some of the requirements to join the institution. To qualify, an individual must work in the film industry. This means that neither individuals who work exclusively in television nor members of the press may join. Oscar nominees are often considered for membership automatically, while other candidates must be sponsored by two active members of the branch they wish to join. Each branch also has its own specific requirements.