Mark Kermode comments on the lack of Women Composers at 2022 BAFTAs and Academy Awards

Mark Kermode has bemoaned the lack of women composers in scoring categories at the main film awards this year. The 2022 BAFTAs recently announced their longlists, and none of the 15 scores currently in the running for Best Original Score has been composed by a woman. The 2022 Academy Awards features one woman composer – Germaine Franco for Disney animation Encanto – in their 15-strong longlist.

As Mark commented on his weekly movie music show on Scala Radio, “If you’re a regular listener, you’ll know that women have always been a central part of our playlist. Very dispiriting, therefore, to note that of the 15 scores longlisted for the forthcoming Baftas, not one is by a woman. Indeed, if you add the Oscar and Bafta longlists together, you get a grand total of ONE woman contender out of 30 possible nominations. Seriously!”

Mark’s ‘best of 2021’ show featured a range of brilliant scores by women composers, including horror film Censor by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, documentaries I Am Belmaya by Marie-Anne Fischer and Julia by Rachel Portman. His Top 5 favourite film scores of the year featured The Reason I Jump by Nainita Desai and his number 1 choice was Drive My Car by Japanese composer Eiko Ishibashi. Yet why did none of these scores make it onto the big awards’ longlists?

The Academy Awards and BAFTAs have been making tentative steps at improving gender diversity in some of the main categories, with Chloe Zhao becoming the second woman to win the Best Director Oscar in 2021, but the scoring awards are still predominantly a man’s world. Rachel Portman was the first woman composer to win an Oscar for the now defunct category of ‘Best Musical or Comedy Score’ for Emma at the 69th ceremony in 1997. Since then, only 2 other women composers have won a scoring Oscar - Anne Dudley won ‘Best Musical or Comedy Score’ for The Full Monty in 1998 and Hildur Gudnadottir won ‘Best Original Score’ for Joker in 2020 – among only a handful of women nominees across the decades, including Mica Levi for Jackie in 2017.

Clearly, there’s still a lot of work to do to showcase and celebrate the work of women composers. Mark’s Scala Radio show features established and up-and-coming women composers every week – and he’s keen to discover more, so email kermode@scalaradio.co.uk if there’s someone whose music you’d like to hear on the programme.

Already in 2022 Mark’s had first radio plays for new scores by Anne Dudley (Benedetta) and Isobel Waller-Bridge (Munich – The Edge of War), and hisrecent Empire magazine playlistshone a spotlight on a range of talent: his 5 Composers Whose Names You Should Know were Hutch Demoulpied, DIE HEXEN, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Aska Matsumiya and Nainita Desai – and Mark is hopeful that Nainita could join the likes of Rachel, Anne and Hildur at the Academy Awards: “If Desai doesn’t have her own Oscar nod by the end of the decade, I will eat Werner Herzog’s shoe!”

Elsewhere on Scala Radio, our partnership with the charitable foundation DONNE, Women in Music has introduced women classical composers from across the centuries to the station, and we recently launched a Women Composers station as part of our Premium subscription, where you can also listen back to Mark’s ‘best of 2021’ show.